Our Provision Supply. 267 



to land owners however small. Let the land be peopled 

 with farmers on separate allotments, not by villagers. 

 There are two points gained. By this less capital is 

 sunk, more kept floating, and more produce is furnished 

 for the market — by the farmer living on his land. A 

 villager is subje6l to the disadvantages of living two or 

 three miles (some even ten miles) away from his cultiva- 

 tion -either negle6ling his family in the village, or his 

 crops on his provision land. In certain conditions of the 

 soil rain falls, and before he arrives in his field the benefit 

 and opportunity is gone ; corn is ready to gather, but 

 before he gets there the rain is down. Again the Govern- 

 ment landlord might assist by subsidizing a steam barge 

 system for the speedy transport ot produce. The fore- 

 going is an indire6t yet a permanent mode of giving 

 prosperity toward the profitable working of our various 

 industries. I must leave the great benefits and advan- 

 tages of rotating sugar cane with provisions on sugar 

 estate lands to the experienced young planter, only calling 

 attention to the success of the system of converting la- 

 bourers into tenant cultivators and assisting them by the 

 steam plough, adopted by the controllers of the Daira 

 Sanieh in Egypt, which converted estates suffering from 

 large losses, in five years into a source of great profit (see 

 Daily Chronicle 28th September, 1892), a system, I con- 

 sider, capable of adoption on large estates in this Colony 

 of British Guiana. The following is the extraft : - 



SUGAR CULTIVATION IN EGYPT. 



An interesting note by Mr. Hamilton Lang, C.M.G., controller of 

 the Daira Sanieh, upon the results of the year 1891 shows how under 

 skilful management, this administration, which during the previous tive 

 years had been a drain upon the Egyptian treasury to an extent varying 

 from ;^75,ooo to ;^265,ooo annually, has been transformed into a source 



