A Railway and Hinterland Development. 163 



The Hinterland Railway. 



Now the case for a railway from our coast-line to the southern 

 savannahs may be put thus — there is obviously only time this evening to 

 touch on the matter quite shortly : — - 



The cultivated and populated portion of British Guiana is but a 

 narrow strip along the coast : almost all of it is swamp, much of it below 

 the level of the sea : and to render it habitable costly sea defence works 

 are required and in addition empoldering, drainage and irrigation systems, 

 costly to construct and expensive to maintain. Thus all cultivation re- 

 quires considerable capital expenditure. It is only by combination in 

 village communities that our farmers can cultivate, and most of these 

 communities had toe immense advantage of taking over their properties 

 from ruined sugar planters at a small cost, ready equipped with all 

 these requisites. Now this coast strip would never have been cultivated 

 at all but for its amazing fertility. It has long been known as the best 

 land in the world for sugar, and within recent years it has been proved 

 to be equally suitable for rice. It will be a bad day for the colony when 

 the cultivation of the coast land is given up. I do not think we 

 need fear this, but rather that we may expect extension in cultiva- 

 tion if only long-talked-of drainage and irrigation schemes are carried 

 out. But it is not every one who is attracted by the prospect of 

 a life on our flat coast land. In most countries there are plains, hills and 

 and valleys that can be cultivated without any such exceptional expendi- 

 ture, and to attract immigration from other countries we must be able 

 to offer new-comers fertile land for settlement similar to their own. 

 At present the population is hemmed in on the coast ; behind the 

 cultivations are swamps, turned for long distances into shallow reservoirs ; 

 then a wide belt of undulating sandhills, generally forest-covered made 

 familar to us by the Wismar-Rockstone railway ; near where the sand 

 begins the rapids on the rivers are also met with, and all further progress 

 into the interior becomes slow, wearisome and costly ; otherwise, along 

 the rivers and small streams many fertile areas are met with. This wide 

 sandy belt is exactly like the sand dunes of some ancient seashore, but 

 Professor Harrison with his microscope will assure you it is not a sea- 

 shore, but is merely due to the disintegration of rocks in situ. 



In amongst the sandhills, but generally to the south of them, is 

 highly fertile and mineralised country with gold and diamonds in un- 

 usual quantity. During the financial year ending to-night the produc- 

 tion of gold totalled 82,706 ozs. and 93,752 diamonds totalling 11,119 

 carats. Since 1890 gold to over 2,300,000 ozs. has been produced, 

 almost entirely from the primitive surface workings of our " pork- 

 knockers'' ! Our mining industry has given a new and not very pretty 

 word to the language. 



These workings are still reached and all supplies for the miners have 

 to be sent by toilsome journeys up rivers cursed with dangerous rapids, 

 cataracts and falls, the miners and their supplies taking weeks to reach 

 their destinations. 



