A Railway and Hinterland' Development. 165 



should include provision for considerable immigration expenditure to 

 make good the labour supply on the coast depleted owing to local 

 labourers working on the line. But the dislocation of labour due to rail- 

 way construction should surely not be greater than at the time of the 

 first gold discoveries. 



The land will grow all tropical products ; it is growing already in 

 the savannah country cotton, excellent tobacco, ground provisions, and 

 fruit trees. There is no reasonable doubt that with a railway to the 

 savannahs, not taking into account branch light lines from Potaro linking 

 i p the Mazuruni, Cuyuni, Barama and Barima, much more fertile agri- 

 cultural land would be made accessible than many generations could 

 exploit. The great Schomburgk made a calculation that to populate 

 British Guiana as thickly populated as the Barbados of his day, and 

 doubtless the population of that little island has increased since, would 

 require 55,000,000 persons. Why all this discussion as to whether the 

 savannahs are tit for cultivation ? We know that parts of them are 

 fertile far more than is likely to be required for agricultural purposes if a 

 railway is built. And we know the forest land, except in the sandy belt, 

 is very fertile. If you doubt, go and see the Indian clearings on the 

 river banks and inland from them. Ask any of the thousands of miners 

 whether, when they do find time to cultivate, the returns are not good. 



It must be remembered there are two distinct climates in this colony 

 — the coastal with two wet seasons, and the inlaad, commencing about 

 150 miles inland, with only one. Many tropical products will grow well 

 in either, some only in one. 



More than half the total production of balata in the colony comes 

 from the Rupununi district. In 1913 the production was 759,000 lbs. out 

 of a total of 1,316,000 lbs. Much of the district is not exploited because 

 of transport difficulties. With a railway the cost of production would be 

 so much reduced as even at present prices to make the industry very 

 profitable. I have often expressed the opinion that the savannahs 

 should be devoted to cattle-raising for a considerable time : but there is 

 another industry and that one in which very large fortunes have been 

 and are being made for which the savannahs are, in my opinion, most 

 suitable, and that is ostrich farming. Within the memory of those now 

 living that industry in South Africa has grown from nothing to be 

 worth two millions sterling a year. It is being found equally profitable 

 in Australia. It flourishes in Egypt and the Soudan and the ostrich 

 is native in Nigeria. I kept one myself for some time in good 

 health in Government House grounds in Lagos, the capital of that 

 colony, feeding it partly on old tennis balls, and the grass plains 

 of Northern Nigeria are similar to our savannahs. I wrote to the 

 Governor-General with a view to obtaining some ostriches from that 

 country, as the climate and general conditions there are more nearly 

 similar to those here, and it is interesting to find that Sir Frederick 

 Lugard intends to make ostrich farming a Government monopoly in 



