Labour and Colonisation — The Outlook. 39 



There is a point of great importance in any system of colonisation, 

 that is, real settlement. The immigration system provided for repatria- 

 tion which is evidently dangerous for we want people here who have a 

 stake in the colony. Some will say the Creole negroes are in such a 

 position but when we look over the villages we tied that most of the 

 original lots are no longer retained by descendants of those who settled 

 on them. A difficulty is produced from the fact that in most cases the 

 provision grounds are far away from the house lots and therefore the 

 dwelling and farm are separate. The idea was to have a village with 

 shops, schools and churches, within easy reach, but the result has been 

 that there is no supervision of the provision grounds, with consequent 

 losses through theft. The best ideal is, of course, a house standing in 

 its own grounds, but this could certainly hamper schools and churches as 

 well as police supervision. The idea of the freedman appears to have 

 been perfect liberty but his advisers, mainly missionaries, wanted to 

 prevent a relapse into savagery. The result was of some advantage but 

 its faults are obvious, yet we can hardly see that the matter can be 

 altered. In England we often find allotment gardens at some distance 

 from the cottages but hardly two or three miles off as is the case 

 with the back lands of some of our village. I have walked aback 

 to inspect villagers' plots and can easily see that they are difficult 

 of access and entail long walks or paddling in bateaux. At the beginning 

 there were no roads at all and even now the few are often quagmires in 

 wet weather. 



My first trip up the East Coast in 1870 gave me almost a shock. 

 Buxton and Beterverwagting suggested a lot of stilted huts in a lake ; in 

 some places they could be reached by wading, in others only by means of 

 corials. Since that time we can see there has been much improvement 

 but I could understand the difficulties of the earlier villages through want 

 of managers. On the banks of the Demerara River there was not the same 

 flooding but almost every hut was in the midst of a jungle that required a 

 cutlass if it were to be penetrated. In such places the dwelling was near 

 the river and the narrow piece of land stretched back into the junode for 

 about a mile. Few were cultivated at all for their owners lived by wood- 

 cutting, the women sometimes putting in a few plantain suckers and 

 fishing to get a relish for the foo-foo soup or porridge. 



It is quite evident that the sanitary conditions on coasts and rivers 

 were very bad. In the villages the land was bare and on the river 

 covered with jungle ; in neither case were the surroundings anything but 

 repulsive. In some villages when the water had gone there was much to 

 offend our eyes and noses, and on the river there was always a mouldy 

 smell from the thatch of the low hut. In connection with the mosquito 

 theory of malaria I may mention that agues appear to be as common 

 where there are no mosquitoes as in places where they are present. 

 We may say plainly that the conditions favourable to disease are present 

 inboth places. 



