1>H jtiraehri. 



For a light railway from Potaro, opposite a point where the main 

 line runs very near the East bank of the Essequibo to the Upper Mazaruni, 

 which Sir Walter Egerton considers strongly advisable, a 20-inch 

 Decauville line is, he thinks, sufficient meantime and the cost he puts at 

 £1,000 per mile, a total of £50,000. As this line would run through 

 country only very partially known, the estimate of cost has not perhaps 

 the same value as that for the main line. 



The million and a quarter estimated in the despatch may be taken 

 (|uite definitely as very nearly the sum required to carry a line to the 

 Kupununi to a point short by 50 miles of the boundary terminus, and to 

 provide feeders, light railways and roads, and an allocation for settling 

 immigrants on lands in the interior. The mists which gave such scope 

 for talk about insuperable obstacles, costly difficulties, bottomless swamps 

 and impenetrable jungle have been, if not dispelled, at least driven iuto 

 the stupid recesses of minds inaccessible to new ideas. It is no longer a 

 badge of social respectability to advertise a cynical contempt for projects 

 of development and the Colony's power of carrying them out. Water 

 Street and the more considerable local representatives of the sugar 

 planters have joined the prophets, the few who remain invincibly bucolic 

 in their parochialism of outlook are entirely negligible so far as influence 

 on the future of the Colony goes. The chorus of the enlightened sings 

 wiih Haydn. 



" Now vanish before the holy beams 

 The gloomy dismal shades of night. 

 Now chaos ends, and order fair prevails 

 Affrighted fly hell's spirit black in throngs 

 Down they sink in the deep abyss of endless night.' r 



Ways and Means. 



The question of ways and means is not the least important of those 

 which remain. 



The earlier projectors of railway schemes contemplated evidently 

 ( lovernment loans for the limited propositions then in view. In 1902 

 however circumstances had altered and Mr. Luke Hill considered the only 

 possible way of accomplishing the opening up of the interior is by means 

 of liberal concessions in land and mining rights to outside capitalists. 

 Mr. Dorman considered on the other hand that " It is quite certain that 

 outside capitalists will not be tempted by land concessions and mining 

 rights only, however liberal they may be and that nothing but a cash 

 guarantee, which the colony ia unable to afford, will secure the millions 

 necessary for such a gigantic scheme. "' 



That Mr. Dorman was right appeared in the offers subsequently made 

 by promoters who visited the colony. The most substantial of these, that 

 made by Colonel Link, a man of comprehensive business perception, 

 backed by some of the great names in railway and general finance, asked 

 for a land grant totalling over 2,000 sq. miles {l\ million acres) in addi- 



