Chap. XI. CRIMINAL JUSTICE. 185 
thought of such a cruelty, the fact is a striking exhibition 
of the national energy of a tribe which — when transplanted 
at the latter end of the passed century to Honduras from 
the island of St. Vincent — consisted of little more than five 
thousand persons, and is now settled along the whole extent 
of coast from Cape Gracias a Dios to Belize, being able to 
furnish between four and five thousand prime hands to the 
mahogany works. While the men are absent in this and 
other occupations, the women cultivate the fields. Man- 
dioca is the principal product of their agricultural industry, 
and the Casade, or bread made of mandioca flour, is 
known by the name of Carib bread at Omoa and Belize, 
where they bring it for sale. Omoa is dependent upon 
them for this, as well as for many other articles of food. 
Almost every morning their canoes arrive loaded with all 
kinds of fish and molluscs, iguanas, mandiocca, yams, plan- 
tains, and cocoa-nuts ; while the Hispano-American in- 
habitants of the town are far too lazy to provide for their 
own wants. 
At Tulian the habitations of this people, situated in a grove 
of cocoa-nut trees, were built of a wooden framework, which 
is filled up with clay, the whole thatched with palm leaves. 
Their fields were situated at a little distance, and I had no 
time to visit them. They had formerly been more ex- 
tensive ; but the cows of Omoa, roaming about for many 
miles, as is the custom in that country, had found these 
plantations, and by their devastations had caused a part of 
the inhabitants of the village to remove to the Laguna de 
Alvarado, to which place I was told the rest were preparing 
to follow them. As soon as a town shall spring into exist- 
ence at the northern terminus of the Honduras Inter-oceanic 
Railway the presence of this Carib settlement must become 
eminently useful. 
