340 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



colours made of logwood, so that by experience they 

 are found as lasting and serviceable as the colour 

 made with any other sort of dye-wood." 



Immediately after this repeal logwood became in 

 great request, and adventurous individuals were in 

 duced to make exertions to obtain a supply. This 

 tree is one of the productions of the province of 

 Yucatan, where the possessions of the Spaniards for 

 a long time consisted only of the port of San Fran- 

 cisco de Campeachy, and two other inconsiderable 

 towns, Merida and Valladolid. These could boast 

 of but few inhabitants, and the rest of the province 

 was wholly desolate, without any indication of the 

 abode of man. The English, from the north conti- 

 nent of America, in the year 1662, tempted by the 

 desire of pursuing a profitable occupation, ventured 

 to cut down some of the logwood- trees, which grew 

 in great abundance on the uninhabited parts of the 

 coast of Yucatan, and more especially in the bay of 

 Campeachy. These persons soon formed a small 

 colony in a spot remote from any Spanish settlement. 

 They first raised their huts near Cape Catoche, 

 and afterwards at Laguna de Terminos, which was 

 found to be a more eligible situation. A few settlers 

 thus continued to cut logwood unmolested by the 

 Spaniards, but always with the feeling that they 

 were intruders on the soil of other colonists. 



After the treaty of Madrid in 1667, which was 

 principally made for adjusting our commerce with 

 Spain in Europe, British subjects were led to 

 imagine that the respective interests of the two 

 countries in the western hemisphere had also been 

 accurately defined by the same treaty, and that the 

 right of the English to cut logwood in those places 

 of the Honduras, uninhabited by the Spaniards, was 

 now clearly established. Many other persons were 

 therefore in consequence induced to become logwood" 



