British Honduras has few modern improvements. There is not a railway in the land, and even the cart roads are only passably good. It contains within its borders possibilities of development that are hardly believable to one who has not seen these incredibly rich tropical lands. Although considered small, it is several times as large as our smallest states, and its agricultural possibilities far exceed those commonwealths. Its nearness to markets makes it especially attractive, and its stable government renders investments absolutely safe. At present its chief distinction is its logwood industry, of which Belize is in the lead, and the mahogany which is floated here in rafts from its own borders and the neighbouring forests of Guatemala and the State of Campeche, Mexico.
The Belize River with its tributary streams leads back into the great tropical forests of Peten where mahogany is abundant. Much of the mahogany lands are in the hands of large owners or companies who have the business thoroughly organized, although large tracts still belong to public lands, where concessions can be secured for cutting the valuable export woods. The timber is roughly squared and then floated down the streams during the rainy season, and most of it finds its way to Belize, where it is put in shape for the market. The mahogany grows rapidly, and it is said that in thirty years a tree will grow from a shoot and furnish logs of large size. This city is also a great market for the chicle gum, which is obtained in the neighbouring forests and shipped to the United States to be used in the manufacture of chewing gum, for which more money is spent by the great family of Uncle Sam than is sent to all the foreign missions of the world by the same nation.
CHAPTER XII
REPUBLIC OF HONDURAS
The Republic of Honduras is situated immediately east of Guatemala and has a frontier line of perhaps two hundred miles next to that republic. On the Caribbean Sea its coast line from Guatemala to Cape Gracias-a-Dios (thanks to God) measures about four hundred miles. The true boundary line between Honduras and Nicaragua has caused much confusion and misunderstanding in the past, and it is hardly well defined yet, although several commissions have been appointed by the two governments and made their reports. It has but a small coast line on the Pacific in the Bay of Fonseca.
There are many rivers which rise in the interior and wend their way toward the ocean. The principal rivers flow northward and empty their waters into the Gulf of Mexico. Of these the largest is the Ulua, which drains a large expanse of territory and discharges a greater amount of water into the sea than any other river of Central America. It is navigable for a distance of a hundred and twenty-five miles for light-draft vessels, and regular service is now maintained on it by a small combined freight and passenger steamer operated by an American company. It opens up a rich agricultural district to commerce. The Aguan, Negro, Patuca and Coco, or Segovia, rivers are also considerable streams which are navigated by the natives. The Lake of Yohoa, the only lake of any note, is about twenty-five miles long and from three to eight miles broad.
Cortez reported to his sovereign that Honduras was a “land covered with awfully miry swamps. I can assure your majesty that even on the tops of the hills our horses, led as they were by hand, and without their riders, sank to their girths in the mire.” The great conqueror doubtless landed during the rainy season, when the rains are literally “downpours” and the rivers become torrents. At that season the mud does seem to be almost without bottom, and the immense areas of mangrove-tree swamps which cover the mud flats in the immediate vicinity of the mainland made the finding of a good landing-place a difficult matter. Although he found the natives tractable and the country was easily subdued, yet he could not control nature, which here exhibits herself in her wildest and most terrible aspects. He named his landing-place Puerto Caballos, because he lost a number of horses, but it has since been named in his own honour.
Honduras is not all swamp, for this condition only exists along the coast of the Atlantic and Pacific and for a distance varying from only a few miles to fifty miles inland. Then the land begins to rise, gradually spreading out into plains and plateaus, until the mountainous region is reached with its many volcanic peaks which lift their graceful heads above the clouds. The same general mountain system that has been described in Guatemala enters Honduras, and with many breaks takes a general southeasterly course through the republic to Nicaragua. The mean altitude is not nearly so high as in Guatemala, nor are there so many lofty peaks, but there can be found almost every possible variety of climate, soil and production.
Nature has been prodigal in her gifts to this republic, and nowhere upon the whole earth can greater returns be realized with a minimum of effort. It seems that all Nature is awaiting with welcoming arms the farmer, the rancher and the fruit-grower, for there is very little of the land that is not susceptible of some sort of profitable development. Nowhere on earth are there more fertile valleys, more genial suns, softer breezes, or fairer skies. And yet with all these natural advantages, and with all this inducement to labour and development, there is no place on this great globe where nature’s gifts are so poorly utilized or so little appreciated, and to-day Honduras is the least advanced of all the Central American republics.
