" Timehri" and Development. 179 



ledoe will still talk of building a railway to the Konawaruk, the Mazaruni 

 or some other river to open up gold or diamond country, but it must be 

 remembered that that way madness lies. Many deposits have been 

 worked out and while we have no doubt that new deposits will be found 

 as the country opens up, the deflection of the route of any railway be- 

 cause of any fresh reports should require most careful consideration. 



" Gold and diamonds are generally capable of looking after themselves 

 without any railway at all. By themselves they hardly justify a railway 

 unless they give indications of having the permanency of a settled in- 

 dustry as at Kalgoorlie and Klondyke, rich alluvial finds are certain to 

 be made but the whole geological formation of this part of the con- 

 tinent renders it advisable to discount enthusiasm as to our mineral 

 resources. 



• ; To what then do we look for remunerative traffic for a railway within 

 the colony ? Firstly, we rely on the certainty that we can raise hundreds 

 of thousands of cattle, apart from tobacco, cotton and other produce, on 

 the vast Kupununi and other southern savannahs. The northern savan- 

 nahs around Kupununi are of scanty herbage and their soil, owing to their 

 vast antiquity, is approximating to the old floor of the continent w r hich 

 the top of the Roraima plateau more closely represents. Millions of 

 years of tropical rains have washed down the nutritive soil of these dis- 

 tricts into the river valleys. The southern savannahs are of lower eleva- 

 tions, probably not exceeding four or five hundred feet above sea level, 

 and are of a more fertile character capable of agricultural as well as 



pastoral developments." 



" Thirdly, we rely on our inexhaustible forest resources in timber 

 and balata. These are only at the very beginning of their development. 

 The doubts recently expressed by a newcomer arose from inadequate 

 acquaintance with the subject, the source of most of the gloomy 

 dogmatism and of all the cynical pessimism under which the colony 

 groans. 



" Fourthly, we rely on the traffic which would come from the 

 carriage of the present annual contingent of balata-bleeders and their 

 supplies, nearly four thousand strong, even allowing for no increase, to 

 and from Siparuni, Rupununi and New River districts, a number suffi- 

 cient on any reasonable relation of future railway fares to present 

 transport costs, to pay the amount of a guarantee from this source alone. 

 " Fifthly, we rely on the prospect of ultimately obtaining a considerable 

 through traffic from the adjoining Brazilian savannahs, which are of vast 

 extent and contain very large herds of cattle, from Manaos, t'he rapidly 

 growing capital of Amazonas, and (if Georgetown rises to the height of 

 its legitimate ambition so as to become, as Mr. Nunan prophesies, a great 

 South American port) from Southern Brazil and from Asuncion, Buenos 

 Ayres, Monte Video and Valparaiso. 



''The fact that the State of Amazonas has twice granted a conces- 

 sion for such a line (i.e. from Manaos to the frontier) disposes of the 

 question of local hostility. The Federal sanction to cross the reserved 



