Gold in British Guiana. 289 
As bearing upon the labour question which is so inti- 
mately allied with the welfare of the colony, a slight 
digression may be pardonable. Destiny it has been said 
shapes our ends rough-hew them how we will — a great 
truth ; yet there is even more profound significance in the 
aphorism that character is fate, while again character is 
influenced by heredity. 
The Demerara Medical Association recently interested 
itself in the excessive infant mortality prevailing among 
the creole population of the colony, but no learned or 
lengthy disquisitions were necessary on such a subject, 
because by any one thoroughly acquainted with the 
habits of the class in question, the whole subject could be 
briefly and comprehensively summed up as originating 
in the cause which led to the adoption of the Salique 
law, as popularly defined in SHAKESPEARE'S * King Henry 
Fifth.' Slavery has been abolished for more than fifty 
years, but the peculiar usages of a former condition of 
society are only too slowly dying out, and the black 
man possessing little originality but being above every 
thing mimetic, will always be found to be a reflex more or 
less in manners and morals of those to whom he has 
been accustomed by traditional usage to look up. 
A well founded objection to the new Mining Laws is the 
omission of the former regulation which gave exclusive 
right of possession to the makers of new paths or tracks 
through the forest for three months after completion. 
As the law stands now, a prospector is powerless to 
prevent his footsteps being dogged by unscrupulous 
parties, who avail themselves of his paths and other 
conveniences without contributing a cent towards the 
expense of making them, and in the event of his striking 
