GUINEA (gin'i), the name formerly given a large section of the W. coast of Africa, from the Senegal, in about 14° N. lat., to Cape Negro, in 16° S. lat. It was divided into two parts, Upper and Lower Guinea, the dividing line being taken variously as the equator, the Ga boon, and the Ogoway. The states and political territories comprised within this long stretch of coast-line, commenc ing from the N., were as follows: the French colony of Senegal, the English settlements on the Gambia, the Portu guese territory of Bissao or Bissajos, the coastal fringe before Futa-Jallon, Sierra Leone, the free negro republic of Liberia, the Ivory and Gold Coasts, the Slave Coast, the Niger delta, and the Kame runs in Upper Guinea; and in Lower Guinea, the Spanish settlements on Co risco Bay, Gaboon, the Kongo Free State, and the Portuguese territories of Am briz, Angola, and Benguela. The coast
line is throughout tolerably uniform, and everywhere flat, with numerous shallow lagoons separated from the ocean by narrow spits of sand, lying parallel to the coast. Proceeding inland, the coun try rises to the central plateau of the continent by a series of broad terrace like steps, down which the longer rivers are generally precipitated in cataracts and rapids. The Genoese claim to have been the first European navigators to reach, in 1291, the casts of Guinea.
They were, however, first regularly visited by merchant adventurers from Rouen and Dieppe from 1364 onward, but not colonized till the end of the 15th century, when the Portuguese, under the enterprising Prince Henry the Naviga tor, sent out, in 1481, the first colonies to this part of the world.