No. 263.
Mr. Fish
to General Schenck.
Washington, March 15, 1875.
Sir: By the instruction No. 375 of the 26th of April, 1873, you were informed at length of the relations between certain of the Central American states and Great Britain, occasioned more particularly by a complaint of Guatemala of international delay in constructing a road to the Atlantic coast, as stipulated in a treaty between Great Britain and her.
From the dispatch and its accompaniments of the 16th ultimo, a copy of which is inclosed, addressed to this Department by Mr. Williamson,* the minister of the United States in Central America, a violation might be inferred of the clause of article 1 in the treaty between Great Britain and Nicaragua of the 28th of January, 1880, which stipulated that “the British protectorate of that part of the Mosquito territory shall cease within three months after the exchange of the ratifications of the present treaty.”
You will make inquiry upon this subject at the foreign office. We were, for many years, urgent that the protectorate referred to should be relinquished, and that the Mosquito Indians within the limits of Nicaragua should be placed on the same footing, in respect to the government of that republic,, as the aborigines in this country stand with reference to the Government here. It was hoped that these objects had been secured by the treaty adverted to.
I am, &c.,
- See under Central America, dispatch No. 315.↩