278 TIMEHRI. 
There is no colonial school. This want, while it exists, 
reflets the greatest disgrace on the country, since the 
education of the free people of the colony is the surest 
pledge of their industry and good condu@, and gives them 
the greatest superiority over the slave population, with 
which they are otherwise confounded. This is meant 
of the lower orders and free people of colour, who 
are unable to procure European education. A colonial 
school, on the Lancastrian plan, would rescue a most im- 
portant portion of the community frem ignorance at the 
expense of one half the income of an useless sinecure office. 
There is no Botanical Garden, though many of the 
most valuable medicinal plants are commonly trod under 
foot, or felled with every portion of the forest ; there is 
no colonial or circulating Library, though books are 
too expensive for general reading and though many 
think themselves obliged to take an extra glass of san- 
garee or grog, for want of better means of passing an 
hour or two of the most sultry part of the day. In short 
there are no Literary or even Mercantile Associations of 
any kind, but there are cock clubs and whist clubs, patro- 
nized by gentlemen whose countenance would raise and 
support institutions of the greatest public utility and 
respectability. 
The public press, amidst all this, is infinitely superior 
to that of any other colony within the tropics, and proves 
at once, that if society in Demerara is not in a high 
state of cultivation, it is by an affeétation of barbarity, 
and a degrading disregard of its latent advantages, which 
refleéts shame upon its members, beyond those of any 
other colony under the British Crown. 
The extraordinary adaptation of the colony in favor 
