CHAPTER II. 



British Guiana. 



HIS section of the Guianas, witli its still undetermined political 

 frontiers, is by far the most important, both for population and 

 commercial activity. It is usually taken for granted, without fur- 

 ther inquiry, that this remarkable superiority of British Guiana as 

 a field of enterprise is primarily due to the administrative genius 

 of the English. But if this relative prosperity may at least in part be attributed 

 to the non-intervention of the home government in local afiairs, to the comparatively 

 limited staff of office-holders, and to the continuity of the policy pursued towards 

 the colony, it is none the less true that British Guiana also enjoys considerable 

 natural as well as political advantages. 



In the first place, it possesses the largest river basin, while its chief plantations 

 are more accessible to shipping both from Europe and the West Indies. Hence 

 these plantations had already been profitably worked by the Dutch long before 

 the English conquest. The cultivable zone stretches along the coast, with a good 

 seaward outfall for drainage purposes. Consequently, numerous towns and villages 

 have been founded and estates laid out in close proximity between the Atlantic 

 and the stagnant waters of the interior. But in Dutch Guiana and in the greater 

 part of the French colony the marshy zone lies on the coast, masked only by a 

 mangrove screen from the ocean. 



It was easy to begin agricultural operations on the open coastlands of the 

 British territory, and, thanks to the proximity of the West Indies, the first planters, 

 for the most part Scotchmen, were able without difficulty to procure all the labour 

 they needed. Since 1802, when Great Britain occupied this northern part of 

 Guiana, which was officially ceded to her in 1814, the rulers of the land have 

 largely profited by the neighbourhood of the West Indian colonies to favour the 

 immigration of the negroes of the overpeopled island of Barbadoes, as well as of 

 the large island of Trinidad. Later, when the emancipation deprived the great 

 landowners of the slaves who worked their estates, the Indian Government threw 

 open its coolie market for the benefit of the wealthy sugar-growers of Demerara. 



All these circumstances secured for British Guiana a decided advantage over 

 the conterminous colonies, and as a natural result this very advantage brought 



