72 Timehri. 
turn-over for capital invested ; in the old days when a sugar property, owing 
to the extraordinary prices that prevailed proved a veritable gold mine, it was 
natural that all thoughts, all energies were directed to the growing of this crop. 
When prices became normal, or perhaps we should say abnormally low, we 
found ourselves with a knowledge of how to grow the sugar cane and convert 
it into sugar—and nothing else. 
Further, to those engaged in the pursuit of cultivating an annual crop, the 
idea of having to wait for so lengthy a period for a return on capital invested 
struck dismay at once, and, with the exception of one or two stout-hearted 
planters, it was voted an impossibility to attempt to strike out upon, not be it 
understood, new lines, but old paths, long grown cut of all recognition since 
the days the aauntless Dutchmen shook the dust of the colony fom their feet. 
For it must be remembered that in ‘the good old days,” cotton, coffee, cacao 
and fruit were all assiduously and skilfully cultivated by the Dutch planter. 
Berbice coffee was noted for its superior fluvour in the world’s market, and to- 
day one has but to visit some of our rivers to see the remains of old cacao 
plantations, very probably over a century old, a cacao tree of which, here and 
there, has become a veritable forest tree, holding its own proudly in that struggle 
tor lite which is so typical a scene of the Guiana forests. Not merely do some 
of them just hold their own against their native enemies, but they even rival 
some of their neighbours in size and importance. A fitting memorial indeed 
to the Dutch planters, who even if the several tombstones erected to their 
memory, which lie scattered here and there on the upper reaches of many of our 
rivers, had long crumbled into dust, need never tear that the work of their 
hands when alive and vigorous has been effaced. The fingers or decay may 
have swept away many of these tombs but the beauty of the trees they planted 
still lingers with us. Further still, though these trees are growing as forest 
trees they have not forgotten their duts and still they prednuce peds plen- 
tifully, which drop to the ground and eventually release the seeds, 
but strain as it may, any seedling that may have germinatea stands 
no chance at all in the terrible fight which literally takes place 
for ¢@xistence in our forests, and so they perish miserably. In 1886 
Mr. Jenman mentions that Mr. Perkins, then in the Department of 
Mines of this colony, sent him a pod which he had gathered from one 
of these old and forest-grown cacao trees in the Essequibo river, ‘‘ whose 
spread of branches was a hundred feet in diameter.” So it came to pass 
that as the growing of cane was understood, enormous capital sunk in the 
industry, a crop could be reaped and returns counted upon every year, and 
like all grasses it was easily propagated and established—the line of least 
resistance (natural enoygh in the tropics) was followed and has been followed 
since, with the inevitable result that we forget all about the fact that in “ ye 
olden days ”’ we grew and exported in large quantities crops other than sugar. 
It was after all very natural too that even if we could revive the growing of such- 
like crops as coffee and cacao, that fears as to the labour supply should pre- 
dominate. But yet we have in some way been able to supply labour for the 
establishment of a subsidiary industry in the shape of rice, and still we find 
that the Balata Industry has at least found the labour necessary to collect 
