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Show 254 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. cotton was formerly the chief article produced. To each of these respectively the following passages, qnoted in order, apply:- "'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 laud between the Corentyue and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are impassable for horses or carriages, while for foot passengers they are extremely dangerous. The number of villages in this deserted region must be upward of 2500, and as the counh·y abounds with fish aud game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence. In fact, the Corcntyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.' "' Canje Creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee estates, and on its west hank eight estates, of which two were in sugar and six in coffee, * The Corcntyne. .ARGUMENT FROM TIIE PUBLIC GOOD. 255 making a total of eighteen plantations. The coffee cultivation has long since been enti•·cly abandoned, and of the sugar estates bnt eight still now remain. They are suffering severely for want of labor, and being supported principally by AfHcan and Coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave and claim their return passages to India, a great part of the district will become abandoned.' "' U ndcr present cncumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs here,* that the two gentlemen whom your commissioners have examined with respect to this distl~ct, both concur in predicting "its slow hut sure approximation to the condition in which civilized man first found it."' "'A districtt that in 1829 gave employment to 3635 registered slaves, but at the present moment there arc uot 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 iu many parts several feet under * En.st bank of the Berbice River. • West bank of the Bcrbice River. |