sagaciously determined to master Lake Nicaragua, and the course of the
river San Juan, its outlet to the Caribbean Sea. The object of the
attempt was twofold, both military and commercial. The route was
recognized then, as it is now, as one of the most important, if not
the most important, of those affording easy transit from the Pacific
to the Atlantic by way of the Isthmus. To a nation of the mercantile
aptitudes of Great Britain, such a natural highway was necessarily an
object of desire. In her hands it would not only draw to itself the
wealth of the surrounding regions, but would likewise promote the
development of her trade, both north and south, along the eastern and
western coasts of the two Americas. But the pecuniary gain was not
all. The military tenure of this short and narrow strip, supported at
either end, upon the Pacific and the Atlantic, by naval detachments,
all the more easily to be maintained there by the use of the belt
itself, would effectually sever the northern and southern colonies of
Spain, both by actual interposition, and by depriving them of one of
their most vital lines of intercommunication. To seek control of so
valuable and central a link in a great network of maritime interests
was as natural and inevitable to Great Britain a century ago, as it
now is to try to dominate the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, which
fulfil a like function to her Eastern possessions and Eastern
commerce.

Preoccupied, however, with numerous and more pressing cares in many
quarters of the world, and overweighted in a universal struggle with
outnumbering foes, Great Britain could spare but scanty forces to her
West India Islands, and from them Governor Dalling could muster but
five hundred men for his Nicaraguan undertaking. Nelson was directed
to convoy these with the "Hinchinbrook" to the mouth of the San Juan
del Norte, where was the port now commonly called Greytown, in those