The First Thirty Years of Schools and School- 
masters in British Guiana. 
By the Rev. W. B, Ritchie, M.A., President of the B. G. School Managers’ 
Union. 
HOME of the first Colonial Blue Books have 
| disappeared. If, indeed, there were any Blue 
pete ~=Books during the first quarter of a century 
after 1804, they are no longer available. And such 
documents of the kind as we have access to are only 
blue in name, but more blank than blue in reality. 
Especially do the Demerarian officials of those days— 
clergy and schoolmasters and the rest—seem to have 
been very negle€tful of their duty in the matter of fur- 
nishing the Government with their annual returns. The 
Berbicians did better. Berbice had of course a Blue Book 
of its own. And that book contains not only a great 
deal of carefully compiled information ; but many quaint 
and readable remarks, 
For lack of the information which such documents 
might naturally be expeé€ted to furnish, the difficulty of 
giving anything like an accurate account of our first 
schools is considerable. So late as 1840, partly owing 
to political conditions which no longer obtain among 
‘our labouring population, and partly owing to the social 
circumstances of the Colony in general, education was at 
a very low ebb, and held a very secondary place. This is 
how the Royal Gazette takes a retrospe& and describes 
the outlook in 1837. “ Thirty five years ago, adventurers 
came to the Colony. They were strangers in a strange 
land, they never looked on it as theirhome. They were 
