Opening up the Country. 33 



and rolling stock for the sum of £140,000, ten years 

 later our late Attorney-General in concert with an 

 American contractor, Mr. MACKAY, nearly succeeded in 

 spending £300,000 for an entirely new line from Mahaica 

 to New Amsterdam, which would have created a void 

 in our colonial revenue for many years to come. 



It would be considerably more profitable to run a tram- 

 way or an inland canal behind the West Coast of 

 Demerara, where the increasing disasters on the stone 

 dams to sea punts and the busy aspect of the highway, 

 suggest the likelihood of dividends to the private in- 

 vestor, who reflects that here all the estates' buildings 

 are nearly in a line instead of being at vastly different 

 distances from the sea, as on the East Coast. 



But if we object; to these costly land-lines, that is no 

 reason why by water much may not be done to improve 

 our means of intercourse with outlying parts and the 

 metropolis. 



The Settlement steamer might easily call twice a 

 week at a stelling at Parica ; a boat of similar size 

 calling twice a week in the Barima, Moruca, and Waini 

 Rivers might render more prosperous and populated that 

 already thriving district ; and a canal of no great length, 

 with locks between the Hayama and Macouria creeks, 

 would bring Massaruni and its stone quarries within easy 

 reach of town by river punts. 



For the great objects of sea-defence, water-supply, and 

 drainage, much has been done by Government assistance 

 and much by private enterprise, no single man having 

 contributed so much patient and modest labour in this 

 direction as the late Mr. William Russell, whose 

 efforts in the Lamaha, Boerasirie, East Coast Demerara 



E 



