Guiana

GUIANA, in general, the region lying north of the Amazon river, south of the Orinoco river and the Atlantic ocean, and east of the southern arm of the upper Orinoco, and comprising an area of roughly 690,000 sq.m. at the north-eastern corner of the continent of South America. Specifically, the term is now applied to the three small European colonies (combined area, about 175,00o sq.m.) on the northern coast of the continent, British, Dutch and French Guiana, which constitute the only European holdings on the continent of South America. Venezuela, however, calls the easternmost portion of her territory "Guiana," and Brazil's territories along the northern bank of the Amazon and south of the colonies are properly Brazilian Guiana.

The origin of the name Guiana, Gayana or Guayana is the subject of doubt and conjecture. Sir Robert Schomburg has suggested that the name was derived from a small river, a tribu tary of the Orinoco, called the Waini or Guainia. It has also been suggested that the name Guayana was an Indian word signi fying "wild coast," a theory supported by the old Dutch map of Hartsinck, where the region is called "Guiana Caribania of de Wilde Kust." The late Colonel G. E. Church (q.v.) held, how ever, that the name is derived from that of the Indian tribes, found there when it was discovered, a group well known in Brazil, the Guayana tribes, called by earlier writers, Guianas, Goyana, Guay ana, etc.

The three Guiana colonies with which this article will alone treat, are British Guiana, extending from Venezuela, the boundary having been settled by award of the king of Italy in 19o4 (see VENEZUELA) eastward to the left bank of the Corentyn river; Dutch Guiana or Surinam, from the right bank of the Corentyn to the left bank of the Maroni river; French Guiana or Cayenne from the right bank of the Maroni to the left bank of the Oyapock river which forms its boundary with Brazil.

Physical Geography.

The combined area of the three col onies is approximately T 7 5,00o sq.m., and the physical character istics are approximately the same in all. There is an alluvial plain 18 to 5o m. in width, much of it below the level of the sea at high tide, but protected, in nature, by mangrove bush and where there is cultivation, by dikes and canals. This plain rises gradually to a height of T o to 15 f t. above mean sea level. The second area in all the countries is a somewhat higher plateau marked by wide savan nahs, traversed by sand dunes and rising to the hills of the third zone which reach a height of 2,000 ft. or more, covered densely with tropical forests, almost impenetrable by land and lining the shores of the innumerable streams. The second zone is cultivated in part, particularly in Dutch Guiana, where the choice of these inland plains for cultivation at first made the developed portion of the Dutch colony much less agreeable, climatically, than the low land section developed in British Guiana, which is swept by the trade winds from the north-east ten months of the year. The fur ther interior, the third section, is broken by hills and heavily forested mountains and here chiefly are found the tropical woods and gums. The highest point of the upland is on Mount Roraima _(8,635 ft.), on the western boundary of British Guiana, in the Roraima Range. A sandstone formation, interbedded with vol canic rocks, extends from Mount Roraima to the Potaro and Essequibo rivers and thence eastward. An immense number of rivers, with their tributaries, cut the land and make travel almost impossible excepting along these streams. Moreover, the rivers rise and fall with the rains and are broken by rapids and water falls, making travel difficult, uncertain and always slow.

Nearly all of Guiana is a worn-down plateau of ancient schist and gneiss overlain in places, especially in the southern part of British Guiana, by beds of Mesozoic sandstone, into which have been intruded dikes and sheets of diabase and other igneous rocks. The mineral products are diamonds, gold and bauxite. The gold is won from placers, which appear to have been formed from the schist and intrusive rocks.

Climate.—The climate of the Guianas is tropical, but is saved from being oppressive by the trade winds from the north-east, which sweep the coastal regions between October and July, August and September usually being dull and oppressive. The average temperature during the season of the trade winds is about 8o°, while in the interior the dank forests shut off the breezes and make the heat oppressive and the nights, while cool, offer slight relief.

As in all tropical countries, the variation of temperature between day and night is only a little less than throughout the year, records taken in Dutch Guiana showing the following ranges of the mean temperatures: day and night, 77.54°-88.38° F; month, 76.1° 78.62 ° ; year, 70• 5 2 °-90• T 4°. Rainfall varies throughout the year, recorded averages showing 8.58 in. in December, 9•57 in January, I T.26 in May, 10.31 in June, 7.2 in February, 6.8 in March, 2 to 2.5 in September. The annual rainfall is from Too to Tao in. at different points. The dry season is officially in August, September and October, but the dry spell in February and March (called the veranillo or "little summer," a season of planting, in Spanish speaking Caribbean regions) is fairly fixed and is an important annual stage in the agricultural economy of the colonies.

Population.

While the inhabitants of the three colonies vary both as to total numbers and with regard to the proportion and nature of the European classes, the Guianas have a population which is extremely cosmopolitan yet at the same time charac teristic. The inhabitants of the three Guianas total about 500,000. The native Indians represent a small proportion of the total, about 6,000 in British, 2,000 in Dutch and i,5oo in French Guiana. Both the British and Dutch colonies have a large population (relatively) of East Indians, imported beginning about T 85o in large numbers (now about 120,000 in British and 5o,000 in Dutch Guiana) and Chinese and Japanese add to the mixture. The underlying population, however, is the descendants of the negro slaves, those who escaped into the jungles prior to the abolition of slavery in the colonies forming a caste of their own, of which the "bush negroes" or Djukas are a part. This hardy race, in common now with the negroes of the plantations and those of the Caribbean islands, have a religion, a pantheon of gods and a language of their own, recognized throughout the Guianas and the Dutch West Indies. This language is based on a bastard English to which have been added Indian, African, Dutch and Portuguese words.

Flora and Fauna.

The vegetation is most luxuriant and its growth perpetual. Indigenous trees and plants abound in the utmost variety, while many exotics have readily adapted them selves to local conditions. Along the coast is a belt of courida and mangrove—the bark of the latter being used for tanning—form ing a natural barrier to the inroads of the sea, but one which— very unwisely—has been in parts almost ruined to allow of direct drainage. The vast forests afford an almost inexhaustible supply of valuable timbers; greenheart and mora, largely used in ship building and for wharves and dock and lock gates ; silverbally, yielding magnificent planks for all kinds of boats; and cabinet woods, such as cedar and crabwood. There may be seen great trees, struggling for life one with the other, covered with orchids —some of great beauty and value—and draped with falling lianas and vines. Giant palms fringe the riverbanks and break the monotony of the mass of smaller foliage. Many of the trees yield gums, oils and f ebrif uges, the bullet tree being bled extensively for balata, a gum used largely in the manufacture of belting. Valuable varieties of rubber have also been found in several districts. On the coast plantains, bananas and mangoes grow readily and are largely used for food, while several districts are admirably adapted to the growth of limes. Oranges, pineapples, star-apples, granadillas, guavas are among the fruits ; maize, cas sava, yams, eddoes, tannias, sweet potatoes and ochroes are among the vegetables, while innumerable varieties of peppers are grown and used in large quantities by all classes. The avocado grows readily. In the lagoons and trenches many varieties of water-lilies grow wild, the largest being the famous Victoria regia.

Guiana is full of wild animals, birds, insects and reptiles. Among the wild animals are the tapir, manatee, sloth, ant-eater, armadillo, several kinds of deer, monkeys and the puma and jaguar. The last is seen frequently down on the coast, attracted from the forest by the cattle grazing on the front and back pasture lands of the estates. Among the birds may be mentioned the carrion crow (an invaluable scavenger), vicissi and muscovy ducks, snipe, teal, plover, pigeon and the ubiquitous kiskadee or qu'est que dit, a species of shrike—his name derived from his shrill call. These are all found on the coast. In the forest are maam (anamon), maroudi (wild turkey), the beautiful bell-bird with note like a silver gong, great flocks of macaws and parrots, and other birds of plumage of almost indescribable richness and variety. On the coast the trenches and canals are full of alligators, but the great cayman is found only in the rivers of the interior. Among the many varieties of snakes are huge constricting anacondas, deadly bushmasters, labarrias and rattlesnakes. Among other reptiles are the two large lizards, the salumpenta (an active enemy of the barn-door fowl) and the iguana, whose flesh when cooked re sembles chicken. The rivers, streams and trenches abound with fishes, crabs and shrimps, the amount of the latter consumed being enormous, running into tons weekly as the coolies use them in their curries and the blacks in their foo-foo.

Economics and Trade.

The three Guianas, although to gether the smallest administrative units in South America, with the exception of Uruguay and Paraguay, and with an aggregate population less than half that of Paraguay, have a production and commerce that are far from negligible. The total foreign trade of the three is two and a half times that of Paraguay and half as much again as Ecuador's. The per capita trade (about u7) is three times that of Brazil or Colombia, four times that of Venezuela and six times that of Ecuador. British Guiana is the second in the world, or a close third to Brazil's second place, in the productions of diamonds and the world's balata and bauxite are supplied in large measure by these three generally believed secondary colonies.

The interest of the world in the Guianas has from the first been in trade. The traders of the early period exchanged their cargoes for good values in cotton, tobacco and forest gums. The Dutch sought tobacco in their early voyages, but sugar early became the most promising of the products and slaves were brought from Africa to cultivate the cane in the uplands away from the buc caneers of the coasts. In later years, and particularly in British Guiana after the British first took possession in 1796, cotton became an important crop, but the abolition of the slave traffic in 1807 struck a hard blow to both sugar and cotton. Coffee has been and still is a most important crop in all the Guianas and cacao has had its turn, although recently it has suffered from blight much as has the cacao of Ecuador. All of the colonies pro duce balata from wild jungle trees, and this, too, is a product of interest and importance to the highly industrialized countries.

Only a small proportion of the soil of the Guianas is cultivated, 136,000 ac. or 0.3 of 1 %, in British Guiana, being the largest area and the largest proportional cultivation of the three colonies. The plantations have shrunk in number since the end of the slave traffic, and the labour problem is an almost insurmountable barrier to great progress. The territory under cultivation, to a large extent lying along the coast, is subject to overflow at high tide, and the Zeelanders who came to British and Dutch Guiana in early days introduced there a system of dikes, against the sea on the one side, with trenches behind them, and often, too, against inundation from the rivers. The complicated system of canals and drains which are necessary often occupy as much as io% of the area of the plantations or estates, and in addition apparently preclude the use of machinery in the sugar fields, which if it were available, would go far to neutralize the lack of labour in these rich but none too healthy colonies.

History.—The Guiana coast was sighted and noted by Christo pher Columbus (q.v.) in 1498, but he made no landing, although his one landing upon the continent of South America was on the peninsula of Paria, the north-eastern extremity of what is now Venezuela, just north of Venezuelan Guiana. It was also noted by Amerigo Vespucci (q.v.) and Alonzo de Ojeda, in 1499 and in 150o Vicente Yanez de Pinzon, who discovered the Amazon river, skirted these shores closely and probably explored some of the rivers; the River Oyapock, the eastern boundary of French Guiana, was called, before the Dutch, by his name, Rio Pinzon.

The legend of El Dorado, the Gilded King, who was reputed to cover himself with pure gold and to wash it from him in the waters of a sacred lake at "Manoa," was early localized in Guiana, although some of the Spanish adventurers sought his kingdom in the highlands of Colombia. It was this legend, of which he read in the papers of captured ships, that led Sir Walter Raleigh (q.v.) to ascend the Orinoco in 1595 in search of El Dorado, to send Lawrence Keymis again on the same search in 1596, and to go again himself, for the last time, in 1617 on that expedition which ended in tragic disaster. This strange legend was apparently invented by the coastal Indians to account for the quills of gold which to this day come down the Orinoco in the course of many exchanges from far interior sources which no white prospector has even yet uncovered.

The Dutch apparently made their first trade contacts with Guiana in 1598, although they had been skirting the coast of the Caribbean (the Spanish "main" or mainland) since 1580. By 1613 these hardy explorers and traders had three or four settle ments on the coast of Demerara and Essequibo (which with Berbice now form British Guiana), eastward of the mouth of the Orinoco, and by 1616 they had penetrated inland. During the same period the French and also the English were establishing their trading posts in Cayenne (now French Guiana) and in Surinam (Dutch Guiana). The French early took predominance in the more eastern region, along the Rio Oyapock at the begin ning, and there they still remain. By 1652 the English had sub stantial interests in Surinam, and in 1663 Charles II. issued letters patent to Lord Willoughby of Parham and Lawrence Hyde, second son of the earl of Clarendon, granting them the region between the Copenam and Maroni rivers, comprising 120 m. of the coast land from east to west, of what is now Dutch Guiana.

It was this stretch of territory regarded as excellent (as it is) for the growing of sugar cane, that Holland willingly accepted in exchange with England for Nieu Amsterdam, the Dutch colony which lay between the English colonies of New England and Pennsylvania, and which now comprises the city and most of the state of New York. The transfer was made as the result of the treaty of Breda, in 1667. The English were then without posses sions or claims in Guiana. The Dutch West India company, which had been formed in 1621, bad taken over Essequibo, over whose destinies it exercised sovereign rights for 170 years. The Dutch made their first settlement in the Berbice river in 1624, thus founding the third of the three colonies which were later to form present British Guiana. Berbice was independent of the other Dutch colonies,but Dutch settlement continued to strengthen itself throughout all of what is now British and Dutch Guiana. In 1657 colonies of Zeelanders had settled on the Pomeroon, Moruca and Demerra rivers, and in 1674 the New Dutch West India company, succeeding the old which had failed, was formed; in 1682 this new company received Guiana by charter from the States-General.

This was in the heydey of the slave traffic, the plantations were in full swing, worked by blacks from Africa, and the colonies were very prosperous. In 1683, the company sold one-third of its Guiana holdings to the city of Amsterdam, and another third to Cornelis van Aessens, lord of Sommelsdijk. The Chartered of Surinam was formed by the three owners of Guiana, the New Dutch East India company holding in addition the trade in slaves, the most lucrative of all the commerce, but allowing the Char tered society to import slaves on their own account, however, on payment of a fine to the company.

Sommelsdijk had agreed to take the post of governor of the colony at his own expense. He travelled thither and lived and died there. He brought the Indians under control, disciplined the ruffian soldiery, and built the important canal which bears his name. He set up a substantial provincial government, including a high court of justice, and contributed much to agriculture, amongst other things introducing the cultivation of the cocoanut palm. His notable five-year reign was ended in June 17, 1688, when he was murdered in a mutiny of his soldiers. Sommelsdijk's widow offered his third portion of the Guianas for sale to William II. of England, but it was finally purchased for 700,000 florins, by the city of Amsterdam. In 1732, Berbice was given a constitu tion and status as an independent colony, and in 1773 Demerara, which had been administered as a part of Essequibo, was also constituted as an independent colony. In 1781, British privateers took possession of the three colonies which constitute present-day British Guiana, and Lord Rodney placed them under the rule of the Governor of Barbados. In 1782 they were recaptured, this time by the French, who were then the allies of the Dutch, and in 1783 they passed again to the possession of Holland, by the terms of the peace settlement. In 1784 Essequibo and Demerara were again united under one governor and the town of Stabroek (now Georgetown) was fixed as the capital.

In 1796 the British again captured Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice and held them until the peace of Amiens in 1802, when they were returned to Holland only to be taken again by the British in 1803, to be held until formally ceded in 1814-15, in the settlement following the close of the Napoleonic Wars.

(W. THo.)