Barbados and Guyana are the two regions of the Caribbean area with which the Austins have been most closely connected for almost 300 years. No two places could be more unlike.

Barbados is a low-lying coral island, approximately 13 degrees north of the equator and only 166 square miles in area. The most easterly of the West Indies, it is buffeted by Atlantic rollers on the rocky windward, east coast and swept by trade winds, for nowhere is it more than 1,100 ft. above sea level. On the leeward, west side there are good beaches and calm pellucid water for sea bathing. Barbados has a healthy climate and is free of malaria, although in the 18th and 19th centuries there were occasional dreadful epidemics of cholera and yellow fever.

When the first settlers arrived in 1627 Barbados was uninhabited and thickly forested. In a short time after settlement the forest cover was almost entirely cleared for the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, which in turn gave place to sugar cane, which until the middle of the 20th century was the staple crop and main support of the population.

Early in its history Barbados was divided into 11 parishes, each with its own Church, the vestry of which, as in Stuart days in England, was responsible for the parish doctor, the upkeep of the roads and the care of the poor and aged. This system persisted until recently.

Barbados enjoyed the right of representative government from 1939 and never passed out of British rule until it was granted independence in 1966. It is now a member of the British Commonwealth, its parliamentary and judicial systems based on those in England.

Guyana, on the north coast of South American, is a region as large as England. When several Austins emigrated there from Barbados in the late 18th century, it was settled only along the coast, the hinterland being sparsely inhabited by the native American Indians. The coastal strip, where the majority of the population lives, is low and swampy and fringed by mangroves. The sea is muddy with silt from the Orinoco River in neighbouring Venezuela. Malaria and yellow fever were endemic, and prevalent until the 1940's, exacting a heavy toll on life. Here was grown sugar cane, mainstay of the economic life of the colony. It is now partly replaced by rice. Bauxite mining in the hinterland also makes an important contribution to the economy.

Sir Walter Raleigh visited the area in 1595 in his search for El Dorado. The first European settlers were Dutch. They left a legacy of many place names, a canal system and a sea wall. As a result of the Napoleonic wars the Dutch gave way to the British who called their newly-acquired colony British Guiana and its capital Georgetown after their King.

The colony was divided into three counties, each named after the river flowing through it. From east to west these are: Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, the last of which is by far the largest but Demerara the most important economically for the capital Georgetown stands at the mouth of its river.

Until recently it was the custom to refer to the whole country as 'Demerara' or, in earlier times 'Demerary' with a short 'a'. Hence 'Demerara sugar' which may just as well have been made in either Essequibo or Berbice.

This colony, too, was granted independence in 1966 and is presently known as the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.