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CHAPTER IX.

BRITISH HONDURAS.

The

THE entrance to the Gulf of Mexico is between two CHAPTER IX. great promontories, Florida on the north, Yucatan on the south. The peninsula of Yucatan points almost due north, ending in Cape Catoche. On its western side, in the angle Eastern where it joins the mainland, is the Bay of Campeché, an coast of Central inlet of which bears the name of the Laguna de Terminos. America. On its eastern side, outside the Gulf of Mexico, is the Bay of Honduras, or, as its Spanish name signifies, the Deep Bay. The coast runs south from Cape Catoche, as far as the extremity of the bay at Golfo Dulce, and on this side is the territory included in the colony of British Honduras looking east over the Caribbean Sea. From the end of the bay, the land takes a sharp turn and runs east almost at right angles to its former course as far as Cape Gracias à Dios. Off this last section of the coast are some small islands, Ruatan, Bonacca or Guanaca, and others which were known in West Indian history as the Bay islands. From Cape Gracias à Dios the land again takes a turn and runs nearly due south as far as the San Juan river and thence southeast to the Isthmus of Darien.

coast.

The San Juan river which flows out of Lake Nicaragua, The and forms the boundary between the states of Nicaragua Mosquito and Costa Rica, is commonly taken as the southern limit of the territory which was known as the Mosquito coast. Its northern limit was in old days Cape Honduras, half-way between Cape Gracias à Dios and the end of the Bay of

SECTION Honduras. Off this coast again, from Cape Gracias southII. wards, are various small islands, one of which was of some importance in the early days of British colonisation and bore the name of Providence 1.

The The thought always present to Columbus on his voyages of fourth voyage of discovery was to find a new way to India and the East. On Columbus. his first three expeditions he had explored the greater and lesser Antilles, and had reached the South American coast at the mouth of the Orinoco. On his fourth and last voyage, in 1502, he set himself to find a strait, which would lead from the Caribbean to the Indian Sea, and which he placed in his calculations somewhere near the Isthmus of Darien. When he had reached Hispaniola therefore from Europe, he took his course westward towards the mainland, and came to one of the Bay islands now named Bonacca, but which the Indians called Guanaja and he himself designated the Isle of Pines 2. From thence he reached the continent at Cape Honduras, and, coasting painfully along to the eastward against wind and tide, at length he rounded the point where the land bends to the south, which in gratitude for a smoother course he named Cape Gracias à Dios. He subsequently explored the whole eastern coast of Central America as far as the Isthmus of Darien, where he gave Porto Bello its name, and finally returned north to linger for months on the shores of Jamaica 3. The doings of the Spaniards in Central America are Spaniards chronicled by Helps and other writers, and even a sketch of the events which followed the discovery of this part of the continent would require more space than could here be given to it. In 1509 a division was made between two rival

The

in Central America.

1 See above, p. 76 note, and below, p. 298. The island was generally known as Old Providence to distinguish it from New Providence in the Bahamas. Its importance is shown by one of Cromwell's letters written in November, 1655, some years after the colony had been abandoned. He writes, 'We could heartily wish that the island of Providence were in our hands again.' [Letter CCVI in Carlyle's collection.]

2 Not to be confused with the Isle of Pines on the south side of Cuba. 3 See above, p. 90.

IX.

captains, Nicuesa and Ojeda, both anxious to colonise the CHAPTER mainland. To the former was assigned the coast from Cape Gracias à Dios to the further end of the Isthmus of Darien, his province being named Veragua, while Ojeda was given the north-west coast of South America from the Gulf of Darien to the Gulf of Venezuela. Subsequently different provinces were established in Central America as year by year more land was conquered and more peoples reduced to slavery. The richer southern and western districts, including Nicaragua, were overrun from Darien; the less attractive and poorer northern counties on the eastern side of the coast, including Yucatan, were, so to speak, an appendage of Mexico. Yucatan is said to have been discovered by Hernandez de Cordova, who reached Cape Catoche from Havana in 1517. In 1524 Cortes sent one of his captains, Christopher de Olid, south to make a settlement in Honduras, and, finding that Olid intended to set up a separate government for himself, he followed him in the same year and carried out his celebrated march from Mexico to the head of the Bay of Honduras, finally returning by sea in 1526 from the newly founded town of Truxillo. Shortly after he left, in the same year, the country round the south of the bay, as far east as Cape Honduras, was constituted a separate government under the name of Honduras, and the new governor, landing at Truxillo, enforced the obedience of the colonists whom Cortes had left there.

After a century of Spanish occupation, Central America. was visited by an Englishman, Gage, in the years 1625-37, who has left a full description of it in his New Survey of the West Indies '.' He notices the neglected and unattractive province of Yucatan, held among the Spaniards to be poor as producing no indigo, cocheneal, or mines of silver, but only timber for ship-building, with honey, wax, hides, and 1 See above, p. 95 and note.

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