“ Spanish Main ”

O most of us the words “ Spanish Main ” conjure up visions of high-sterned carracks riding at anchor off a town of red-tiled, white-walled houses backed by a mountain wall ; of mule-trains trudging through the Darien forest laden with small, flat, heavy boxes containing treasure torn from the Incas. Mosquitoes and heat; cruelty and courage. Drake, Cortez, Morgan, Venables. Cartagena, Nombre de Dios, Panama. We forget—or perhaps, have never realized—that the motive behind all those wild, fantastic doings, the magnet that drew Europeans to those shores, was trade. But so it was—and it was the desire for trade that led men from the British Isles to establish the tiny settlement on the Bay of Honduras on the inhospitable, uninhabited coast between the Captain-generalships of Yucatan and Guatemala.
For years the Spanish had been exporting dye-woods from Campeche on the Gulf of Mexico. Then a British buccaneer captured a vessel thus laden and, after having burned much of this disappointing cargo for firewood, discovered to his astonishment that it was
worth £100 a ton. The news went round, and many of the dubious sea-faring characters that infested the Caribbean Sea in those days tried to share this unexpected treasure from the swamps of Campeche, until the Spaniards learned of it and drove them out. Forced to seek elsewhere, and with a natural liking for sheltered and concealed waters and a contempt for the perils of navigation, the British logwood hunters presently established themselves at the mouth of the principal river running into the immense lagoon that lies behind the coral reef (second longest in the world) which extends from the base of the peninsula of Yucatan southward to within twenty miles of the coast of Guatemala.
The first inhabitants of the Settlement were part-time foresters.
They plied this more peaceful trade only when the dangers of the hurricane season rendered maritime enterprise—shall we call it?-—unprofitable. Even in the early days of the 18th century they were a rough lot; Captain Nathaniel Uring roundly declared that “ the settlement on the Bay of Honduras is entirely composed of criminals, fugitives from justice or men of desperate fortune.” But tough they had to be, for Britain, and even Jamaica (herself no Sunday-school in those days), disowned them. The Spaniards, though they had never made the
Measuring a mahogany tree before felling (below) and the barbecue—or platform of sticks—on which the feller stands (left)
Courtesy of the Timber Development Assn. and H.M.S.O.

worth £100 a ton. The news went round, and many of the dubious sea-faring characters that infested the Caribbean Sea in those days tried to share this unexpected treasure from the swamps of Campeche, until the Spaniards learned of it and drove them out. Forced to seek elsewhere, and with a natural liking for sheltered and concealed waters and a contempt for the perils of navigation, the British logwood hunters presently established themselves at the mouth of the principal river running into the immense lagoon that lies behind the coral reef (second longest in the world) which extends from the base of the peninsula of Yucatan southward to within twenty miles of the coast of Guatemala.
The first inhabitants of the Settlement were part-time foresters.
They plied this more peaceful trade only when the daggers of the hurricane season rendered maritime enterprise—shall we call it?-—unprofitable. Even in the early days of the 18th century they were a rough lot; Captain Nathaniel Uring roundly declared that “ the settlement on the Bay of Honduras is entirely composed of criminals, fugitives from justice or men of desperate fortune.” But tough they had to be, for Britain, and even Jamaica (herself no Sunday-school in those days), disowned them. The Spaniards, though they had never made the
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