Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/521

in heaps like that of Monte Testaccio near Rome. One explorer speaks of "mountains of earthenware," and another tells us that " around Libertad the tombs are in thousands, offering every pos sible variety of form, size, and thickness. " Monuments of this sort have been found ranging from 20 to over 170 feet in length and 120 in breadth, built of huge stones piled up 5 feet in thickness, which opula- must have been brought from great distances. Managua appears to on. have had a population of 40,000; mention is made of other cities four miles in extent ; and when Gil Gonzalez penetrated into the country in 1522 he found in one district a cluster of six consider able towns all less than two leagues apart. But a few years of Spanish rule sufficed to turn whole tracts of flourishing country into uninhabited wilds " (H. H. Bancroft), and, after making every allowance for the defective character of the last census returns, the present population of the whole state cannot be estimated at more than 400,000. A calculation based on the partial census of 1846 gave 300,000, of whom about 100,000 were pure-blood Indians, 150,000 half-castes (Mestizoes, Zambos, &c.), 20,000 Negroes, and 30,000 whites. Throughout the present century the whites appear to have shown a general tendency to diminish, and the indigenous element is by some now estimated at fully one half of the whole population. With the exception of some wild tribes in the interior of Mos- quitia, nearly all the natives are now in a more or less civilized state, and have generally adopted the Spanish language. At the time of the conquest Herrera tells us that five distinct languages were current in Nicaragua : the Caribisi (Carib) on the east coast, now represented by the Rama, Toaca, Poya, and Waikna (Mosco); the Chontal of Chontales, Segovia, and parts of West Honduras and Salvador, now represented by the Woolwa in Chontales and Mos- quitia; the Chorotegan (Dirian), mainly between Lake Managua and the Pacific and thence north to Honduras, now extinct ; the Orotinan between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific (department of Rivas) and thence south to the Gulf of Nicoya, Costa Rica, also extinct; the Cholutec (Niquiran), a pure Aztec dialect spoken in the large islands of Lake Nicaragua, and about Masaya, Granada, and other districts, especially along the north-west side of the lake, where it still survives among a few scattered communities. The presence of Aztec settlements in this region, and at one time even amongst the Chontales of the opposite side of the lake, is abundantly established by this survival, by the archaeological remains found in the islands and adjacent mainland, and especially by the Aztec geographical nomenclature widely diffused throughout the whole of West Nicara gua ; e.g., Popoga tepee = Popocatepetl, the local name of the Masaya volcano; Ometepec or Ometepet = 0metepetl, i.e., "Two Peaks," the largest of the islands in Lake Nicaragua ; the ending galpa, common in Chontales (Juigalpa, Matagalpa, &c.), which is the Aztec calpa, group of houses, town, from calli, house. The euphonic changes c or t for final tl, g for c, &c., occur even in Mexico itself, and are important as showing that the Cholutecs are comparatively recent intruders from the Anahuac plateau, not the original stock of the Aztec nation, as has been suggested by some ethnologists. 1 Besides the Caribisi, or continental Caribs of Herrera, the Mosquito Coast is occupied by other Carib communities, which are descended from the Caribs removed thither from the island of St Vincent by the English in 1796. To these alone the name of Carib is now applied, although they are not pure-blood Indians, but Zambos, in whom the Negro features greatly predominate. The Woolwas of the interior of Mosquitia and Chontales are divided into a great number of tribes collectively known as Bravos, that is, wild or uncivilized, who live chiefly on hunting and fishing, and are prac tically independent of the Nicaraguan Government. The term Bravo itself is the exact Spanish equivalent of the Aztec Chontal, Chondal, that is, " barbarian," which at the time of the discovery was applied by the Cholutecs to all the tribes dwelling east of the treat lakes and on the Cordillera de los Andes as far north as Hon- uras and San Salvador. Here they seem to have supplanted a still more ancient race, who had attained a high state of civilization, as attested by the already-mentioned monuments and stone sculptures of Chontales, which are of a different type both from the Aztec and the Maya-Quiche remains of Yucatan and Guatemala. Adminis- According to the electoral law of 1858 Nicaragua forms a demo- tration. cratic republic modelled on that of the United States, with a legis lative assembly of eleven members, a senate of ten, and a president elected for four years and assisted by a cabinet of four ministers. The seat of government, formerly Granada and Leon, has since 1858 been Managua on the south-west side of Lake Managua. Although Roman Catholicism is still recognized as the state religion, the free exercise of all others is guaranteed, together with freedom of the press and of education. Public instruction, which is provided 1 It should be noted in this connexion that Btischmann has clearly traced a distinct Aztec geographical terminology throughout the whole of Central America from Guatemala to Comayagua in Honduras on the one hand, and on the other through San Salvador and West Nicaragua nearly to the Costa Rica frontier. The Pipil, an Aztec dialect rather more divergent than the Cholutec f Nicaragua, is still current in parts of Guatemala and San Salvador, but no evidence of Aztec settlements has been discovered either in Yucatan or in Costa Rica (Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen, passim). 479 for by one university, three colleges, two hundred schools, and an annual grant of 10,000, is still in a very backward state. The total attendance at the national schools in 1882 was 5000, or less than 8 per cent, of the whole population. The criminal charges in the same year were 1938, or 5 per 1000, showing a slight improve ment on previous years. There are no railways, and very few good roads even between the large towns and seaports. But the tele- Tele graph system (800 miles) was completed in 1882, and in the same graphs, year Nicaragua joined the Universal Postal Union. The telegraph despatches forwarded through twenty-six offices numbered 81,000; letters and packages of all sorts, 1,119, 000. 2 First discovered and coasted by Columbus during his fourth and History, last voyage in 1502, Nicaragua was not regularly explored till 1522, when Gil Gonzalez Davila penetrated from the Gulf of Nicoya to the western provinces and sent his lieutenant Cordova to circumnavigate the great lake. The country takes its name from Nicaragua (also written Micaragua), a powerful Cholutec chief, ruling over most of the land between the lakes and the Pacific, who received Davila in a friendly spirit, and accepted baptism at his hands. Nicaragua s capital seems to have occupied the site of the present town of Rivas over against Ometepec, and soon afterwards the Spaniards overran the country with great rapidity, both from this centre northwards, and southwards from the Honduras coast. The occupation began with sanguinary conflicts between the two con tending waves of intrusion, and down to the present day this region has had little respite from external attack and internal convulsions. Granada was founded in 1524 on the isthmus between the two lakes as the capital of a separate government, which, however, was soon attached as a special intendence to the general captaincy of Guate mala, comprising the whole of Central America and the present Mexican state of Chiapas. Hence, during the Spanish tenure, the history of Nicaragua is merged in that of the surrounding region. Of its five earliest rulers " the first had been a murderer, the second a murderer and rebel, the third murdered the second, the fourth was a forger, the fifth a murderer and rebel " (Boyle). Then came the hopeless revolts of the Indians against intolerable oppression, the abortive rebellions of Hernandez de Contreras and John Bermejo (Bermudez) against the mother country (1550), the foundation of Leon, future rival of Granada, in 1610, and its sack by Dampier in 1685, and, lastly, the declaration of independence (1821), not definitively acknowledged by Spain till 1850. In 1823 Nicaragua joined the Federal Union of the five Central American states, which was finally dissolved in 1833. "While it lasted Nicaragua was the scene of continual bloodshed, caused partly by its attempts to secede from the confederacy, partly by its wars with Costa Rica for the possession of the disputed territory of Guanacaste between the great lake and the Gulf of Nicoya, partly also by the bitter rivalries of the cities of Leon and Granada, respective headquarters of the Liberal and Conservative parties. During the brief existence of the Federal Union "no fewer than three hundred and ninety-six persons exercised the supreme power of the republic and the different states " (Dunlop s Report). Since then the independent government of Nicaragua has been distinguished almost beyond all other Spanish -American states by an uninterrupted series of military pronunciamieutos, popular revolts, partial or general revolutions, by which the land has been wasted, its former industries destroyed, and the whole people reduced to a state of moral debasement scarcely elsewhere paralleled in Christendom. Conspicuous amongst the episodes of this sanguinary drama was the filibustering expedition of General Walker, who was at first invited by the democrats of Leon to assist them against the aristocrats of Granada, and who, after seizing the supreme power in 1856, was expelled by the combined forces of the neighbouring states, and on venturing to return was shot at Truxillo on September 25, 1860. A truce to these internecine troubles has been recently brought about by mutual exhaustion; and, should any of the schemes of interoceanic canalization be carried out, it may be hoped that a national revival will take place under more favourable prospects for the future. One source of serious embarrassment has been removed by the Mosquito settlement of the Mosquito reserve question. This territory, which reserve, stretches along the Caribbean coast from the Sisin Creek to the Rama river (from 10 30 to 13 N. lat.) and for about 40 miles inland, had enjoyed a semi-independent position under the nominal protection of Great Britain from 1655 to 1850. By the Clayton- Bulwer treaty of 1850, England resigned all claims to the Mosquito Coast, and by the treaty of Managua in 1860 ceded the protectorate absolutely to Nicaragua. The local chief was induced to accept this arrangement on the condition of retaining his administrative functions and receiving a yearly subvention of 1000 from the suzerain state for the ten years ending in 1870. But he died in 1864, and Nicaragua has never recognized his successor. Never theless the reserve continues to be ruled by a chief elected by the natives, and assisted by an administrative council, which assembles at Bluefields, capital of the territory. al .LHUcllclus, Uti[utai ui LUC LCIIILUI^. 2 Official Report of the Minister of the Interior on the Slate of the Republic for the years 1881-82, Managua, 1883.