APPENDIX. 

 I. 



THE GEORGETOWN— MANAOS RAILWAY. 



Sir WALTER EGERTON'S VIEWS. 

 Society of Arts, London, April 30th, 1918. 



Tapping the Amazon Valley. 



The presence of arapaima in the Rupununi and of a very vicioua little 

 biting fly, one of the pests of the Amazon, are held to be proofs that once 

 the waters of the Rupununi valley drained into that river. Even now the 

 height of the divide between the sea and the Amazon valley is only some 

 250 ft., and in the wet season the waters of the two river systems 

 approach within half a mile of each other, and Indians drag their canoes 

 across the watershed. If ever the middle Amazon is to be given a route 

 from Manaos, more than a thousand miles shorter than the river route to 

 the United States and Canada, surely it will be over this low watershed 

 to Georgetown. If the line is constructed to Manaos its extension to 

 meet the southern railway systems of Brazil and the Argentine can 

 only be a question of time. The Takutu, on the Brazilian boundary, 

 runs into the Rio Branco, one of the chief tributaries of the Amazon, 

 joining that river near Manaos. 



The Projected Frontier Railway. 

 The British Guiana section, if taken from Georgetown to the junc- 

 tion of the Ireng with the fakutu, to which point launches easily ascend, 

 would be some 340 miles. Its construction presents no engineering 

 difficulties, and the cost of a metre-gauge line was estimated by Mr. 

 Bland at only £3,500 a mile. Mr. Buck, the Colonial Director of Public 

 Works, has recently investigated the problem afresh, and recommends a 

 slight variation of the route at Georgetown end, but confirms Mr. Bland's 

 estimate of mileage cost. 



I will not here discuss the relative advantages of the two routes 

 beyond remarking that by Mr. Buck's route the distance to the Takutu is 

 increased by twenty-six miles, a very serious consideration as traffic in- 

 creases, and that Wismar, the probable headquarters of a great bauxite 

 industry, would be left without any other communication with George- 

 town than the lengthy river route. 



Dr. Nunan,- the present Attorney General of British Guiana, had 

 done much to boom this attractive railway project before my arrival in 

 the colony, and succeeded in raising great enthusiasm on the subject. 

 Many of the leading men see in this line even without the Manaos exten- 

 sion, a solution of the problem of the colony's development. I agree with 

 them, and I had hoped to return to England in August, 1914, to press 



