English intercourse with the Indians of the Mosquito coast; and that may
be as far back as about 1630: it is certainly as far back as 1650.

If the name came from the synonymous insect, would it have been given by
the Spaniards or the English? _Mosquito_ is the Spanish diminutive name
of a fly: but what we call a mosquito, the Spaniards in Central America
call by another name, _sanchujo_. The Spaniards had very little
connexion at any time with the Mosquito Indians; and as mosquitoes are
not more abundant on their parts of the coast than on other parts, or in
the interior, where the Spaniards settled, there would have been no
reason for their giving the name on account of insects. Nor, indeed,
would the English, who went to the coast from Jamaica, or other West
India Islands, where mosquitoes are quite as abundant, have had any such
reason either. At Bluefields where the writer has resided, which was one
of the first places on the Mosquito coast frequented by English, and
which derives its name from an old English buccaneer, there are no
mosquitoes at all. At Grey Town, at the mouth of the river San 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: