Here[,] after many vicissitudes both by sea and land[,] Wallace fixed his residence, [and] erected a few log huts and a small fortalice, which stood on the site now occupied by the handsome premises of Messrs. Boitias and Delande.

This information was promptly popularised by John Lloyd Stephens, who, on 30 October 1839, landed in Belize with Frederick Catherwood en route to Maya ruins in Guatemala, further enriched by Justo Sierra O'Reilly on 5 September 1849, and repeated throughout scholarly and lay literature of the 19th century.

[9][10][11][note 5] By 1883, an historian described the state of affairs thus – A halo of romance surrounds the early history of British Honduras, legend assigning this region as the scene of many a daring exploit, many a riotous orgie, in the good old times when the adventurous sons of Albion roamed the Caribbean, partly under the protection of their own dreaded black flag, and sometimes under that of the country of their birth, [...].

"[24] This analysis was further supported by historian Matthew Restall who conducted his own research and concluded that "if Wallace had existed, there would at least be one mention of him in seventeenth or eighteenth-century sources.

The Honduras Almanac, which assumes to be the chronicler of this settlement, throws a romance arounds its early history by ascribing its origin to a Stotch bucanier named Wallace.

The fame of the wealth of the New World, and the return of the Spanish galleons laden with the riches of Mexico and Peru, brought upon the coast of America hordes of adventurers–to call them by no harsher name–from England and France, of whom Wallace, one of the most noted and daring, found refuge and security behind the keys and reefs which protect the harbour of Balize.