The History of British Guiana: Comprising a General Description of the Colony ; a Narrative of Some of the Principal Events from the Earliest Period of Its Discovery to the Present Time ; Together with an Account of Its Climate, Geology, Staple Products, and Natural History, Volumen2Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Términos y frases comunes
ALLIANCE allied animals antennæ ants aphides appearance banks Barbadoes Bartica beak beautiful Berbice birds bluish body breast British Guiana brown Caladium called cent chiefly church climate coast colonists colony common Court of Policy crab creeks creole cultivation deaths Demerara and Essequebo diseases districts eggs elytra Essequebo established estates Euphorbiacea Fabacea feathers feed feet in length female fever fish frequently Georgetown grass grey guianensis guilders habits head Hoorn houses inches in length inches long Indians inhabitants insects island kind known labour land larvæ latifolia Lauracea legs mandibles mission missionaries mortality natives negroes occasionally ORDER parish peculiar persons Pirara plantain plantations planter plants plumage present quebo rain remarkable Richard Schomburgk schomburgkiana schomburgkii season seen settlement slaves snake Solanacea species specimens spots sugar Surinam surinamensis tail thorax tion town tree tribe troops varieties violacea West Indies whilst wild wings wood yellow
Pasajes populares
Página 332 - A districtf that in 1829 gave employment to 3635 registered slaves, but at the present moment there are not more than 600 laborers at work 'on the few estates still in cultivation, although it is estimated there are upward of 2000 people idling in villages of their own. The roads are in many parts several feet under water and perfect swamps, while in some places the bridges are wanting altogether. In fact the whole district is fast becoming a total wilderness, with the exception of the one or two...
Página 132 - The following circumstance is still more remarkable, and illustrates, in a singular manner, the care of God over his servants. Being one evening attacked with a paroxysm of fever, he resolved to go into his hut and lie down in his hammock. Just, however, as he entered the door, he beheld a serpent descending from the roof upon him. In the scuffle which ensued, the creature bit him in three different places ; and, pursuing him closely, twined itself several times round his head and neck as tightly...
Página 307 - It has twelve teeth in all, the four incisors being remarkably long, and often curved ; it has four toes on the fore feet and three on the hind ones ; the tail is merely rudimentary, barely an inch long, and naked.
Página 331 - If the present state of the county of Demerara affords cause for deep apprehension, your commissioners find that Essequibo has retrograded to a still more alarming extent. In fact, unless a large and speedy supply of labor be obtained to cultivate the deserted fields of this once flourishing district, there is great reason to fear that it will relapse into total abandonment.
Página 11 - Eosne's machinery, costing $40,000 each, had just arrived from France, and were in process of erection ; steam-engines and engineers were coming over daily from America ; new estates were forming ; coffee plantations were being broken up ; and their feeble gangs of old people and children who had hitherto been selected for that light work, were formed into task-gangs and hired out by the month to the new ingenios, then in full drive. " ' It was crop time : the mills went round night and day. On every...
Página 10 - 1 spent," says that intelligent witness, " the beginning of this year in Cuba, with a view of ascertaining the preparations which were being made in that island to meet the opening of our markets. To an Englishman coming up from Grenada and Jamaica, the contrast between the paralysed and decayed aspect of the trade of those colonies, and the spirit anH activity which your measures had infused into that of the Havannab, was most disheartening.
Página 331 - the once famous Arabian coast, so long the boast of the colony, presents now but a mournful picture of departed prosperity. Here were formerly situated some of the finest estates in the country, and a large resident body of proprietors lived in the district, and freely expended their incomes on the spot whence they derived them.
Página 331 - Under present circumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs here,* that the two gentlemen whom your commissioners have examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting " its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized man first found it.
Página 330 - Of Guiana generally they say — ' It would be but a melancholy task to dwell upon the misery and ruin which so alarming a change must have occasioned to the proprietary body; but your commissioners feel themselves called upon to notice the effects which this wholesale abandonment of property has produced upon the colony at large. Where whole districts are fast...
Página 331 - The abandoned plantations on this coast,* which, if capital and labor could be procured, 'might easily be made very productive, are either wholly deserted, or else appropriated by hordes of squatters, who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public roads and bridges; and consequently all communication by land between the Corentyne and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are impassable for horses or carriages, while...