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The British Colonies.
Chapter III.
The Growth of the British-American Colonies
(1837-1897).
The growth of our Colonial Empire during the Victorian era reveals a principle of spontaneous life very different from that of all other European countries. There have been no bounties to encourage our sailors and merchants, no subsidies to aid our Colonial department, no bureau to direct our colonists. As above hinted, British colonization has forced itself into every imaginable corner of the world by sheer persistence and perseverance, often in spite of official protests and the cry of Departmentalists, so that the various chapters of British colonization strike the eye, again and again, as triumphs of individualism. There were certain portions of the world where, in 1837, the British Empire could grow, and others where it was compelled to remain stationary, simply from geographical considerations. In the West Indies, a group which first naturally invites attention, it was impossible to overflow beyond the shores of the islands, and it was only possible to advance in such continental possessions as British Guiana and British Honduras, which have been always associated, historically and geographically, with the West Indian Islands. The tropical regions of Central and North America have, however, never presented themselves to the British colonists as bonâ-fide colonizing homes. Cam- péché Bay and its neighbourhood had been a favourite resort of the logwood cutters and buccaneers in the seventeenth century, and there had been an attempt to plant a colony of Scotchmen on the Isthmus of Darien after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). But this latter project had failed, and the survivors were transferred