DR. LATHAM ON THE MOSKITO KINGDOM.
The last portion of Dr. Robert G. Latham's learned work on the Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies, treats of American ethnology, a branch of the subject which, though extensively investigated, is greatly in want of systematic arrangement. Some of Dr. Latham's views are novel. The following sketch of the Nicaraguan Indians is interesting at the present moment for political reasons:—
"The Moskito Indians are no subjects of England, any more than the Tahitians are of France, or the Sandwich Islanders of America, France, and England conjointly. The Moskito coast is a Protectorate, and the Moskito Indians are the subjects of a native king. The present reigning monarch was educated under English auspices at Jamaica, and, upon attaining his majority, crowned at Grey Town. I believe that his name is that of the grandfather of our late gracious majesty. King George, then, King of the Moskitos, has a territory extending from the neighborhood of Truxillo to the lower part of the River San Juan; a territory whereof, inconveniently for Great Britain, the United States, and the commerce of the world at large, the limits and definition are far from being universally recognized. Nicaragua has claims, and the Isthmus canal suffers accordingly. The King of the Moskito coast, and the Emperor of the Brazil, are the only resident sovereigns of the New World. The subjects of the former are, really, the aborigines of the whole line of coast between Nicaragua and Honduras—there being no Indians remaining in the former republic, and but few in the latter. Of these, too—the Nicaraguans—we have no definite ethnological information. Mr. Squier speaks of them as occupants of the islands of the lakes of the interior. Colonel Galindo also mentions them; but I infer, from his account, that their original language is lost, and that Spanish is their present tongue; just as it is said to be that of the aborigines of St. Salvador and Costa Rica. This makes it difficult to fix them. And the difficulty is increased when we resort to history, tradition, and archæology. History makes them Mexicans—Asteks from the kingdom of Montezuma, and colonists of the Peninsula, just as the Ph[oe]nicians were of Carthage. Archæology goes the same way. A detailed description of Mr. Squier's discoveries is an accession to ethnology which is anxiously expected. At any rate, stone ruins and carved decorations have been found; so that what Mr. Stephenson has written about Yucatan and Guatemala, may be repeated in the case of Nicaragua. Be it so. The difficulty will be but increased, since whatever facts make Nicaragua Mexican, isolate the Moskitos. They are now in contact with Spaniards and Englishmen—populations whose civilization differs from their own; and populations who are evidently intrusive and of recent origin. Precisely the same would be the case if the Nicaraguans were made Mexican. The civilization would be of another sort; the population which introduced it would be equally intrusive; and the only difference would be a difference of stage and degree—a little earlier in the way of time, and a little less contrast in the way of skill and industry. But the evidence in favor of the Mexican origin of the Nicaraguans is doubtful; and so is the fact of their having wholly lost their native tongue; and until one of these two opinions be proved, it will be well to suspend our judgment as to the isolation of the Moskitos. If, indeed, either of them be true, their ethnological position will be a difficult question. With nothing in Honduras to compare them with—with nothing tangible, or with an apparently incompatible affinity in Nicaragua—with only very general miscellaneous affinities in Guatemala—their ethnological affinities are as peculiar as their political constitution. Nevertheless, isolated as their language is, it has undoubtedly general affinities with those of America at large; and this is all that it is safe to say at present. But it is safe to say this. We have plenty of data for their tongue, in a grammar of Mr. Henderson's, published at New-York, 1846. The chief fact in the history of the Moskitos is that they were never subject to the Spaniards. Each continent affords a specimen of this isolated freedom—the independence of some exceptional and impracticable tribes, as compared with the universal empire of some encroaching European power. The Circassians in Caucasus, the Tshuktshi Koriaks in North-Eastern Asia, and the Kaffres in Africa, show this. Their relations with the buccaneers were, probably, of an amicable description. So they were with the negroes—maroon and imported. And this, perhaps, has determined their differentiæ. They are intertropical American aborigines, who have become partially European, without becoming Spanish. Their physical conformation is that of the South rather than the North American; and, here it must be remembered, that we are passing from one moiety of the new hemisphere to the other. With a skin which is olive-colored rather than red, they have small limbs and undersized frames; whilst their habits are, mutatis mutandis, those of the intertropical African. This means, that the exuberance of soil, and the heat of the climate, make them agriculturists rather than shepherds, and idlers rather than agriculturists, since the least possible amount of exertion gives them roots and fruits, whilst it is only those wants which are compatible with indolence that they care to satisfy. They presume rather than improve upon the warmth of their suns, and the fertility of the soil. When they get liquor, they get drunk; when they work hardest, they cut mahogany. Canoes and harpoons represent the native industry. Wulasha is the name of their evil spirit, and Liwaia that of a water-dog. I cannot but think that there is much intermixture amongst them. At the same time, the data for ascertaining the amount are wanting. Their greatest intercourse has, probably, been with the negro; their next greatest with the Englishman. Of the population of the interior we know next to nothing. Here their neighbors are Spaniards. They are frontagers to the river San Juan. This gives them their value in politics. They are the only well known extant Indians between Guatemala and Veragua. This gives them their value in ethnology. The populations to which they were most immediately allied have disappeared from history. This isolates them; so that there is no class to which they can be subordinated. At the same time, they are quite as like the nearest known tribes as the American ethnologist is prepared to expect. What they were in their truly natural state, when, unmodified by either Englishman or Spaniard, Black or Indian, they represented the indigenous civilization (such as it was) of their coast, is uncertain."
GOLD-QUARTZ AND SOCIETY.
The Burns Ranch Union Mining Company in California have published a prospectus—we suppose to facilitate the sale of their stock—and the writer indulges in some speculations respecting the influence of the discovery that the chief mineral riches of the new state are in mines, instead of the sands of rivers, thus:
It appears to be the destiny of America to carry on the greatness of the future, and that Providence—which shapes the ends of nations as well as of persons, at a time when it was most needful for the prosecution of her mission, when war and the expedients of political strategy are out of vogue, and the people is most powerful of which the individual civilization, energy, ambition, and resources are greatest—that Providence, at this crisis, has opened the veins of the Continent, slumbering so many thousand years, in order that we might derive from them all that remained necessary for investing the United States with the leadership of the world.
The first intelligence of the discovery of gold in California fell upon the general mind like news of a great and peculiar revolution. It was at once—even before the statements on the subject assumed a definite or certain form—it was at once felt that a new hour was signally on the dial-plate of history. Immediately, those immense fortunes which were acquired by the Portuguese and Spaniards nearly four centuries ago—fortunes which, in the decline of nations, have still remained in families as the sign and substance of the only nobility and power which mankind at large acknowledge—those astonishing fortunes which raised the enterprising poor man to the dignity and happiness of the most elevated classes in society, were recalled, and made suggestive of like successes to new and more hardy adventurers. The reports came with increased volume; every ship confirmed the rumors brought by its predecessor, and new intelligence, that, in its turn, tasked the popular credulity; and it came soon to be understood that we had found a land literally flowing with gold and silver, as that promised to the earlier favorites of Heaven did with milk and honey. As many as were free from controlling engagements, and had means with which to do so, started for our El Dorado, making haste, in fear that the wealth of the country would quickly be exhausted—not dreaming, even yet, that there was any thing to be acquired but flakes and scales and scattered masses of ore, which would be exhausted by the first hunters who should scour the rivers and turn the surface soil.
But at length the geologists began to apprehend, what experience soon confirmed, that, extraordinary as were the amounts of gold found in drifts of gravel, and deposits that had been left in the beds of streams, these were merely the signs of far greater riches—merely indexes of the presence of rocks and hills, and underlayers of plains, impregnated with gold, in quantities that the processes of nature could never disclose, and that would reward only the scientific efforts of miners having all the mechanical appliances which the laborious experiments of other nations had invented. The fact of the existence of veins of gold in vast quartz formations, and ribs of gold in hills, was as startling almost as the first news of the presence of the precious metal in the country. This at once changed the prospect, and from a game of chance, elevated the pursuit of gold in California to a grand industrial purpose, requiring an energy and sagacity that invest it with the highest dignity, and to such energy and sagacity promising, with absolute certainty, rewards that make it worthy of the greatest ambition.