of dependence or shadow of slavery, is fascinating to those who pursue it above all others, and utterly denudes other employments of the ablest supply of labour. Unfortunately the continuance of the industries with which it is bound up is increasingly threatened. The failure of commercial firms in the colony, involved by advances to cultivators, or in their own direct operations which unfavourable seasons have rendered fruitless; the check in Yucatan through the effect of the duties now raised by Mexico on stores sent across the frontier for gangs' supplies, and wood brought out, after paying a first royalty to the Indians, progressively overshadow the prospect, and the rallying of prices for wood is less and less to be counted on. There are growing indications that before long, unless the demand for labourers for employment in the Republic of Honduras and elsewhere outside the colony increases, an industrial crisis more severe than such temporary difficulties as have already inade themselves felt of recent years may create serious trouble in the colony. For the Belize Creole does not accept with equanimity proposals to reduce his standard wage; on the contrary, he regards it as a form of malignant treason, an oppression and a violence to his liberties, and assembles, very vociferous and threatening, when such manœuvres are reported to be in the wind. The wood from the more accessible parts of the colony has long been cut out; the regrowth of mahogany is a matter of forty or fifty years at the least, that of logwood of fourteen or fifteen. employment fails there will, if history repeats itself, be preliminary troubles of the nature of disturbances in Belize, followed by the problem of an unemployed population, every man of whom can cut down two trees' more easily than he can raise one blade of corn.

If

This is not merely figurative. The negro and Indian idea of cultivation, universal throughout the West Indies, is always to cut

The Creoles of the Belize forest-works, fed on "rations" of "pork and dough," and supplying themselves, practically altogether, with imported food bought out of their wages, are more helpless to provide for themselves by agricultural industry than even their kindred in those West Indian Islands in which the population has remained dependent in similar fashion on the sugar

estates.

He

The dangers of this situation have long been recognised, and successive governors, under the continuous encouragement of the Colonial Office, have endeavoured to provide against them. The late Sir F. P. Barlee deserves the credit of having taken the most important effectual step in this direction. established, by contract, regular steam communication with New Orleans, and thereby enabled a market for fruit to be found in the United States, and the important banana industry to be developed. His policy was the object of the most embittered and unscrupulous opposition on the part of the mahogany and logwood interests, who were also interested in preventing competition from the United States in their monopoly of the supply of imports. But although the bananagrowing industry has brought money into the colony, and has enabled some independent planting enterprises to be developed, or to survive, notwithstanding the labour difficulty, it has not provided for or attracted the Creoles of African blood. Nor will any one who knows them feel sanguine that this class can be made self-supporting by agriculture on small holdings of land, as the "settlers" are in Jamaica, Grenada, and increasingly in Trinidad. The Indian and the Carib, and the Spaniard of the north or the south, will remain self-supporting populations: the outlook for the African

down and burn virgin forest (if available) as a preliminary to planting food crops. Manuring and rotation are unknown. When the clearing is exhausted another grove is felled.

Creole and for those who have made money by his labour has long appeared increasingly threatening.

The remedy or alleviation now most pressingly advocated is the project of a railway through the colony from Belize into Guatemala, to connect, if possible, with railways in that Republic or in Mexico, and ultimately to be a branch of the great trunk line that is to run from Klondike to Cape Horn. The port of Belize was for long an important entrepot for Central American trade. Goods imported direct from England were there transhipped and distributed by land or sea into Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, and the other Central American Republics. This was largely a smuggling trade. The development of steam com

munication between the United States and these Republics, and the opening and improvement of ports such as Livingston, Port Barrios, and Puerto Cortés, have much diminished the Belize trade in those directions. The Yucatan trade now languishes under the preventive activity of Mexico; the trade up the Belize River Valley into Peten, the northern province of Guatemala, is hampered by the long journey through forest and swamp, and the imperfections of the Belize River Channel. It is believed that if a railway could be constructed the trade of Peten and the adjacent districts, which have now no other outlet except over the mountains to the south to the Rio Dolce (flowing into the Bay of Honduras), would come through Belize, and would increase with this opportunity of outlet. At the same time it is suggested that a railway to the western frontier would enable districts rich in uncut mahogany and logwood to be worked in Guatemala. This project of a railway has been pending for a good many years. Two surveys have been made, one incomplete and somewhat abortive, one thorough and conclusive, at the expense of the Colonial Government. Negotiations are still proceeding with a view to the construction

of a railway by a Company, and the procuring of a concession from the Government of Guatemala for an extension into that territory. It may be hoped that if these schemes should be carried out some settlement for agricultural purposes of the land along the line would result, and that a portion of the nomadic wood-cutting Creoles might gradually be absorbed into such industry. It is unfortunate that the course of the line from Belize for about thirty miles inland must run through swamps and barren "pine ridges," of no value for any kind of settlement. happens that this tract of country is about the most valueless in the colony; and that all the lands through which the railway would pass are in private ownership. These considerations have suggested an alternative scheme for a line from Stann Creek, a small town south of Belize, to the frontier, which would pass over more difficult country, but by a shorter route through Crown lands and through a valley in which there is already a certain amount of settlement.

It

Altogether, the future of British Honduras presents itself as a somewhat disquieting problem. Here are more than 7000 square miles of rich soil and splendid forests, with a population of a little over 31,000, and only the coast-line and a corner up in the north in any sense really settled. The colony of British Guiana presents an analogous case, and the two suggest far-leading speculations with regard to the colonising capacity of the British race. British Honduras is comparatively far less of a British settlement to-day than it was about two hundred years ago, when Benbow (subsequently Admiral of the Fleet) was cutting logwood with his partners on the creek that still bears his name. The carlier settlers lived and worked for years themselves at manual labour in this climate, as they did in other West Indian islands before the full development of the slave-trade. They do not seem to be able to do so

now, and they do not seem to be able to train or induce the emancipated negro to work for their profit in agriculture, except under conditions of land tenure which fortunately now survive in a few West Indian islands only. Unless they can solve this problem, it looks as though British Honduras as a country must become more and more the country of the medley of coloured races now co-ordinated by European institutions, showing little promise, either jointly or severally, of ability to maintain such co-ordination themselves.