Vi PREFACE. 



Once the home of buccaneers, afterwards, for more than a 

 hundred and fifty years, a mere station for cutting mahogany 

 and logwood, its fortunes have practically been in the hands of 

 a few monopolists. These, holding nearly all the laud, have 

 been content to get from it, in a lazy, desultory, and somewhat 

 spasmodic manner, such timber and dyewoods as lay within 

 reach of the principal rivers. 



Now, however, such supplies are becoming exhausted, and as 

 the land monopoly has been broken by the enforced sale of 

 extensive tracts of forests, the colony enters practically upon a 

 new phase of existence. 



Its ultimate destiny will depend no less upon the wisdom 

 and discretion of its rulers, than upon the character of the 

 settlers likely to be attracted to it. 



My object has been to place, in as clear and as impartial a 

 manner as possible, the circumstances which at present obtain 

 in the colony, and, starting from a consideration of its soil, 

 climate, and vegetable productions, to indicate in what directions 

 it is capable of being gradually developed and enriched. I am 

 too deeply sensible of the results which usually follow the 

 extensive and reckless cutting down of tropical forests, to 

 advocate a wholesale denudation of crown lands in British 

 Honduras. I trust, therefore, the question of retaining in 

 permanent forest the chief watersheds of the country, as well 

 as wooded belts in the neighbourhood of streams and springs, 

 will receive the earnest and careful attention of the legislature. 



With this important point well kept in view, I believe the 

 Government would do well to offer every reasonable facility for 

 the establishment of permanent plantations in the colony, and 

 for attracting to it an intelligent race of planters, possessing the 

 necessary capital and energy. 



At present, several hundred thousand acres of some of the 



