Some Lines of Progress. 213 
With Surinam there is a direct communication through Sprostons’ steamers and 
the Dutch fruit boats, and owing to that colony’s similar development (or lack 
of it) to our own, not much further can be hoped for at the moment. 
But the organised, more or less settled, and undoubtedly progressive republics 
of Brazil and Venezuela are as far removed from our commercial horizon as 
Japan or China. This is a fact not very creditable to our local enterprise. 
Colonel Monagas, the Venezuelan Consul, has been kind enough to promise us for 
the next “ Timehri”’ which will appear, God willing, on July lst, a paper on 
* Trade Relations and Communications with Venezuela.’ We also hope to secure 
more than one authoritative essay on the possibilities of relations with Brazil. 
Possibly the beautiful slides of the Attorney General’s Kaieteur trip may 
revive again that favourite project of our respected director, the Hon. B. Howell 
Jones, viz., a Sea Wall tourist hotel. His Excellency’s interest in the scheme 
took the practical form of the offer of a grant of a choice of sites on the Sea Wall. 
I have no doubt that existing vested interests could be so dealt with that a hotel 
of sixty rooms could be kept going all the year round by some thirty or forty 
homeless persons like myself in constant residence and would make a handsome 
profit by attracting tourists to the colony during the five months of the European 
and American winter and early spring. Worked in sympathetic relations with 
the Royal Mail tourist system, advertised by attractive illustrated handbooks 
(such as Mr. Goring, Manager of Sprostons, Ltd., and Mr. Gonsalves, the enter- 
prising maitre d’hotel of the New Victoria Hotel, have recently issued), utilising 
the powerful machinery of Sprostons to make a stay in the colony attractive and 
possibly assisted by the establishment of inexpensive dak-bungalows or rest- 
houses at Suddie, Bartica, Whim and Kaieteur, there is little doubt that ten per 
cent. or more on a capital of $75,000 would be easily forthcoming. I assume, 
however, the indispensable existence of a trained hotel keeper and an efficient 
lady housekeeper. 
INADEQUACY OF THE ROMAN DUTCH LAW. 
An ANACHRONISM, 
For the Commerical Committee no more serious or pressing subject could 
present itself than the consideration of he suitability of our present common law 
for existing requirements and possible developments of trade. The law of a coun- 
try affects it in all its commercial relations at home and abroad. Any difficulty 
or uncertainty in regard to its incidence, especially in regard to the enforcement 
of contracts, hampers commerce in a manner almost inconceivable. Capital 
is a shy bird and as nervous of a law-suit as it is of a revolution. At the cession 
of Demerara, Essequebo and Berbice to Great Britain on 22nd July, 1815, 
the Roman-Dutch system was retained although during the occupation of the 
Nethe lands by France in the great war just concluded it had given place at home 
to codes based upon those of the great Napoleon. Those codes were retained 
after Waterloo and now prevail in the neighbouring Dutch colony of Surinam. 
Most of the countries cf Europe and Louisiana in the United States have adopted 
codes of a similar character. 
