338 TiMEHRI. 



people engaged in the business and the better the chances 

 for their making a living at it, and paying their way 

 honourably. This is just where about 80 0/0 of the 

 trouble you are deliberating on really lies ; it is far too 

 easy for any man, whether he is competent either finan- 

 cially, expertly, or educationally, to take out a grant. 

 At present the trade is in the hands of men who use 

 other people's money to carry it on, consequently the 

 market is glutted and heavy loss ensues to those who have 

 advanced the incompetent grant-holder ; this, coupled 

 with the abandoning of sugar estates and general de- 

 pression in trade all over the colony, (greatly due to 

 gold), is I think responsible for the present state of the 

 wood-cutting industry. Eighty per cent of the wood 

 cut on the Demerara river is used up in the colony and 

 the islands. In Essequebo this is quite the reverse, but 

 trade there has had to meet bad markets in England and 

 the Continent, bnt I have never heard much crying out 

 from the Essequebo people in the business. Essequebo, I 

 may say carries on all the export trade, the greenheart 

 logs in that locality being squared for, and naturally 

 suited to the requirements of the export trade. My 

 firm ara about the only export shippers of greenheart 

 from the Demerara River and we find that in order to be 

 able to sell our timber in England, we have to select and 

 resquare our logs after buying them from grant-holders ; 

 only about 80 0/0 of the ordinary Demerara river logs 

 can be thus prepared by us for profitable export. 



We don't run our own grants because it would be 

 injudicious to do so as long as there are other people 

 quite willing to do so and sell us the timber at a loss to 

 themselves We always try to make our undertakings 



