Our Villages and Country Parts. 257 
buildinys did not aspire to architectural beauty or embellishment. Even 
the glass window was not very much in evidence. But they were large 
and roomy and suggested no overcrowding of the family. Not unfre- 
quently they were of two-storeys. They have given place to a smaller 
house with smaller rooms (not fewer occupants though), but presenting a 
greater display of the carpenters and painters’ decorative art. 
In whatever way they may be laid out, however, too many of our 
villages need to be ru ralised. This may seem contradictory but it is true. 
Especially i is this the case on the East Coast of Demerara, where the 
idea seems to be emphasised that every little village aspires to be a 
miniature Georgetown, both in its natural appearance and in the style 
and life of its inhabitants. 
The life and character of our villages and country parts have 
suttered also because of the absence of a resident gentry. There are no 
country residences (or so few as hardly to affect the statement) with 
gardens and lawns suggestive of quiet and ease. No ‘‘ Squire ” moves 
up and down the country side, taking an interest in the families and 
homes of his neighbourhood ; and spending his leisure among his well- 
kept garden beds and inspecting cattle and sheep and poultry that vie 
with those of his neighbour at the Agricultural Shows. There is, of 
course, the Parson and the Doctor ; and where there are estates in the 
neighbourhood the Manager of the estate. But, with few exceptions, 
the first named two are residents in “miniature Georgetown,” while the 
situation of the estates prevents the last named from exercising any 
influence on village life. Thus shut up to themselves, the villagers have 
little or no opportunity of feeling the touch of refined country life. 
I fear that the Government itself cannot be held entirely free from 
blame in this matter of huddling the people together in the villages. 
Where it has undertaken to settle communities the conditions set up have 
been the reverse of conducive to the development of rural life. Indeed in 
some cases they are positively insanitary. 
Many villages are witnessing a striking change in the nationality of 
their inhabitants. The descendants of the early negro settlers are giving 
place to the East Indian.’ Neglected farms have ceased to yield produce 
and the owners go away in search of a living elsewhere. In many cases 
neglected drainage is the cause of the neglected farm; in others, false 
ideas of labour lead the younger generations away from their farms; in 
others the excitement and romance of the goldfields or the prospects of 
the balata bush draw the muscles of the manhood of the village from the 
shovel and the fork. The de-ruralising spirit, too, creates dissatisfaction 
in the breasts of the imitators of the city gent. To see the ruins of a 
large board-and-shingle house in which lived the now past generation 
- unlettered, it may be, but thrifty and industrious, and beside it a tottering 
collection of uprights, wattles, mud plaster and coconut leaves supported 
by props of Courida or other easily reached wood, the shelter now of the 
