While the origins of this film are unconfirmed, it is likely that Honduras contains footage filmed by the explorer and filmmaker Edward A. Salisbury during a year-long expedition down the east coast of the United States, through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, and up the western coast of Central America (Ruoff, 2006, 75). An article in Moving Picture World in January 1917 explained that Salisbury had brought back 65,000 feet of film, from which ‘there will be 25,000 feet of exceptional film’ (Moving Picture World, 27 January 1917, 502).

Salisbury was accompanied on parts of his 12,000 mile trip by film star William S. Hart, the author Mary Roberts Rinehart, and for several months, the author Rex Beach, who fitted the films with titles (Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 7 October 1917). The first of the ‘Salisbury-Beach’ pictures was shown at the Rialto in New York in March 1917, with their footage from Honduras featuring in the film On the Spanish Main, which played at the Rialto ‘to a capacity house every day for eight weeks’ (Richard, 1992, 204). Details of the film suggest very close parallels with Honduras. For example, a report in the New Zealand press for ‘the third of the famous Rex Beach travel series, “With Rex Beach on the Spanish Main”, noted that ‘Swan Island takes up a large part of the film’ and then quoted from the film’s intertitles. ‘It is the quietest place in the world… there are no women there’ is almost identical to the opening title in Honduras– ‘Swan Island, one of the quietest places in the world. There are no women here’ (Grey River Argus, 16 April 1918, 4).

Salisbury explained that ‘he would probably select five or six or seven thousand feet of the finest stuff for a feature, while much of the remainder will be cut for division between scientific bodies and educational institutions’ (Moving Picture World, 27 January 1917, 502). A subsequent report stated that there were a series of sixteen ‘one-reel educational pictures’ and certainly the scientific photography and detail within Honduras suggests that the footage came from this series (Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 7 October 1917). Moving Picture World noted that the other men on the expedition included ‘one of the most expert exponents of microcinematography’ – George Stone from the University of California – and Charles Dahl and Stephen Hutt, ‘animal specialists who had previously worked with Mr Salisbury in obtaining motion photographs of wild animals’ (Moving Picture World, 27 January 1917, 502).

The film contains footage of Swan Island, which was until 1972 claimed by both the United States and Honduras, and which is found approximately ninety miles off mainland Honduras. The subsequent footage shows the ‘interior of Honduras’ and in particular a manganese mine. In 1918 a rich deposit of manganese was found in Spanish Honduras, and it is therefore possible that the location of the film has been erroneously identified as British Honduras (New York Times, 1 September 1918). The principal exports of British Honduras were mahogany, cedar and chicle, which was used in the production of chewing gum. These were predominantly exported to the United States, as government reports in 1918 indicated that 92% of exports went to the USA.