A VISIT TO A DEMERARA SUGAR FACTORY 39 



For a long stretch the road threads its way through 

 an avenue of palms, aloft on whose giant, branchless 

 trunks are plumelike boughs that nod gracefully in 

 the breeze. Here it is flanked by a canal, which is 

 entirely covered by a thick carpet, that has a ground- 

 work of green, richly bedecked with a raised pattern 

 of cerise-hued Lotus - lilies. A little farther on is 

 another canal, with an equally thick carpet, but this 

 time the design is wrought by dehcately tinted, 

 lavender water-hyacinths. And all the while, in the 

 background, are waving fields of sugar-cane, spreading 

 around and across to the remote horizon. In some 

 parts this same scene is displayed on both sides of the 

 road, but at intervals on the river-side the land narrows 

 and becomes a scrub patch intersected by canals, with 

 kokers or sluice-gates, which play an important part 

 in the drainage system of the cane - fields. At in- 

 tervals, too, the view of the sugar-cane display is 

 partially blocked by logics, rows of labourers' dwellings 

 that front the canals ; and sometimes it is wholly 

 blotted out by a foreground of market gardens, planted 

 with cocoa-nut trees, plantains, and numerous other 

 tropical fruits and vegetables. 



Again, there are roadside scenes of daily life which 

 temporarily draw our attention from the cane-fields. 

 We are constantly meeting and passing some of the 

 coolies and coloured folk, who comprise the labouring 

 population of the estates, or an enterprising John 

 Chinaman who has made a prosperous business concern 

 of his little shanty of a store in the vicinity of the 

 plantations. We see women squatting alongside a 

 trench, washing clothes by the novel method of 

 beating them with bats ; a wedding-party of East 



