Читать книгу Through British Guiana to the summit of Roraima онлайн

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The Hopetown Settlement, which was once a flourishing village engaged chiefly in charcoal-burning, now consists only of a few hovels, thatched with troolie palm, and of some ill-kept rice-fields, the one redeeming feature being a nice wooden church. When we went in, there were flowers on the altar, and a pair of Cantonese vases, which must wonder how they got there. An aged Chinese catechist conducted the service, and a priest visits the place at rare intervals.

The people, I remember, welcomed us gladly, and were delighted to hear a few words in Cantonese spoken by my husband. The whole village accompanied us as we walked along the dam, which serves it both as a main road and as a safeguard against inundation. We visited the “cultivation,” but there was nothing satisfactory to be seen. A few miserable plantains, a few poor cacao-bushes, untended and uncared for, was all we could observe. A paddy-field, to which we were led, was merely a rough clearing in the bush, the trees having been cut down, but the stumps left standing, and no attempt was made to irrigate or drain. There had been no manuring, nor, indeed, was there any sign of tillage. The sight was a sad one to eyes accustomed to the smiling, carefully tended rice-fields of China, with their neatly dammed divisions for conserving water, fields from which the laborious Cantonese, by unceasing toil, reap their annual reward of two rice harvests and one crop of “dry cultivation.” The Hopetown settlers told us that they could only raise a rice crop from a given area once in five years; but with care the land could, of course, be made productive. The settlement possessed no animals; not even the pig, so universal in China, was to be seen. In fact, the people evidently lacked energy to make an effort to improve their condition. Most young Chinese, desirous of better things, have doubtless discovered that by going to Georgetown they can with thrift, industry, and the business instincts of their race, find more promising openings for making a livelihood, in trade or otherwise, than Hopetown offers. Hence only the aged, the feeble, or the indolent, remain in the settlement; and Hopetown no longer answers to its name, for little hope of its future is now left.