" Timehri" and Development. 191 



single fact that the cost of my recent two months' expedition to the 

 interior amounted, for transport alone, to $4,000 or £800 for five 

 Europeans, and this total did not include the cost of their messing but 

 only the food for the boats' crews, &c. The party did not travel in 

 nearly as great comfort as the Colonial Governments in West Africa and 

 their European officers consider essential for the preservation of health. 



It may perhaps be looking rather far into the future, but at any rate 

 I am not the first to put forward the view that if a line from George- 

 town to Manaos is constructed, this route may, and probably will, form a 

 section of a great North and South Transcontinental Main South 

 American line similar to the Cape to Cairo African line, connecting 

 Buenos Ayres in the Argentine with Georgetown. The direction is due 

 north and south, both termini lying close to the 58th degree of west 

 longitude, and Manaos lying almost directly between them. 



The lines in the Argentine Eepublic and Brazil are being rapidly 

 linked up, and the completion of such a main line is probably not as 

 difficult of realisation, with similar advertisement, as that from the Cape 

 to Cairo. 



Geographically, Georgetown seems to hold the field as the terminus of 

 a North to South Transcontinental South American line, because 

 nowhere is the watershed between the Amazon and the northern coast of 

 South America so low. The watershed on the Rupununi savannah is 

 only 400 feet above sea level. Georgetown is also the best and safest 

 harbour between the Orinoco and the Amazon, the Demerara entrance 

 being actually as deep and a safer bar than the Orinoco, and west of the 

 Rupununi watershed there is no outlet to the northern coast without 

 passing through most mountainous and difficult country. 



Its construction at the present time would probably start a combined 

 effort on the part of the great and prosperous South American States to 

 give the Continent through railway communication between the far 

 South in the Argentine, over 40 degrees of latitude to Georgetown, and 

 make the capital of the colony the metropolis of the Northern Coast of 

 the Continent. 



<OST OF CONSTRUCTION. 



vi t>i i., I Georgetown to Wismar including cost of ter- 



V minus,— at Georgetown £300,000 



1,000,000 



T> / linn u.~>, il l v_j k.~\j i i;unm 11 



Report. I tit- * t <-i 



) \\ l.smar to Ireng month 



£1,300,000 



Less if taken only as far as Yupukari, 50 miles 



at £3,500 ... 175,000 



£'1,125,000 



Allocation to improve facilities for whe 



transport across savannah ... ... ... 25,000 



Carried i'<>r>r<inl ... £1,150,000 



