Report of Society's Meetings. 1^9 



events given us reason to hope this to be the case, but I feel 

 certain that recent and unusual occurrences have tended, 

 and will tend, to advance us as a community, to make our 

 existence, our whereabouts and our possibilities, more 

 widely known, to attra6l to our shores both capital and 

 labour, and to lead us into that place amongst the Colo- 

 nies of Britain to which our territory and its producing 

 power entitle us, and which is due to the courage of 

 yourselves and of those who have fought the battle of 

 Guiana's life in the years that are gone. And then as to 

 our progress ; well, a man does not make much headway 

 when he is swimming up a stream and stemming a cur- 

 rent, which those who know, admit to be strongly set 

 against him. If he holds his own and struggles into still 

 water it is not human, nor do I believe it to be divine, to 

 expe6l him to instantly dash off towards higher points of 

 the river. The probabilities are that if he does so, he will 

 find himself in a current against which he is powerless to 

 fight, and the result must be inevitable collapse. And you 

 have held your own, in a long and arduous struggle, 

 and that without outside aid. Employment has been 

 found, and is still being found, for those of our people who 

 will work on the great fruit belts and in the interior 

 as well. We are for the moment, I believe, in still water, 

 but we are panting, and just existing after the fight. 

 We scarcely realise how much strength, how much 

 capital has been put out, expended in reaching that 

 position ; and we are not sure to which river bank 

 we can crawl. We have been I know — I am speaking 

 of the Colony as a community — regarded as being 

 lethargic, slow, tropical lotus-eaters, eggs-in-one-basket 

 men. I do not hold with that view. Pioneers, here 



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