Notes and Queries, Number 27, May 4, 1850 | Page 2

Juan, there are plenty; but not more than in Jamaica, or in the
towns of the interior state of Nicaragua. However names are not always

given so as to be argument-proof. {426}
How did the word mosquito come into our language? From the Spanish,
Portuguese, or Italian? How old is it with us? Todd adds the word
_Muskitto_, or _Musquitto_, to Johnson's _Dictionary_; and gives an
example from Purchas's Pilgrimage (1617), where the word is spelt
more like the Italian form:--"They paint themselves to keep off the
muskitas."
There is a passage in Southey's Omniana (vol. i. p. 21.) giving an
account of a curious custom among the Mozcas, a tribe of New
Granada: his authority is _Hist. del Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, l. i. c. 4.
These are some way south of the other Moscos, but it is probably the
same word.
One of the Virgin Islands in the West Indies has the name of Mosquito.
Some "Mosquito Kays" are laid down on the chart off Cape Gracias à
Dios, on the Mosquito coast; but these probably would have been
named from the Mosquito Indians of the continent. And these Mosquito
Indians appear to have spread themselves from Cape Gracias à Dios.
It is stated, however, in Strangeways' _Account of the Mosquito Shore_,
(not a work of authority), that these Mosquito Kays give the name to
the country:--
"This country, as is generally supposed, derives its name from a clustre
of small islands or banks situated near its coasts, and called the
Mosquitos."
I should be glad if these Notes and Queries would bring assistance to
settle the origin of the name of the Mosquito country from some of
your correspondents who are learned in the history of Spanish conquest
and English enterprise in that part of America, or who may have
attended to the languages of the American Indians.
2. I propose to jot down a few Notes as to the early connexion between
the English and the Mosquito Indians, and shall be thankful for
references to additional sources of information.
I have read somewhere, that a Mosquito king, or prince, was brought to
England in Charles I.'s reign by Richard Earl of Warwick, who had
commanded a ship in the West Indies; but I forget where I read it. I
remember, however, that no authority was given for the statement. Can
any of your readers give me information about this?
Dampier mentions a party of English who, about the year 1654,

ascended the Cape River (the mouth of which is at Cape Gracias à Dios)
to Segovia, a Spanish town in the interior; and another party of English
and French who, after the year 1684, when he was in these parts,
crossed from the Pacific to the Atlantic, descending the Cape River.
(Harris's _Collection of Voyages_, vol. i. p. 92.) Are there any accounts
of these expeditions?
Dampier also speaks of a confederacy having been formed between a
party of English under a Captain Wright and the San Blas Indians of
Darien, which was brought about by Captain Wright's taking two San
Blas boys to be educated "in the country of the Moskitoes," and
afterwards faithfully restoring them, and which opened to the English
the way by land to the Pacific Sea. (Harris, vol. i. p. 97.) Are there any
accounts of English travellers by this way, which would be in the very
part of the isthmus of which Humboldt has lately recommended a
careful survey? (See _Aspects of Nature_, Sabine's translation.)
Esquemeling, in his _History of the Buccaneers_, of whom he was one,
says that in 1671 many of the Indians at Cape Gracias spoke English
and French from their intercourse with the pirates. He gives a curious
and not very intelligible account of Cape Gracias, as an island of about
thirty leagues round (formed, I suppose, by rivers and the sea),
containing about 1600 or 1700 persons, who have no king; (this is quite
at variance with all other accounts of the Mosquito Indians of Cape
Gracias); and having, he proceeds to say, no correspondence with the
neighbouring islands. (I cannot explain this; there is certainly no island
ninety miles in circumference at sea near Cape Gracias.)
A quarto volume published by Cadell in 1789, entitled _The Case of
His Majesty's Subjects having Property in and lately established upon
the Mosquito Shore_, gives the fullest account of the early connexion
between the Mosquito Indians and the English. The writer says that
Jeremy, king of the Mosquitos, in Charles II.'s reign, after formally
ceding his country to officers sent to him by the Governor of Jamaica
to receive the cession, went to Jamaica, and thence to England, where
he was generously received by Charles II., "who had him often with
him in his private parties of pleasure, admired