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

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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 his activity, strength, and manly accomplishments; and not only defrayed every expense, but loaded him with presents." Is there any notice of this visit in any of our numerous memoirs and diaries of Charles II.'s reign?
A curious tract, printed in the