MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.
Central America has owed much of its ocean-transportation service to the development of its banana industry, as this has brought about the establishment of the steamship lines of the United Fruit Company. The vessels of this company have provided the east coast of Central America with a service to United States ports more frequent and regular than is enjoyed by any other section of Latin Ainerica. Large ships carrying as a rule both passengers and freight sail regularly between the United States and Central America, as well as Colom bia and Cuba, giving direct connections between these countries and five United States ports. From New York there are two sailings each week for Panama (one of these boats also mak ing Port Limon, Costa Rica), and one sailing every two weeks for British Honduras, Guate mala and Spanish Honduras. From Boston there is a weekly boat to Port Limon, stopping at Havana, Cuba, on the way. From New Orleans there is a boat each week to British and Spanish Honduras and Guatemala and an other to Panama and Costa Rica; while a third sails for Panama by way of Havana. Service is also offered from Galveston and Mobile, though no passengers are carried, as they are on all the other routes. These boats, carrying millions of bunches of bananas from Central American ports every year, as well as cacao and other produce, afford an adequate and valued service of immense importance to the prosper ity of Central American countries, all of which are reached directly except SalvadOr and Nicaragua.
Besides the United Fruit Company lines serving the east coast from the United States are the Bluefields Fruit and Steamship Company, operating between Bluefields and New Orleans, affording the only regular steamship commu nication of eastern Nicaragua with the outside world; the Orr-Laubenheimer Line, the vessels of which operate between Mobile and ports of British Honduras and Guatemala; the Hub bard-Zemurray Line running fruit steamers from Mobile to Puerto Cortes, Ceiba and Tela.
Honduras; and the Independent Steamship Line, with sailings twice a week for Ceiba, Honduras.
Before the war the Hamburg American Line (Atlas Service) had weekly sailings be tween New York and Port Limon, and also a semi-monthly service from Port Limon to Hamburg. The Elders and Fyffes Line formerly carried bananas from Costa Rica to Bristol, England, but the vessels were taken over by the United Fruit Company, which continued the sailings via Colon and Jamaica. The French Compagnie Generale Transatlantique maintained a semi-monthly service between Colon and Port Limon and Havre before the war, but sailings under war conditions have been uncertain. Besides this line connections between Panama and Europe are normally afforded by the Leyland and Harrison Line and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company to England, La Veloce (Italian) to Genoa, and the Compania Transatlantica de Barcelona to Spanish ports.
On the Pacific coast Central America is served by five regularly operating lines, the Pacific Mail, the line of W. R. Grace and Com pany, the Salvador Railway and Steamship Com pany, the Jebson Line and the California South Sea Navigation Company. The first-named line operates between Balboa and San Fran cisco, touching at intermediate ports , of im portance, the second between Seattle and Bal boa and the third between Salina Cruz, Mex ico, the terminus of the Tehuantepec Railway, and Balboa. The Jebson Line and the Cali fornia South Sea Navigation Company operate out of San Francisco, the former with steamers every three weeks and the latter every 10 days for ports to the south. Before the war the vessels of the Kosmos and Hamburg Amer ican lines called at Central American ports on their way to Europe. All the above lines serve Mexican west-coast ports as well as those of Central America, and in addition the Pacific Coast Steamship Company has sailings from San Francisco to Mexican ports.