Hopttown Chinese Settlement. 67 



greased rapidly, the principal products being rice, charcoal and eddoes. 

 A large and substantial Church was built some time after, and though its 

 repairs are sadly neglected at the present time, yet it stands out as a 

 monument to attest the existence of a once thriving Chinese town. 



Decline. 

 The causes of the decline of the settlement from what can be 

 gathered in conversation with old Chinese residents and from others 

 who had resided there, may be attributed to the following reasons : — 



1. A good many who made and saved a fair amount of money left in 

 order to engage in business near the larger centres of population, the 

 work being less, arduous and the profits greater. 



2. The disinclination of the younger generation to till the soil, or to 

 engage in other strenuous manual labour, and the superior attractions of 

 business life, which in those days, was very remunerative. A youth 

 engaged as a shopman, at a small wage, with board and lodging free, 

 might very soon aspire, on the accumulation of a few hundred dollars, to 

 be the owner of his own shop, and as the merchants of Georgetown 

 gave credit freely in those days' it was not difficult to start off with very 

 little. 



3 As there was a lack of woman folk among the immigrants a great 

 many of the men died off without leaving any offspring behind them. 



4. Failure to plant permanent crops. It is difficult to understand 

 why the settlers did not go in for the planting of cocoa or coffee on an 

 extensive scale, as the land is certainly suitable for either. The real 

 reason appears to me to be that the Chinese did not know very much 

 about them ; that they were unwilling to wait for, perhaps, five years, 

 before anything could be reaped from the trees, and finally, and this might 

 have been a point of great importance to them, the land was owned 

 generally, that is to say, there was no individual title. It might have 

 occurred to individuals that if they planted permanent crops, the question 

 of inheritance would arise after their death. 



I regard the failure to plant permanent crops as one of the principal 

 reasons for the decline of the settlement because I am of opinion that if 

 such plants had been put in there would have been an inducement for a 

 great many to rema'n there, as the subsequent labour would have been 

 very little and light, compared with the returns obtainable, and this no 

 doubt would have formed a counter attraction to that of a business life. 



5. The Boerasirie Scheme, the object of which was to create a 

 j^fiseryoir of water in the backlands of the estates of the West Coast and 

 WesTBaTik of IhlT Demerara river, was also largely instrumental in bring- 

 ing about the failure of the settlement. The great body of water retained 

 had no outlet but that of the Camoonie Creek and to a slight degree of 

 the Bonasika, and a mere glance at the map would convince one that 

 during the rainy seasons, the banks of the Camoonie must be inundated, 

 and of course crops thereon could not thrive. This scheme was started in 

 1887 or thereabouts. 



