Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/506

486 equal, at 4s per dollar, to £3,304,000.—According to the report of the government, the value of foreign goods imported is £1,652,000 sterling, and half of this being put down as British produce, would make the value of our exports £826,000: this, however, is far from correct: the value of them is double that amount. In the colony of Belize alone, a settlement which may one day become a most valuable entrepôt for all the more immediate points of the Spanish Main, and including, of course, the rising republic of Guatemala, there is a capital little short of two millions sterling employed at the present day. It is to this colony that the Guatemalian merchants come to make their purchases; and owing to the facilities thus offered by its situation, as well as on account of the duties of introduction being so much lower into that republic than they are at Mexico,—being in the proportion of about sixteen to seventy per cent.—it follows, necessarily,