14 TIMBER 
even to this day mahogany of good quality of any 
origin is often described by the uninitiated as Spanish 
mahogany, although shipments from the first-mentioned 
Island practically ceased many years ago. The wood on 
its introduction was doubtless in great favour and sup- 
plies from St. Domingo in considerable amounts 
regularly followed. Other districts in the West Indies 
and Central America in which varieties of the wood 
grew took up the export, and very soon this tropical 
product was being shipped from Mexico, Honduras and 
Cuba. Later, other countries in the same zone assisted 
in augmenting the supply until, at the present time, 
almost every district in Central America and adjacent 
countries helps, with wood of varying description, to 
fill the ever increasing demand which exists in very 
many countries. 
A marked epoch in the history of this wood, as these 
Central American supplies began to show slight signs 
of exhaustion, was the discovery that, in the tropical 
regions on the West Coast of Africa, lying somewhat 
in the same parallels of latitude, huge forests more 
or less timbered with species of mahogany and other 
trees were available for supplementing the world’s 
demands. These enormous belts of forest land, lying 
roughly speaking at a distance of about forty miles from 
the coast, and extending in a more or less parallel direc- 
tion to the sea-board, stretch approximately from the 
French Guinea possessions to within the country beyond 
the Congo, embracing in this extent Liberia, the French 
possessions on the Gold Coast, Nigeria, the Cameroons, 
the French Congo adjoining, and the Portuguese posses- 
sions South of the Congo. Various species of timber 
from these forests found their way to the markets in 
a desultory manner during the latter part of the nine- 
teenth century, but no accurate statistics are available 
