The Crown Lands of British Guiana. 339 



pay and as a rule succeed, or leave it alone for some one 

 else to undertake and to lose the money on ; this is how 

 we have conducted business in this line for 80 years, 

 and have always been able to pay 100 cents to the dollar. 

 No one grant-holder on the Demerara river could load 

 you a ship. 



Four or five men in Essequebo produce more than 

 half of the timber taken from Crown Lands in the colony 

 annually and any one of these men could load you a 

 vessel with timber off his grant in 35 days. These are 

 the men who do the most work in the trade and have 

 least to say on the royalty matter. From the table of 

 statistics in your report I cannot tell how many grants 

 were in the Demerara river or what they produced in any- 

 thing, neither is it possible to say whether the grants 

 were used for greenheart, shingles, charcoal or any- 

 thing else, but I think I shall be safe in making 

 a few assertions about them, the accuracy of which 

 can easily be proved by the Crown Surveyor. In 

 1893-4 there were about 22 grants for cutting green- 

 heart in existence, and about 20 grantholders^ and I 

 think that the average output per grantholder for the 

 year would be about (certainly not more) 6,500 c. feet. 

 Some of the grantholders did not, I am sure, ship indivi- 

 dually more than 3,000 feet. I think possibly about 15,000 

 feet would be the largest individual shipment for the 

 whole year. Licenced grantholders do not cut Mora, 

 Wallaba and other woods, into the shape of timber for 

 mercantile purposes : these kind of woods are all cut by 

 jobbers off private lands, either their own or ob- 

 tained from some one else. This kind of timber is 

 sold at about a quarter of what its real value ought to be. 



