BRITISH HONDURAS 



944 



BRITISH MUSEUM 



products, and imports approximately the same 

 amount. 



Government and History. The capital is 

 Georgetown, on the coast, a curious city of 

 53,000 inhabitants, which has its houses built 

 on great piles to avoid the high tides. A gov- 

 ernor, appointed by the British Crown, a 

 council and a court of policy constitute the 

 executive department, and the legislature con- 

 sists of a single house of elected members. 



The Dutch made the first settlements in 

 Guiana in 1613, and not until 1815 did the 

 British make good their claim to the territory 

 they now hold, though they had previously 

 attempted its conquest. The latter part of 

 the nineteenth century saw the country much 

 disturbed by boundary disputes with Vene- 

 zuela and Dutch Guiana, but these were settled 

 in 1899 by an international commission. H.M.S. 



BRITISH HONDURAS, hondoo'ras, or BE- 

 LIZE/ beleez', a colony of Great Britain, in 

 the northeastern part of Central America. 

 From 1636 it was frequently visited by log- 

 cutters, but the first permanent settlement was 

 made early in the eighteenth century by a 

 Scotchman. The 

 Spaniards, hold- 

 ers of the adja- 

 cent territory, 

 frequently tried 

 to drive out the 

 settlers, but in 

 1783 a treaty for- 

 mally recognized 

 the right of Great 

 Britain to de- 

 velop the section, 

 provided all Brit- 

 ish subjects in LOCATION MAP 

 the Spanish parts of Central America removed 

 at once to Belize, as it was then called. It 

 was not until 1836 that the colony was recog- 

 nized as a permanent possession of Great Brit- 

 ain. Since that time the country has pro- 

 gressed steadily, and is in many ways more 

 advanced than the independent Latin countries 

 of Central America. 



British Honduras has an area of 7,562 square 

 miles, or a little more than the combined areas 

 of Connecticut, Delaware and the District of 

 Columbia, but its population of 40,458 (1911) 

 is less than one-fortieth of that of the states 

 named. It is bounded on the east and north- 

 east by the Bay of Honduras, on the north and 

 northwest by Yucatan, and on the south and 

 west by Guatemala. The coast is low and 



swampy, the climate sub-tropical, and, in spite 

 of dampness and occasional epidemics of yel- 

 low fever and cholera, the colony is not as 

 unhealthful as are most of the Central Ameri- 

 can states. Fewer than a thousand of the in- 

 habitants are whites, however, the rest being 

 negroes, Indians and half-breeds. 



It was the timber, especially the mahogany, 

 which originally led Great Britain to seize the 

 colony, and timber has remained the chief 

 product. Numerous palms, some of them val- 

 uable, grow wild, and bananas and sugar cane 

 are cultivated, but in all the colony there are 

 fewer than 100 square miles of land under til- 

 lage. The trade, about one-half of which is 

 with Great Britain, amounts to nearly $6,000,- 

 000 annually. 



The government of the colony is in the hands 

 of a governor, assisted by an executive and a 

 legislative council, all appointed by the sov- 

 ereign of Great Britain. The capital and prin- 

 cipal seaport is Belize, a thriving town with a 

 population of about 10,500. In the neighbor- 

 hood of the cities there are fairly good roads, 

 but elsewhere they are very poor, and there 

 are no railways. See CENTRAL AMERICA. 



BRITISH ISLES, iles, the most important 

 archipelago in the world, bounded by the Eng- 

 lish Channel, Strait of Dover, North Sea and 

 the Atlantic Ocean. They include Great Brit- 

 ain, consisting of England, Scotland and Wales ; 

 Ireland, Isle of Man, the Hebrides, the Ork- 

 neys and Shetland Islands and numerous small 

 and unimportant islands and islets. For full 

 description and history, see GREAT BRITAIN; 

 ENGLAND; SCOTLAND, etc. . 



BRITISH MUSEUM, muze'um, a great na- 

 tional institution in London, which includes 

 one of the largest libraries in the world, the 

 largest reading room, wonderful collections of 

 antiquities and an exhibit of rare drawings. 

 In 1753, Sir Hans Sloane bequeathed to the 

 nation his various collections, including 50,000 

 books and manuscripts, on the condition of 

 $100,000 being paid to his heirs. Montague 

 House was appropriated for the museum, and 

 it was first opened on January 15, 1759. Addi- 

 tions to the collection poured in, and the orig- 

 inal building soon proved too small; a new 

 building in Great Russell Street was planned, 

 but it was not completed till 1847. In 1857 a 

 second new building was completed at a cost 

 of $750,000. 



More recently, the accommodation having 

 become again inadequate, it was resolved to 

 separate the objects belonging to the natural 



