Mr. Braida to Mr. Uhl.

Sir: I beg to report that Nicaraguan troops occupied Bluefields during the night of February 10–11, and took possession of all the public buildings.

The chief sent a protest to Her British Majesty’s consul, Mr. H. F. Bingham, at this port, who himself showed me the whole correspondence between the chief and Don Carlos Alberto Lacayo, the commissioner of Nicaragua.

It is believed that the Nicaraguan Government does not intend to incorporate the reservation by force, but that an assembly of all the chiefs of the Indian tribes will be called in, in order to establish a new council and a municipal authority. So far it has not come to any serious conflict, but the excitement is very great.

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The intimations and protests which the young chief addressed to the commissioner were ill advised, and will render it difficult for the British Government to favor Mosquito.

The commissioner very energetically declined to give the chief explanations—even calling some of the latter’s pretentions “idiotic.” I have all this information only from the British consul, to whom the chief sent a special boat asking for protection.

Mr. H. F. Bingham was also informed by an Englishman, coming from the Wanks River, that Honduraneans had taken Cabo Gracias I Dios; that they killed the Nicaraguan governor, Franc. Guerrero, and that the soldiers had left for the bush.

We are entirely cut off from the interior, and no steamer is expected to come down, on account of the defeat of the Nicaraguan army, the steamship Victoria being needed on the lake.

I am, etc.,

S. C. Braida,
United States Consul.