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:
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 a 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 a 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