32 Timehri. 
bined Court when the question of ways and means arises. In this colony, as 
elsewhere, there is an aversion to some forms of Government enterprise 
involving the expenditure of money, and it may be admitted that the hand- 
ling of the railway question by the Jamaica Government in the past has 
been fantas‘ic and ruinously expensive and that the railway management of 
the Trinidad Government has beea inadequate if not unprogressive. On the 
other hand the virtual monopoly of the Crown Agents, the pet bogey of the 
colony, of railway construction instituted by Government, appears in some 
marvellous way to have been recently relaxed. The construction of the 
extension of the Uganda railway has been placed in the hands of private con- 
tractors (Messrs. Pauling). Rightly or wrongly there is a strong conviction that 
construction by the Crown Agents themselves has involved excessive expendi- 
ture and unnecessary delay. Perhaps a higher standard of engineering and 
other requirements has been aimed at than would satisfy private railway 
companies striving for the same result. The necessity for strict economy is 
likely in the nature of things to be less strongly insisted on in the case of 
Imperial expenditure than in the case of the moneys of private shareholders. 
At all events it is with some satisfaction that one learns that Government con- 
struction need no longer involve direct Crown Agent control of the operations 
which may be let out to private contractors on the most economical and 
efficient basis obtainable under the requisite conditions. 
The question of gauge for a trunk route would appear to be now definitely 
settled by the insistence on the metre gauge in the Brazilian railways, 
with which the lines of this colony must ultimately connect. Further 
South various gauges are still in operation. A good many of the Argen- 
tine lines are 3ft. 6 inches, but any trunk line northwards is certain to 
be a metre gauge. The Cape to Cairo and Nyasaland railways are 8 ft. 
6 inches with their branches and feeders. The Uganda railway, on the 
other hand, is a metre gauge and that standard would appear to be 
a compromise which would have met the views of Messrs. Dorman and La 
Bastide who were in favour of the construction of light railways which can be 
widened with comparative ease and cheapness (as was shown in the alteration 
of the Beira line from 2ft. to 3ft. 6 inches) should the traffic render it desirable. 
The standard gauge of 4 feet 84 inches, such as Mr. Luke Hill and Colonel Link 
both advocated, may now be regarded as out of the question for any railway 
into the interior. The difference in cost, however, would nowadays be nothing 
like as great as was estimated in 1902. It may be taken also that the start- 
ing point must be one that will not encounter the political opposition of 
Georgetown, which would suffice to wreck any proposal, This renders 
Bartica impossible even if the enormous expense of the construction of a 
second emporium of trade and of removing the various sunken rocks which 
endanger the Bartica anchorage did not already do so. The geographical 
advantages of Bartica are only apparent and vanish on closer examination. 
The rivers which converge there are great in length and bulk, but are 
navigable only for small boats ; the harbour is dangerous and the bar of the 
Essequibo impossible to regulate, consisting as it does of shifting banks. 
Georgetown on the other hand has a bar capable of immense improvement 
