266 MAHOGANY FORESTS. 



tended throughout the highlands of the interior of 

 Central America, St. Domingo and other places; where 

 it grows to a gigantic size, its head towering far above 

 all other growths, and bearing aloft a splendid crown 

 of light green leaves, something resembling those of 

 the European ash. " Its trunk is often 50 feet in height, 

 and 1 2 feet in diameter, and ramifies higher up into so 

 many arms, that the shadow of its crown covers a vast 

 surface. " * At one time St. Domingo mahogany was 

 most esteemed, but some of the finest timber of this 

 kind which the world now produces comes from the 

 British settlements in Honduras, which were established 

 for cutting and shipping these trees, as long ago as 

 1638 and 1640, from which period the right to this 

 territory has been constantly maintained by Great 

 Britain, against the pretensions of Spain, chiefly on 

 account of the importance of this industry. 



The task of conveying these immense logs for great 

 distances through an almost impenetrable and trackless 

 forest, is as might be expected a very arduous one. The 

 work commences during the rainy season, in August, 

 when gangs of twenty or thirty men, under a captain, 

 are employed to search for and cut the timber, for 

 whose conveyance roads have then to be made, upon 

 which the logs, after being squared, are conveyed on 

 trucks during the dry season, when the ground is firm, 

 to the banks of a neighbouring river, upon whose waters 

 they are floated, during the next rainy season, down to 

 the sea. f 



The dense and equatorial nature of the forests of 



* Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel for Central 

 and South America, edited by H. W, Bates, 1878, pp. 94 96. 

 f Ibid., pp. 9496. 



