NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

NICARAGUA AND ITS RAILWAY.

To carry a railroad or to open a canal across that portion of Central America which is known as Nicaragua, are projects which have long been in abeyance. Their discussion have even had an influence upon the political history of the country. When, on the separation of the Central American provinces from Spain, the royalists associated themselves in a revolutionary movement which they were unable to resist, they did so in the secret hope of establishing a Central American monarchy. Their political opponents, on the other side, aimed at a republican confederacy, after the model of the North American Union. The latter succeeded. The royalists, unwilling to submit, asked the assistance of the ephemeral Mexican emperor, Iturbide; and when, in consequence of this application, a Mexican army entered Guatamala, the fugitive republican congress decreed the annexation of Central America to the United States. The shortness of Iturbide's career relieved the country from the necessity of choosing between the two annexations, either to the then existing empire of Mexico or to the North American Union. But that decree of annexation to the United States decided the character of the interference of foreign powers in the domestic affairs of Central America; and all the subsequent phases of political dissension and civil war in that unfortunate country, down to William Walker, who was called in by the remnants of the same party which, in 1822, decreed the annexation to the United States, take their origin from that desperate position of parties in the first year of independence. From that date it was decided that thenceforth Central America should be a prey to foreign influences-that the royalists or aristocrats, called "serviles," had to look to England; the republicans or democrats, called "liberales," to the United States, for sympathy and support in their struggle for power, and the realisation of their political system. From that time also, throughout Central America, the former might be called the English, the latter the American party; and as the latter were those who established, supported, defended, and, after its having been overturned, strove to restore the federal constitution and government, British influence in Central America, as a matter of course, directed itself against all federal tendencies and to preserve the status quo. It is not a little singular that, at the epoch of the first conquest of Central America by the Spaniards, the country was found to be, as it is in the present day, divided among populations who, it is well known, had attained to a remarkable degree of civilisation-their monuments still studding the land-but separated from one another by idioms, and dialects, and by political tendencies. The attempt at a federation of the March-VOL. CXXXIX. NO. dlv.

States of Central America met with a similar result, and a French traveller, well acquainted with the country, Monsieur Henri de Suckau, although strongly opposed to English influence, admits that the tendencies, absolutely opposed, of the populations of the States of Central America render a federal union difficult, and almost chimerical; he believes that they have found the form of government which suits them best; and that which proves it, he says, is that, for nigh twenty years, the most perfect peace has been maintained, and favours the development of commerce and industry. We have thus presented to us pretty nearly the same state of things as existed at the time of the conquest. One of the finest countries in the world--among the richest in mineral resources, and the most productive in precious woods and in useful and medicinal plants-divided into petty states, independent of, and often inimical to, one another. According to Henri de Suckau, the idioms even differ already in the different towns.

Various attempts have since been made to reconstruct the union dissolved in 1837, more especially by Nicaragua, Salvador, and Honduras in 1844, 1846, and 1847, without leading to any result; until, in 1849, the influence of the United States was brought to bear upon the question. Encouraged by the government of Washington, the State of Nicaragua took the lead in a new attempt. Guatamala and Costa Rica held aloof, but the representatives of the other three States assembled at Leon, drew up a federal constitution, and elected a president of the new confederation.

To frustrate the success of these labours has been one of the principal motives by which foreign influences were actuated in promoting the revolutionary outbreak of 1851 in Nicaragua. To frustrate the endeavours of the Accessory Transit Company, an offset, or rather a metamorphosis of the Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Company of New York, was another motive of almost equal weight with the same foreign influence. Both motives, by the peculiar turn which things had taken in Nicaragua, came into conflict with each other; the federalists of Leon being precisely that of the two Nicaraguan parties which was opposed to the new contract demanded by the Accessory Transit Company. The government of President Taylor had also, in the mean time, given place to that of President Fillmore, and with the change of administration came also a change of policy in reference to Central American affairs. Hence it came to pass that, on this occasion, England and the United States took the same view of the question, both concurring in not taking any notice of the existence of the new Central American Confederation, though it had been formed under the influence of the latter of the two powers.

In this hopeless state of affairs the interference of the Canal Company marked a new period in the history of Central American troubles and dissensions. Munoz and the federal party at Leon were opposed to extending the immense monopolies and privileges, including those of the sole navigation of the lakes, to a company which merely proposed to open a carriage-road across the Isthmus of Rivas, whilst the anti-federal and aristocratic party, whose head-quarters were at Granada, were inclined to grant the concession. A revolution breaking out in 1851 at

* Une Voie nouvelle à travers l'Amérique Centrale, p. 16.

Leon, the Americans induced the Granada party to elect a government of its own, which, in return for the support given to it, granted the contract demanded by the Accessory Transit Company. The government of Leon protested, however, against the cession, taking the unobjectionable ground that, if during a civil war a foreigner enters into an agreement with one of the parties, he makes his rights and claims dependent upon the fate of the party on which he thinks proper to rely. Hence it was that, notwithstanding the temporary successes of Chamorro, and the failure of the second revolt of the Leonese in 1854 under Munoz and Castellon, when the aid of Walker and his followers was cast into the scale, the anti-federals triumphed over their antagonists, but without the objects proposed to themselves by the Accessory Transit Company ever having been permanently carried out.

The majority of the Nicaraguans have ever entertained a correct conviction that their country, and Central America in general, can only be redeemed by the aid of foreign elements of population from Europe and North America. Froëbel attributes the circumstance of the democratic party having sought foreign assistance at any cost to the fact that, seeing and understanding the degree of prosperity, progress, wealth, and power derived by the United States from foreign emigration, they also fully understood that, with all its natural wealth and advantages of situation, Central America has no other hope of escape from ruin than the acquisition of skill, intelligence, activity, enterprise, and capital from the same source.* It is to this feeling that is to be attributed the liberal concessions made to the Nicaragua Railway Company, more especially of ten acres of freehold land to the first fifty thousand shares of ten pounds each-a boon which, it is to be hoped, will not be lost to the country by any new pronunciamentos or revolutions which may arise to annul the existing contract.

M. Felix Belly, a French gentleman, who improved upon the project of a Nicaraguan canal, entertained as far back as 1846 by the present French emperor, also obtained a convention from the presidents of the republics of Nicaragua and of Costa Rica, in accordance with which he, Monsieur Belly, was to cut a canal or water-route for ships through the territories of those potentates, obtaining thereby certain vast privileges, including the possession of no small portion of these territories, and the right of levying all manner of tolls on the world's commerce which was to pass through his canal. And the potentates above named were in return to receive from M. Belly very considerable subsidies out of these tolls.

"What strikes me," remarks Mr. Anthony Trollope, "with the greatest wonder on reading-not the pamphlet, for that is perhaps more wonderful in other respects, but the articles of the convention-is that these three persons, the potentates aforesaid and the chevalier, should have among them the power of doing all this, or that they should even have had the power of agreeing to do all this; for really up to this period one seems hardly to have heard in England much about any one of them.

"That there should be presidents of these two republics is supposed, as there are also doubtless of San Salvador and Venezuela, and all the

* Seven Years' Travel in Central America, p. 158.

other western republics; but it is to be presumed that as presidents of republics they can have themselves no more power to give away a ninetynine years' possession of their lands and waters than can any other citizen. The President of the United States could hardly sell to any Englishman, however enterprising, the right of making a railway from New York to San Francisco. The convention does certainly bear two other signatures, which purport to be those of the ministers of foreign affairs attached to those two republics; but even this hardly seems to give us a sufficient guarantee of power. What if we should put our money into the canal, and future presidents should refuse to be bound by the agreement ?”*

The same pertinent, or impertinent question, according to the light in which it may be viewed, might perchance be put in the case of the concession granted to Captain Bedford Pim or to the Nicaragua Railway Company, but this, as we shall afterwards explain at length, is not the ease, and the concessions granted have been ratified and confirmed by

congress.

Whilst quoting Mr. Trollope, we observe that he further remarks, in connexion with the various lines of transport across Central America, advocated by different parties, that, as regards railway passage, one line being now open and at work, has those nine points in its favour which possession gives. It does convey men and goods across with great rapidity, and is a reality, doing that which it pretends to do. Its charges, he admits, however, are very high; and it would doubtless be well if competition, or fear of competition, could be made to lower them. Five pounds are charged for conveying a passenger less than fifty miles; no class of passengers can cross at a cheaper fare; and the rates charged for goods are as high in comparison. On the other side, it may be said that the project was one of great risk, that the line was from its circumstances very costly, having been made at an expense of about thirty-two thousand pounds a mile, and that trains by which money can be made cannot run often-perhaps only six or seven times a month each way.

Admitting, as Mr. Trollope himself does, that British diplomacy can have no further interest in Central America than that of making the public world-roads which that country so peculiarly presents, available to all nations, and that such is the sole and only meaning of all those treaties made on our behalf with Central America, or in respect to Central America-Clayton-Bulwer treaty, new Ouseley treaty, and others-it may be replied to the above, that not only does competition render other lines of transit desirable, but some such would present great advantages to the regions through which they would pass, as well to travellers bound to distant countries.

This is the case especially with the Nicaragua Railway, and it would also be the case with the Honduras Railway. It appears from the accounts given by Mr. Squierst that we have on the latter line a kind of breach in the Cordilleras, which constitutes an opening as if especially designed for a railroad. Two rivers take their departure from this breach in opposite directions, one for the Bay of Honduras, the other for the Bay *The West Indies and the Spanish Main, p. 346. By Anthony Trollope.

Notes on Central America; particularly the States of Honduras and San Salvador, &c. By E. G. Squiers.

of Fonseca. These two streams flow each along a wide valley, and these two valleys meeting at their heads constitute in reality only one. The most populous and prosperous towns of Honduras and Salvador are scattered along or near to this pass. Comaygua, the capital of Honduras, stands at about a central point. Tegucigalpa, the most populous city, Choluteca and San Miguel, provincial capitals, are close by, and numerous large and small towns also lie around, indebted for their existence chiefly to the well-known mineral wealth of the country. Honduras surpasses in this respect, as also in the abundance of its precious woods, all other of the States of Central America. This mineral wealth, it is to be observed, is chiefly confined to that system, or cluster of mountains, which constitutes what may be called the plateau of Honduras. Neuva Segovia and Chontales, the mineral district of Nicaragua, also belong to this mountain system, and the same holds good with respect to the mineral district of San Miguel in Salvador, and which embraces the only mines in that State. It is evident, then, that the Honduras Railway would present, like that of Nicaragua, advantages of a local character, and that it would do much towards opening Honduras and Salvador to commerce and civilisation. Objections have been started against the road having to ascend nearly three thousand feet above the sea-level, but over such an extent of country the grades would not be found more severe than many that are now to be found on railways in full work in other countries. If the Americans had the same interests in the Pacific that we have, this line would have long ago been constructed, for its position is more favourable to traffic with the United States than any other. In the mean time, we are not a little amused by M. Henri de Suckau, another Belly and Lesseps in regard to magnificence of conception and magniloquence of expression, asserting that "it would be grand, it is indeed necessary, that France, which is found at the head of all ideas of progress, should here take the initiative and give the example."

The fact is that, notwithstanding the gloomy anticipations of some, who cannot conceive how rival lines, if costing much, and being compelled at the same time by that very rivalry to run at low rates, can pay, Central America will in the course of time be traversed by many lines, most of which will be found self-supporting. The Panama line is a mere line of transit. It would not be so with a line, if feasible, across the Mexican provinces of Vera Cruz, Tabasco, and Oaxaca, nor with a line across Honduras, nor with a line across Nicaragua. All these would open new countries well populated, and of vast resources to commerce and civilisation, at the same time that they would present favourable competitive lines of transit to other parts of the world.

A considerable passenger traffic has now existed for some years past through Central America by the route of the Lake of Nicaragua. This, of course, has been in the hands of the Americans, and the passengers are chiefly those going and coming between the Eastern States and California. They came down to Greytown, at the mouth of the San Juan River, in steamers from New York, and other American ports, went up the San Juan River in other steamers, with flat bottoms prepared for those waters, across the lake in the same way, and then by a good road over the Isthmus of Rivas, the intervening neck of land between the lake and the Pacific