BEITISH HONDUEAS. 193 



tlie Spanish half-castes and the descendants of political refugees from the Central 

 American republics. In the towns the bulk of the people are Mulattos of all 

 shades, while the hamlets scattered over the rural districts are occupied chiefly 

 by the so-called " Caribs," that is, Indians who have, no doubt, some Carib blood 

 in their veins, derived from the Caribs removed in 1797 by the English from 

 St. A^incent to the islands on the Honduras coast. 



Some 30 miles above the town of Belize the river is fringed by a large 

 number of artificial mounds, which have not yet been explored. They appear to 

 have been either burial-places, or raised camping-grounds, to serve as refuges for 

 the people during the floods. Anyhow, they show that this region was not always 

 a solitude. 



Although within an eighteen-days' voyage of England, the interior of Belize 

 is less known than Central Africa. Yet few regions abound more in natural 

 resources of all kinds. " One of the most remarkable peculiarities of the climate 

 and soil is that almost all the trojjical products of commercial value may be grown 

 in the same zone. I have frequently seen maize, rice, bananas, pineapples, 

 oranges, cofEee, cacao, cotton, cassava, rubber, and cocoanuts all flourishing on the 

 same piece of land. Cacao of good qualit}^ is found growing wild in the forests ; 

 there is an abundance of fibre-producing plants, particularly henequen and silk- 

 grass, varieties of the aloe, and there is a large extent of land suitable for cattle 

 and mule breeding."* In the southern part of the t rritory, the area of drainage 

 within the British frontier is very narrow ; the 1 ills in this district are, for the 

 most part, merely the advanctd spurs of the Sierra de Chama, which traverses the 

 Guatemalan province of Alta Vera Paz. In these unexplored regions the 

 highest summits visible from the sea exceed 1,000 feet, while the little isolated 

 group of limestone rocks known as the " Seven Hills," terminating in a head- 

 land on Amatique Bay, falls to about half that elevation. IN^orthwards, pine- 

 clad cliffs skirt the shore at a certain distance inland, forming, so to say, a second 

 beach rising above the low-lying coast zone. 



The Cockscomb Mountains. 



In British Honduras the highest mountains are the Cockscomb range, 

 which are also connected by a lateral ridge with the Guatemalan sj^stem. The 

 loftiest peaks lie within British territory, where the main crest is disposed in the 

 direction from west to east, while from the northern slopes torrents descend to the 

 River Belize. These uplands, which are richly wooded on their lower flanks, and 

 dotted with a few pine-trees on their higher escarpments, consist partly of granite, 

 as shown by the rolled blocks in the beds of the torrents. Explorers have 

 specially noticed hard limestones veined with quartz and vertically disposed schists, 

 which are very difficult to scale. Thrse are probably the pcden/ales which Cortes 

 and his followers took twelve days to cross during his wonderful expedition to 

 Honduras in 1524. Victoria Peak, the culminating point, ascended for the first 



* J. Bellamy, Proe. £. Geo. Soc, September, 1889. 

 46 



