Development and Taxation. 95 



to settle, where that railway was to go and where it was to start from. 

 There were other places which if they had to begin anew they might 

 without much hesitation say were better places for the starting off 

 point of a railway, but they were not to forget what they had locked up 

 in Georgetown and what loss would be caused to the inhabitants here if 

 they started a new capital in some other part of the coast. They must 

 not start a railway without being quite sure where they wanted it to go 

 and beyond that what they could get on the way in which the}' wanted 

 it to go. 



The Eockstoxe-Potaro Survey. 



Last year they had a survey carried out ; it was arranged before he 

 came here, from Rockstone to the Potaro valley. Personally, he was 

 bitterly disappointed with the results of that survey. The estimated 

 cost of a railway built through comparatively easy land was, he did not 

 hesitate to say, absolutely prohibitive. But that was not the worst part 

 of the case. Estimates were fallible ami they might get another engineer 

 to go over the same route and give them a very different estimate, but as 

 far as he could ascertain, that railway was simply running into a cul de 

 sac and could not be prolonged much further than where the survey 

 terminated. They had got to decide where they wanted to start from 

 and where they wanted to go and to be quite sure that the route they 

 had selected was a feasible one and that was his object in going up t > see 

 for himself. He was not an engineer, he was not comp -tent to decide on 

 the feasibility and cost of any such scheme, but the advantage of going to 

 see the place oneself was that one could understand what experts told 

 about the difficulties and the possibilities and, unless he had some personal 

 knowledge of the country, this was a most difficult thing. They had been 

 very fortunate he thought in securing the services of a skilled engineer 

 in tropical railway construction and he had every hope that his visit 

 here might lead to the elaboration of a more definite and concrete 

 scheme for communication with the interior. Whether the scheme that 

 had been stated in detail would ever be carried out depended firstly 

 on whether they could be united here in pressing for its execution 

 and in being willing to make sacrifices in order that it might be carried 

 out, secondly, whether they could induce and convince capitalists that 

 it was a good scheme, and thirdly, whether they could enlist the material 

 support of the Secretary of State for the Colonies in carrying out the 

 scheme. They were fortunate, he thought, in the present Colonial 

 Secretary. A remote ancestor of his was one of the first visitors to 

 Guiana and one of the first to try to carry out a scheme for its develop- 

 ment. He hoped for Mr. Harcourt who now held the proud position 

 of Secretary of State for the Colonies that it would be during his term of 

 office that such a scheme might be decided upon and commenced and 

 carried out. (Applause.) 



