126 Selections. [no. 3, new series, 



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. mainland ; 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 afford 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 cf 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 percent* 

 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- 



* Stevens' Second Incidents of Travels in Yucatan. 



