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
days a fine and spacious harbor. There his charge ended; but his
mental constitution never allowed him to look upon a military task as
well done while anything remained to do. In the spirit of his famous
saying, fifteen years later, "Were ten ships out of eleven taken, I
would never call it well done if the eleventh escaped, if able to get
at her," he determined to go with the troops. With his temperament it
was impossible to turn his back upon the little body of soldiers,
whose toilsome advance up the tropical stream might be aided and
hastened by his ready seamen.

The first objective of the expedition was Fort San Juan, a powerful
work controlling the river of the same name, and thereby the only
natural water transit between the sea and Lake Nicaragua. Upon the
possession of this, as a position of vantage and a safe depot for
supplies and reinforcements, Dalling based his hopes of future
advance, both west and south. Nelson took with him forty-seven seamen
and marines from his ship's company; the former, aided by some
Indians, doing most of the labor of forcing the boats against the
current, through shoal and tortuous channels, under his own constant
supervision and en