Railways ; Ten Years After. 35 
consideration. Gold and and diamonds are generally capable of iooking 
after themselves without any railway at all. By themselves they hardly 
justify a railway unless they give clear indications of having the permanency 
of a settled industry as at Kalgoolrie or Klondyke. Rich alluvial finds 
are certain to be made but the whole geological formation of this 
part of the continent renders it advisable to discount enthusiasm as to 
our mineral resources. 
To what then do we look for remunerative traffic for a railway within 
the colony? Firstly, we rely on the certamty that we can raise 
hundreds of thousands of cattle apart from tobacco, cotton and other 
produce, on the vast Rupununi and other southern savannahs. The 
northern savannahs around Roraima are of scanty herbage and thin 
soil owing to their vast antiquity as approximating to the old floor 
of the continent which the top of the Roraima plateau more closely 
represents. Mulhons of years of tropical rains have washed down the nutritive 
soil in those districts into the river valleys. The southern savannahs are of 
lower elevation, probably, not exceeding four or five hundred feet above 
sea level, and ofa more fertile character capable of agricultural as well 
as pastoral development. Yet even here we must be careful not to ex aggerate 
the possibilities. Oursavannans have not the lush-grass and deep soil of 
the North American prairies or the Argentine pampas. It is only where 
the patches of forests have protected and enriched that any great fertility 
is found. Nevertheless the district is capable of enormous development, by 
Europeans. as well as by Africans or East Indians. The climate is 
excellent and fairly cool, with a constant breeze. Secondly, we rely on 
the certainty that we can create a market for those products and that 
the market will be a growing one. Thirdly, we rely on our inexhaustible forest 
resources in timber Pal balata. These are only at the very beginning of 
their development. The doubts recently expressed by a new-comer as to 
the future of the balata industry arose from inadequate acquaintance with 
the subject, the source of most of the gloomy dogmatism and of all the 
cynical pessimism under which the colony groans. Fourthly, we rely on the 
traffic which would come from the carriage of the present annual contingent 
of balata-bleeders and their supplies, nearly four thousand strong, even 
allowing for no increase, to and from the Siparuni, Rupununi and New River 
districts, a number sufficient on any reasonable relation of future railway 
fares to present transport cost, to pay the amount of a guarantee from this 
source alone. Half our entire export of balata comes from those districts now 
and they are mostly virgin tracts. Fifthly, we rely on the prospect of ulti- 
mately obtaning a considerable through traffic from the adjoining Brazilian 
savannahs, which are of vast extent and contain very large herds of cattle, 
from Manaos, the rapidly growing capital of Amazonas, and (if Georgetown 
rises to the height of its legitimate ambitions so as to become, as Mr. Nunan 
prophesies, a great South. American port) from Southern Brazil and from 
Asuncion, Buenos Aires, Monte Video and Valparaiso. Perhaps too much 
stress has been laid upon the advantages of a through route and I merely refer 
to the possibility in passing. Brazil wants the best market for its produce 
