Railwars ; Ten Years After. 33 
and it only remains to ascertain whether the terminus should be the city 
itself or the Vreed-en-Hoop suburb on the opposite bank. Vreed-en-Hoop 
has the disadvantage of being on a lee-shore, but its adoption would enable 
the West Coast Demerara Railway to be utilized and would open up a dis- 
trict of considerable and ascertained resources. 
Although some of the remarks of the writers and speakers of 1902 
are of purely historical interest (for instance the adoption of the 
Lartigue system could no longer be seriously advocated and no other mono- 
rail scheme has found sufficient favour up to date), the whole discussion con- 
tains many features of permanent value and no apology is made for reproduc- 
ing it from the last number of Timehri, which was to appear for nine years. 
It shows that we have gone patiently round and round the subject 
ever since and arrived where we began ten years ago, with diminished 
hopes and without resident experts capable of forming or expressing 
as independent an opinion as those who took part in the debate in 
1902. Not the least melancholy feature of the colony’s stagnation 
has been the steady deterioration of its personnel, a phenomenon of 
which nobody will venture to deny the existence. The history of the 
railway question in British Guiana during the past three or four years 
has been characterised by a masterly inactivity, combined with a simulation 
of movement by which nobody is deceived and in which nobody is 
interested. In 1909 the Combined Court rejected a proposal of His late Fxcel- 
lency Sir Frederic Hodgson for a vote of $20,000 for a Government railway 
survey. The members, who were not convinced that any definite railway policy 
had been formed, held that the sum demanded was utteily inadequate for any 
serious undertaking and, wnder the circumstances, were of opinion that the 
money would be simply thrown away. A few formed the harsh judgment that 
it would serve no purpose except to enable all concerned to announce that 
they had “ done something.’ Indeed the statement that a line into the 
interior was actually in course of construction was circulated for some time 
and the colony congratulated by the Morning Post on its enterprise. The 
error was subsequently explained but much harm had been done. In the 
following year the proposal was repeated and with great reluctance the 
sum asked for was now voted. Nobody was any better satisfied with 
the prospects than in the preceding year, but the argument that a 
rejection of the proposal would be interpreted at the Colonial Office 
us showing an utter indifference to railway development altogether, secured 
the necessary majority. In 1912 an unexpended sum of $15,000 has been 
re-voted. In the interval a railway surveyor of some Indian experience has 
been secured at a moderate cost by the Crown Agents after not more 
than eighteen months delay and has been at work for some time in 
surveying a route from the Demerara-Essequibo railway line (which joins 
Wismar on the Demerara and Rockstone on the Essequibo) through 
the country between the two rivers to the point where the Potaro flows 
into the Essequibo. The country is as well-known as any part of the foreshore. 
The distance is about sixty miles, and no engineering difficulties of any kind 
have been known to exist. None, we believe, have been discovered during the 
