SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 57 



yield so high a rent in new countries, that it might be worth 

 the while of European merchants to advance the capital requi- 

 site for their structure : it would supply in the form of rent, a 

 secure and a liberal interest. The principal material used is 

 North-American lumber, of which the market-value fluctuates 

 much : it is thought that down the river Orinoko this material 

 might be fetched at a cheaper rate. I have known the price 

 of lumber vary from six to twenty pounds per thousand feet; 

 the demand indeed exceeds the quantity imported, for which 

 reason the latter price is nearer the standard. Lime is a vast 

 expence, being brought to us from Europe : surely a little 

 search in the interior would discover lime-stone rocks among 

 the mountains. Dutch terras sells for twenty pounds sterling 

 the hogshead. A house of 40 feet long and 28 wide, to be 

 well finished, with outbuildings, two stories high with an attic, 

 and raised on a brick foundation eight feet high, costs here at 

 a moderate calculation two thousand five hundred pounds, be- 

 sides the lot of land, which if conveniently situated could not 

 be had for less than two hundred pounds. The town was 

 originally laid out in lots of one hundred by two hundred feet, 

 many of which, small as they appear, have been divided into 

 quarter and half lots. These lots are continually increasing in 

 value, but they do not form, as in the North-american cities, 

 habitual objects of stock-jobbing and of mercantile speculation. 

 This art of selling the ground on which a house stands, with- 

 out selling the house, or the right of living in it, has the me- 



