Spanish and Catholic identities. Protestant missionaries, such as the Moravians in Nicaragua, were also active in the area. This identity as English speakers would be reinforced with the North American transportation and fruit producing concerns entered the region in the later nineteenth century. Filibusters The Atlantic coast of Central America was also an ideal base for filibusters, U. S. based adventurers who tried to intervene in the affairs of Central American republics. William Walker's short lived take over of Nicaragua in 1856 was the most famous and important of these private military adventurers. The Yucatán Caste War In the mid-nineteenth century the Caste War, a major civil war broke out in Yucatán, pitting Mexican and Spanish settlers and the Mexican government against insurgent Mayas. The war was long and protracted, lasting until 1902, and created many refugees. These refugees, who were of a wide variety of origins, pushed into British Honduras and Honduras. In the case of British Honduras they came to form a significant portion of the population, and many were employed in the logging and other industries. Panama Canal Several attempts to build a Panama Canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific side of Central America failed before US interests acquired the French project and lands in 1902. In constructing the canal, the US builders employed thousands of workers from the British Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Barbados. As a result of this immigration, an English-speaking community grew up in the Canal Zone and adjacent areas. It continues to this day. Railroad construction and the U. S. fruit companies In the late nineteenth century, the Caribbean coast of Central America was a backwater, poorly developed and in many cases only partially controlled by its legal governments. Most of the Caribbean side of Costa Rica was under the control of Talamanca and other indigenous groups. Nicaragua and others had to consider the independent Miskito Kingdom until 1894. Mexico gained control of its portion of the Yucatán only following the end of the Caste War in 1902. The California Gold Rush after 1849 created a very large demand for rapid, sea borne travel from the East Coast of the United States (as well as other parts of the world) and the Pacific, and Central America was a potentially usable route. As a result, there were various attempts to build railroads across the isthmus. In 1850, Honduras began work, financed and overseen