Don Pedrarias d'Avila, Governor of Panama, undertook its exploration from the south in 1514. Nine years later he was encouraged to send a force for its subjugation, under command of Francisco de Cordova, who secured the submission of its cacique, Nicarao or Nicaya. The conquerors gave that chieftain's name to his country. They founded Leon and Granada, which have remained its leading cities. Nicaragua gave a few recruits to Pizarro. Philip II., with narrow-minded foresight, sent a commission to survey the isthmus and judge of the feasibility of cutting a ship canal. The report was favourable, the route by way of Panama being chosen. It was too favourable, as it pointed out the advantages of such a passage to international commerce. Spain did not want such broad liberality, and Philip decreed the punishment of death to any one who might thereafter propose to wed the two oceans together. But, as high tariffs encourage smuggling, so prohibited commerce takes refuge in privateering. The Buccaneers arose to dispute with Spain the monopoly of her American trade. The isthmus suffered most from their ravages. Panama, then as now, the most important city on the coast, was the depôt for the royal treasure gathered at the adjacent mines of Cana. Drake paid it a predatory visit in 1586. It was afterwards taken and sacked at different times by Morgan, Sharpe, Ringrose, and Dampier. It was burned three times between 1670 and 1680. Finally it was abandoned for the new town, three miles inland.
Nicaragua, though liable to predatory forays, had not wealth enough to tempt the buccaneers from richer prey. Cape Gracias a Dios, on its north-eastern boundary, was a rendezvous of the freebooters; but the Atlantic coast was even less inviting to the plunder-seekers than the Pacific. The narratives of the buccaneers touch lightly on it. Its name of the Mosquito Coast appears to have been well deserved. De Lussan speaks with lively horror of the pestiferous little insect which "is sooner felt than seen."
The buccaneers passed away, but left a legacy. Great Britain in 1742 laid claim to the Bay Islands, which had been captured by English buccaneers just a century before. A war with Spain ensued, without material gain to either party. By the treaty of 1763, England renounced her claim on Central America, and evacuated all the disputed territory, except the Island of Ruatan, on the Atlantic coast of Honduras, a shirking of her obligations which awakened a renewal of hostilities. In 1780 Colonel Polson was sent to invade Nicaragua. Landing a force of two hundred sailors and marines at San Juan del Norte, he ascended the river in boats, carrying with little trouble the half-dozen fortified positions on its banks. At the head of the river, where it receives the waters of Lake Nicaragua, the expedition was confronted by the frowning batteries of Fort San Carlos, then, as now, guarding the mouth of the lake.
At this point in the narrative, history and tradition part company, the former averring, upon historical and biographical English authority, that Horatio Nelson, then a simple unknown captain commanding the naval forces, reduced the fort, inflicted a severe chastisement upon the enemy and returned victorious to his ships. Tradition tells a prettier story.
As the flotilla neared the shore in line of battle, the stillness was unbroken, save by the plash of their oars and the music of the surf. Not a soldier was visible on the ramparts, for the cowardly varlets of the garrison, taking advantage of the Commandante's sickness, had fled to the woods at the first sight of the enemy. The gallant hidalgo in command was left without a single attendant, save his lovely daughter. But she was a true soldier's child, with the spirit of a heroine. The boats drew rapidly near the shore, their oars flashing in the morning sun, the gunners awaiting with lighted matches the order to fire. Nelson stood up to bid his men give way, and at the instant a flash was seen in one of the embrasures of the fort; the next moment the roar of a cannon broke the stillness of lake and forest. Immediately gun after gun echoed the sound, but the first had done the work of an army, by striking down Horatio Nelson. The boats pulled rapidly out of range and down the river, beaten and discouraged. Nor did they escape heavier losses; for the Spaniards so harassed and plagued them on the retreat that, of the two hundred men who had started from San Juan, but ten returned in safety. Nelson's wound cost him the loss of an eye; and he who had never turned his back on a foe-man fled from the guns of San Carlos, served by a girl of sixteen. It was the Commandante's daughter, Donna Rafaela Mora, who had fired the battery and saved Nicaragua. The heroine of Fort San Carlos was decorated by the King of Spain, commissioned a colonel in the royal service, and pensioned for life.
Such is the tradition, accepted as authentic by the natives and supported by the testimony of several trustworthy travellers. None of Nelson's biographers make mention of the heroic maiden. According to those historians, Nelson ascended the river as far as Fort San Juan—probably Castillo Viejo—which he reduced after a somewhat protracted siege and a heavy loss to his forces. They place the scene of the accident by which he lost his eye at the siege of Calvi, in the Island of Corsica. Yet Captain Bedford Pim, of the Royal Navy, in his book of Nicaraguan travel, gives unquestioning credence to the legend of the country; which has also been accepted by other English writers who may be supposed to have a familiar acquaintance with the life of Nelson. So firmly is it believed in Nicaragua that, upon the strength of his inherited glory, General Martinez, a grandson of the heroine, was chosen President of the state in 1857, although there was at the time a regularly-elected President claiming and lawfully entitled to the office—a fact which should suffice to silence the most captious critic. In an iconoclastic age it were needless cruelty to rob the poor Nicaraguan of the only bit of heroic history he possesses. Possibly Nelson's biographers suppressed an incident which did not redound to the glory of their hero; perchance, his Catholic Majesty was imposed upon, or the tradition of the Maid of San Carlos may be but another transplanted solar myth. Quien sabe?
CHAPTER VII
British intrigues on the Isthmus — Morazan and the Confederacy — The Mosquito Dynasty — Bombardment of San Juan — Castellon calls in the foreigner — Doubleday and his free lances — Cole's contract approved by Walker.
So long as Central America remained a province of Spain, England's policy was one of peaceful words and hostile deeds. Binding herself, by treaty after treaty, to the renunciation of all claims upon the country, she steadily maintained and extended her hold upon various objective points—Ruatan, Belize, and the Bay Islands which command the Gulf of Mexico, being her favourite spoils. Some equivocal clause in a treaty, a frivolous pretence of avenging some imaginary dishonour, a buccaneer's legacy, a negro king's grant, if no better offered, was put forward as the excuse for armed occupation. Spain's ill-gotten possessions were beginning to bear the usual fruit. At length, in 1821, the colonies of the isthmus heard the cry of liberty from the North echoed by a responsive one from the South. Spanish America shook the chain fretted and worn in the friction of centuries, snapped the frail links asunder, and stood up among the nations, free. But the iron had done its work. The cramped limbs refused their offices; the eyes, wont to peer half closed in dungeon light, blinked and were dazed in the sudden noon of liberty. The body was that of a freeman, but the soul was the soul of a slave. When liberty comes to a nation prematurely, she must be born again in pain and travail ere the boon be valued by its receiver.
A disunited union of a few years' duration, a travesty of power under Iturbide's pasteboard crown, secession, reunion, discord, revolution—the annals of Central America are the Newgate Calendar of history. Yet, among the ignoble or infamous names of Central American rulers, there is one worthy of a brighter page, as its owner was of a better fate. Don Francisco Morazan, first president of the five united states, hardly deserved the title given him of the "Washington of Central America." He was an able, brave, and patriotic man, but cruel and vindictive towards his opponents. He was chosen to the presidency in 1831, and filled the office nine years; at the end of which time the natives had grown heartily tired of the civilized innovations, which were as unfitted to their inferior nature as the stiff garments of fashion to their supple limbs. Morazan had neither the grace nor the wisdom to accept philosophically the people's choice of a reactionary demagogue who catered to their tastes, and so he began to intrigue against the government of his successor, failing in which he was forced to fly to South America. Two years afterwards he landed with only three hundred followers in Costa Rica, and made himself master of the capital. But the President of that state soon rallied a force of five thousand and besieged the invader, who, after a gallant resistance of two days, was compelled to surrender. He was tried and found guilty of conspiring against the confederated states, and was put to death, together with his chief adherents, on the 15th of September, 1842. Guatemala ended the troublesome question of representative government in 1851 by electing Carrera, a half-breed, to the office of president for life.