4 
settlement, for agricultural industries will bring good 
mahogany within sufficiently easy reach to enable it 
to be cut at a profit. 
It was recognised long ago by a few people that if 
the colony was to develop it must turn its attention 
to agriculture. One of the most important industries 
entered on was tho production of sugar, and for some 
years there was a small export of this commodity. 
This was in the days when sugar realised from £2$ 
to ^30 a ton. The methods adopted were unscien¬ 
tific, and as the price of sugar fell, so the production 
in the colony fell off; and now very little more is 
made than will meet the demands for local consump¬ 
tion, and the price is kept up by a tax of cents, a 
pound on all imported sugar. 
It was Lieutenant-Governor Barlee who took the 
most important step towards maintaining agricultural 
industry in the colony. He saw that there was close 
by, in the United States, a market for fruit, and he 
changed the course of the mail from Jamaica to New 
Orleans, thereby securing that regularity of com¬ 
munication without which a trade in fruit cannot be 
carried on. The result is that a substantial trade 
has sprung up in bananas, plantains, and coco-nuts, 
and we have an excellent mail service at slight cost. 
For a weekly direct service to and from New Orleans 
we pay a subsidy of $12,000, and the steamers are 
exempt from port dues and compulsory pilotage. On 
the other hand, the service earns, at Postal Union 
rates, between $5,000 and $6,000 for the benefit of 
the colony. In the ordinary course the mails reach 
London 15 days after leaving Belize, and vice versa. 
The annual export of bananas is about 650,000 
bunches; about 5,000,000 coco-nuts are exported, 
and 1,000,000 plantains. 
Another industry which has recently started, and 
promises to be of importance, is that «:f cacao. Cacao 
is indigenous in the colony, and some settlers make 
