Our Cable Communications. 59 
now at work between Georgetown and Trinidad — though 
it is always advisable to duplicate each route, for however 
smartly our cable ships can now repair these lines, under 
the sea, time is always involved, and telegraphic isolation 
is a thing to be avoided as far as possible. British 
Guiana has had its little experience of this silence to the 
outer world, as witness the recent reduction of subsidy 
to the existing Telegraph Company, by the Court of 
Policy. That there is dissatisfaction with the present 
cable communication with Great Britain was shewn by 
the influential Conference that met at Barbados in the 
year 1881, to which British Guiana sent its representa- 
tive in the person of the Hon. W. F. Haynes Smith. 
The outcome of that gathering was, not only to express 
its disapproval of things as they were (and now are) ; 
but to recommend a scheme for connecting the West 
Indian Islands and Colonies with Nova Scotia, via Ber- 
muda. Now Demerara is not specially interested in 
opening up telegraphic communication with Bermuda, 
and hence that scheme would not be of much benefit to 
the colony over the present one. The cost was to be 
the good round sum of one million pounds sterling, and 
it was proposed that the Home Government should 
contribute the sum of three hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds thereto, and the Colonies — including Jamaica, 
British Guiana, Trinidad, Barbados, and the Leeward 
Islands — with Bermuda, the remaining six hundred and 
fifty thousand pounds. The Imperial Government, how- 
ever, after referring the matter to the Postmaster General , 
did not approve of the scheme, and the Engineer in Chief 
of the British Postal Telegraphs — than whom I do not 
know a more competent authority — pointed out the 
H 2 
