Selections, [no. 3, new seiues, 
CAPABILITIES OF HONDURAS AND YUCATAN. 
In regard to the British settlement of Honduras, as a future field 
for cultivation, it presents an extent of sea-board of above 200 
miles, by from 50 to 100 miles inland, and is nearly three times the 
size of Jamaica, the largest of our West India Islands, from which 
it lies about 700 miles due west on the ^.^ainland ; it possesses a 
virgin soil, fine climate, several navigable rivers, and numerous 
means of water carriage. Would government guarantee security 
in its land, for the purposes of cultivation, it could afi^ord scope for 
the employment of large capital; but at present it is restricted to 
the mere products of the forest, almost entirely to mahogany and 
logwood : as it is, its imports now reach above £400,000 sterling 
per annum, employing 22,000 to 28,000 tons of shipping. 
Dr. Thompson has brought home one sort of the native Seed 
Cotton of Yucatan, which is among those produced ; it is fine, but 
from its downy nature could only be cleaned by the saw gin. So 
extensively was this article grown in Yucatan that, in the times of 
the old Spanish Historians of the Conquest, the Natives came to 
fight against the Spaniards in defensive armour thickly padded with 
cotton. The Indians of that Peninsula, as described by Stevens, 
are familiar with the culture of cotton, of sugar along the coast of 
Campeachy, and of tobacco and maize in the interior. They can- 
not know the use of the saw gin ; but an American gentleman is 
mentioned by Stevens--' as now growing and manufacturing Cotton 
in the neighbourhood of Merida, for disposal in that city and vici- 
nity. 
When Dr. Thompson was in Yucatan he saw mule loads of 
Cotton in the seed (that is, as it came from the tree), conveyed to 
Valladolid and Merida, to be sold there ; thus carrying 75 per cent, 
of unnecessary weight, by not freeing it from the seed on the farm 
where it was grown. 
The Indians, though nominally free, are much oppressed by the 
Spanish descendants, and from their youth up to advanced age in a 
state of debt for small advances. Were political disabilities re- 
* Steyens' Second Incidenta of Travels in Yucatan. 
