ii. Timehri. 



of the Amazon Valley. Whether one can be done without the other is 

 still a subject of controversy. Some are satisfied that a development rail- 

 way should end in the bush and that we should rely upon internal possi- 

 bilities alone. Many shrink from the very idea of Georgetown (improved 

 to the rank of a first-class port under Baron Siccama's projects or under 

 some newer scheme) becoming the Northern terminus of one of the 

 numerous lines now reaching up through the Matto Grosso to Manaos or 

 being surveyed from that gang-lion through Northern Amazonas. 



This magazine has only one railway policy and that is the 

 ascertainment of all the data. The Royal Agricultural and Com- 

 mercial Society of which it is {he organ is not likely to repudi- 

 ate any legitimate ambition of the colony which is based upon 

 such an investigation. But the friend who told Hon. C. F. Wieting in 

 London a year or two ago that what was wanted in the colony was a 

 little more imagination has laid his finger upon the great intellectual 

 deficiency which tends to paralyse our population as pioneers. Without 

 that saving gift Cecil Rhodes would never have planned the railway and 

 telegraph which have given to the British Empire Africa South of Lake 

 Tangayika, nor would Strathcona and Hays with their associates have 

 covered Canada with a network of railways and with hundreds of 

 thousands of homes. To increase our population we must consider 

 whether we cannot afford to offer the necessary inducements to settlers 

 which other countries have thriven by advertising. Schemes of 

 colonization which have partially succeeded in this country in the past or 

 which are succeeding to-day in tropical and sub-tropical Brazil may not 

 be beyond our reach. If East Indian indentured immigration continues 

 and whether it continues or not the present system might perhaps be 

 supplemented by the introduction of whole families. A better class of 

 cultivator and a labourer less amenable to outbursts of furious excitement 

 might thus be secured. The incidence of cost could be so arranged as to 

 impose upon the sugar planter no more of the burden than his fair share. 

 It is easy to undervalue the services of the latter to this colony in the 

 past and it is only when a sugar estate goes out of cultivation that one 

 thinks of estimating the disastrous loss to the community which such an 

 event entails. By the collapse of the New Colonial Company 

 we are threatened with the loss of four. There are many indica- 

 tions that the proprietors are beginning to realize the value of 

 the personal equation in their relations with the colony and the 

 colonists should not fail to take advantage of the change. W T hen 

 therefore the managing director of a great and exclusively plant- 

 ing firm, like Mr. C. Sandbach Parker, identifies himself so far 

 with the general fortunes of the country as to formulate a scheme 

 of development, which he has done in his recent address at one of the 

 Royal Colonial Institute City luncheons, it should receive most careful 

 study and attention from every citizen. Adequate discussion has not been 

 forthcoming hitherto. Prominence has therefore been given to it in 

 the introductory address to the debate on the development of the colony. 

 On the question of expense Hon. C. F. Wieting at the same meeting 



