In the meantime, the United States had annexed Florida. Then the Texans set up an independent government, and it was recognized as an independent nation, but with its people openly anxious for annexation to the United States. The statesmen of England saw that annexation was inevitable and that a war with Mexico would follow, with the result that the territory of the United States would be enlarged in the Southwest and along the Spanish Main, where British subjects were looking for a further extension of territory and influence. For at about this time the ancient settlement of logwood cutters at Belize was developed into the colony of British Honduras (1845). Although England had subscribed to and helped to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, her statesmen were looking to an extension of British Honduras as far south as the mouth of the Rio San Juan, in Nicaragua. To secure this extension a protectorate over the Mosquito Coast Indians was declared, and the coast was assumed to be territory entirely independent of Nicaragua. On August 19, 1841, British war-ships captured San Juan del Norte, at the mouth of the San Juan, drove away the Nicaragua officials, and installed Mosquito Indians. The Nicaraguans soon drove away the Mosquito forces, but the interest in the place having been intensified by projects for building an interoceanic canal across the country, the British returned, late in 1847, and on January 10, 1848, placed the Mosquito chiefs once more in possession. With the rush of emigrants to California, the United States became interested in this aggression. It would never do to allow the British to control such a highway as was then in contemplation. The British naturally held on to what they had secured at the mouth of the San Juan, however, and then, with a view of obtaining control of the other end of the canal route (the Gulf of Fonseca), they began to press Honduras for the payment of certain claims of British subjects, the nature of which is of no importance because the claims were merely a pretext for an aggression that would have been made had no claims been in existence. To back these claims a British warship appeared, but when the Honduranians were in straits, the American envoy to Nicaragua heard of their trouble, hastened to meet them, and then negotiated a treaty (September 28, 1849) by which a part of Tigre Island and a part of the coast of the Gulf of Fonseca were granted to the United States for a naval station. When the British envoy learned how he had been outwitted, he ordered some of the naval force at his command to seize Tigre Island in contempt of the acquired rights of the United States. (See Keasbey's _Nicaragua Canal_ and Pims _Panama_.) That the British fully expected a war with the United States, is beyond dispute. In fact, they had been prepared for war ever since 1840, but the Nicaragua matter it was supposed would surely bring on the long-looked-for contest.