Up the Puruni River. 335 
by this small attempt at agriculture ; and I feel sure my 
health would have been better, had I had access to such 
a supply of good fresh vegetable food. 
It would, I think, pay well to plant small patches of 
cleared forest land, for the placer holders and their 
labourers would be only too glad to get the produce as 
a change from the eternal rice and flour, and as a means 
of increasing their powers of resisting fever and malaria. 
Of the future of the gold industry here but little can 
be safely asserted, since the country has been but very 
imperfectly prospected — in reality a mere scratching, so to 
speak, in a small piece of ground when the extent of 
British Guiana is considered. The knowledge of the 
existence of gold in paying quantities in this colony, made 
itself manifest at a time when the attention of the 
investing public in England was attt acted to Australia, 
New Zealand and the Transvaal. Of these three, the 
first two had already acquired a name and fame for their 
golden treasures, while the Transvaal, by judicious puffing, 
easily attracted the money of gold speculators and be- 
came a good ground for company mongers. 
The climates also of all these three countries possess great 
advantages over that of Demerara, and besides this they 
have never enjoyed the dubious privilege of being maligned 
wholesale. The white man, it is true, cannot, as a rule, 
hope to work with impunity in water, under the conditions 
unavoidable when washing for gold, but such work may 
well be left to the black labourers who scarcely seem to 
surfer, whilst he may with advantage, devote himself 
otherwise to superintending and directing operations 
generally. 
The country here is a peculiarly difficult one to 
