36 Timehri. 
by the quickest route. It is no more likely to prohibit trade or railway com- 
munication with us than with any of the nine other South American coun- 
tries on which it borders. I need only say that the completion of a through 
route to Buenos Aires would bring Georgetown within four days of that 
capital and within five of the capital of Chili. Georgetown is the natural 
terminus of the inevitable South-American Central Railway of the future, 
but our own apathy would destroy the effect of any natural advantages. 
There will be a long and uphill struggle to secure the realization of this ideal, 
even when the colony has grasped the geographical and economical position 
and girded itself, government, legislature and people, white, black, Hast 
Indian and coloured for an achievement which would make it the Capetown 
or Montreal of the South American Continent. We must not sit down like 
Horace’s rustic beside the stream but must see that we get across. So far 
we have camped beside the ruts on the road before ever reaching the stream. 
Meanwhile the foreshore must not be neglected. Exghty thousand pounds 
would build a metre gauge line from New Amsterdam to Skeldon and if 
it is true that the present shocking road costs a dollar a rod to repair that 
sum would more than pay a subsidy for a decent line. 
The amount mentioned by those engaged in the debate in 1902 for the cost 
of railways of the gauges referred to is astonishingly low. Mr. Dorman esti- 
mated £1,500 a mile for a 3ft. 6 inch railway. Mr. La Bastide placed it at 
£2,500 and mentioned £1,800 fora 2ft. 6 inch line. Neither quotes any authority 
or gives any figures for this low estimate. We can only say that it appears 
altogether too optimistic. The Uganda metre gauge cost about £8,000 a 
mile. The Straits Settlement lines and some of the West Coast lines are 
said to have run to £10,000. While these schemes were carried through under 
very unhealthy and often novel tropical conditions, entirely with imported 
labour and under the heroic conditions of Government expenditure, the possi- 
bility of extravagant outlay and the cost of importing a large part at least 
of the labour must always be borne in mind in making such calculations. 
The Hon. George Garnett, in his address at the Town Hall at the general 
election, mentioned £3,000 a mile as his estimate. I am inclined to fix 
£4,500 as closer to the real sum. I do so while realising that there are 
virtually no engineering difficulties except the inevitable bridging of the 
Essequebo. We have moreover none of the unhealthy conditions of other 
tropical countries. The death-rate of our balatw industry is not even 
one per cent. I believe that a railway tapping the savannahs and 
aiming to link up with a line from Manaos would barely exceed 300 miles in 
length and could be built of a metre gauge for 1} millions sterling, the lengths 
mentioned in the debate being excessive. I also believe that even if the 
entire amount of any guarantee ever likely to be demanded by business men 
or given by a business Court were called upon from the colony it would 
be defrayed under an amortization scheme by a maximum increase on our 
present burdens of taxation of five per cent. There would be no need to fund 
the debt until it became due, (if it ever became due at all) by annual deficits, 
and payment of any guarantee for fifteen or twenty years could be spread 
over fifty or sixty. There is no reason why posterity should not pay a 
