The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-01
IN VOLUNTARY EXILE.
STORT OF THE AMERICAN SET
 ELEMENT

l cA NNN Off From the World, ar StiII Fahti l ful to the Lost Cause-A Garden Spot
 To the average American there is no more interesting place in the tropics of the new world than Toledo settlement, 1 in British Honduras, writes John L. CoWan in the Cincinnati Commercial 1 Tribune. It is a bit of the old Creole state of Louisiana in a tropic setting, and probably furnishes the truest pie ] ture of life in the cotton states before i the war to be found anywhere in the
 world. It is the retreat and home of a 1 band of self-made exiles, who deserted 1 their old homes rather than accept the consequences of northern success in the civil war.
 1 The end of the war found many of the planters of the south in sore traits. | Their slaves had been set free; their crops destroyed; their homes pillaged or burned; their plantations overrun by i contending armies.
 l Reduced from affiuence to utter pow erty, it is hardly to be wondered that their feelings toward the federal gov
 ernment were far fom kindly. Most of them, however, courageously set to work to rebuild their shattered fortunes in the land of their birth. Not so with ! the irreconcilables. The spectre of |! ''nigger rule'' and the excesses of the 1 carpet-baggers made them feel that the l Union was no longer fit or a safe res 1 ldence for trueborn southern gentle man.
 1 The proudest, most exclusive and most stiff-necked of the native aristoc- racy of the United States has always been the old creole element of Louisia- na, tracing it's descent back to the orig inal Spanish settlers and boasting that 1 it has kept it's blood pure from Saxon contamination through all changes of government and all vicissitudes of for 1 tune.
 l It is, therefore, not surprising that many members of the creole aristocra
 cy gathered together such of their port able property as had escaped the gen. eral wreck, sold their ruined homes for whatever they would bring and emigra- | ted.
 A few went to Canada; some went to | the Bermudas; more went to Cuba, | Porto Rico and others to the West In- dies; and fourteen families went to British Honduras. Most prominent
 and influential of these fourteen fami- lies were the Pearces, Beins, Hutchin- sons, Perrotts, Paines, Waterous, Oct
 gels and Wilson's, all from the immedi-
 ate vicinity of New Orleans. Each
 family took along considerable num- Der of it's former slaves, who preferred
 to follow the fortunes of their old mas
 ters rather than accept their freedom
 and try the uncertain and hazardous l experiment of making their own living 1 The immigrants arrived in Belize, the i capital and chief city of British Hondu- as, in the fall of 1865. They were cordi- ally received by the colonial authori- ! ties, who realized that immigration was 1 the one thing needed to bring prosperity | to the colonies, and hoped that kindly 1 treatment of this band of self-made ex-
 iles might encourage others to follow
 them. An act was promptly passed by i the colonial council and approved by
 the governor-genera1 giving to the i'm
 migrants six hundred acres of ground
 near the Rio Grande, which empties
 into the Amatique inlet.
 It casts an interesting sidelight upon
 British policy to learn that this liberal
 grant was in territory that Great Bri-
 tain had never before even pretended 1 to own. The southern boundary with 1 Guatemala had never been officially de-
 fined, but had always been shown on
 British maps as formed by the Rio Si-
 bun, ninety miles north of the Toledo grant. The permanent settlement made
 by the Americans was the chief argu-
 ment used afterward to justify the
 moving of this boundary line one hun
 dred miles south of the Rio Sibun to the l Amatique inlet; and the feeblt govern
 n1ent of Guatemala was powerless to prevent this mbarefaced robbery.
 Once planted in this retreat, the set | tiers at Toledo began to carve out for
 themselves new homes in the wilder
 ness. On all sides they were surround
 infested by wild beasts and inhabited
 only by semi-civilized or wholly savage
 tribes of Indians. The recently libera-
 ted slaves and their proud and aristo-
 cratic masters toiled side by side, all
 differences of race, color and condition i for the time being forgotten. Houses
 must be built. forests cleared away,
 and the land planted in food-producing
 crops in order to prevent the settlers from becoming objects of charity.
 The nearest settlement to Toledo was, and still is, the village of Punta Gorda, | inhabited by some four hundred semi-
 civilized Carlos, and located on the Rio
 Grande, some. six miles distant from the
 Toledo grant The colonial government constructed a stone -ballasted road be- tween the two points, and over this the
 settlers transport their goods and pro- I duce, mainly by the use of oxen. The 1 interior of the country is so intersected 1 by swamps, lagoons and morasses that 1 land communication with Belize is inl- possible, rendering necessary the long, circuitous and tiresome trip, first to the Rio Grande over the government road,
 then down the river to the Caribbean
 sea and up the coast to Belize.
 It is but paying a deserved tribute to industry, perseverance and intelligence of the settlers at Toledo to say that l their lands are now the garden spot of all Central America. The original
 grant of six hundred acres has been