324 TlMEHRI. 
the owners have not seen their way to continue the 
working of the estate ; still this does not prove that 
other estates are necessarily in a moribund condition. 
The history of gold all the world over is the same, the 
first effe6t has always been to paralyze existing indus- 
tries. When the rush set in in Australia, merchants left 
their desks and sailors abandoned their ships, but the 
eventual result was a great stimulus to every enterprise 
in the colony. The same rule held good in California, 
and it will hold good here. Gold has taken away much 
labour from the cane-fields that can be but ill spared, 
but when it attracts labourers from surrounding countries 
it will re-pay with interest everything that it is now bor- 
rowing from the agricultural industry. It is absurd to 
suppose that this country will ever cease to depend, 
mainly, upon agriculture in some form or other, and if 
sugar be ( tottering to its fall' what is to take its place ? 
The outlook for sugar is not as dreary as is commonly 
supposed ; there is every reason to suppose that the con- 
sumption of the world will go on increasing as it has 
done in the past, and there are good reasons for believing 
that the increase in the production of beet sugar will not 
keep pace with this increase in consumption. Where is 
the further supply of sugar to come from ? Obviously 
from the tropical cane-field. And what country is better 
enabled to grow sugar than the coast lands of British 
Guiana. 
It is true that the number of sugar estates becomes 
yearly fewer and fewer, but the export of sugar does not 
decrease, it fluctuates, as is natural, considering what an 
important part the weather plays in the matter, but it is 
a fluctuation with a tendency to rise, just like the sue- 
