French Guiana

“ British Guiana, extending from Venezuela to the left bank of the Corentyn river; Dutch Guiana 675 (or Surinam) , from the Corentyn to the Maroni river; French Guiana (or Cayenne) , from the Maroni to the Oyapock river;2 Brazilian (formerly Portuguese) Guiana, extending from the southern boundaries of French, Dutch, British and part of Venezuelan Guiana, to the Amazon and the Negro. Of these divisions the first and last are now included in Venezuela and Brazil respectively; British, Dutch and French Guiana are described in order below, and are alone considered here. ”

“ Like a New York garbage boat carrying refuse to the sea, French convict ships dump the offal of humanity on these shores. The Pilgrims came to America with religious convictions, somewhat different from the convictions criminal and otherwise those Frenchmen held who settled Canada, Caledonia and Cayenne. Climate here is one long season of sorrow. Guiana is an outlaw country, a jumping-off place of the world, a back-door to perdition; a dominion of dolour, despair, mud and blood, where Death is the jailer who frees. ”

“ The three Guianas, British, French, and Dutch, represent one of the least attractive parts of South America in almost every way.
British Guiana has 300,000 inhabitants of whom one-third are Negroes, another third Orientals, mostly Hindu, and the remainder is largely made up of crosses between these two elements, of a few thousand native Indians, and of a handful of Whites.
Dutch Guiana has a population well under a hundred thousand, largely Orientals imported to furnish coolie labor and including Hindus, Javanese, and Chinese. There are many Negroes and a couple of thousand Whites. ”

“ It is a magnificent country, with grand rivers, cascades and the most wonderful mountains and scenery, which it is difficult to surpass in any part of South America. And here the traveller and the naturalist may revel in the works of Nature.
Guiana was the first part of the New World to be explored by adventurers other than the Spaniard and the Portuguese, and to this day it stands out as foreign to the rest of Spanish [56] America. The English, the French, the Dutch fought between themselves for its territory and its colonizing and trading stations. ”

“ English is spoken by all business men.
The Royal Dutch West Indies Mail direct from New York has two sailings a month for this colony. It is also accessible from Trinidad, Curaçao, and Barbados.
French Guiana has 49,000 square miles of territory, with a population of about 13,500, some 8,500 of which are convicts, as this is a penal settlement. Capt. Dreyfus was confined here on Devil’s Island. This is the least developed and less promising of these colonies. There is little agriculture and less cattle raising. Whatever trade there is is controlled by France. ”

“ Besides the French space center at Kourou, fishing and forestry are the most important economic activities. Forest and woodland cover 90% of the country. The large reserves of tropical hardwoods, not fully exploited, support an expanding sawmill industry that provides sawn logs for export. Cultivation of crops is limited to the coastal area, where the population is largely concentrated; rice and manioc are the major crops. French Guiana is heavily dependent on imports of food and energy. Unemployment is a serious problem, particularly among younger workers. ”

“ The Spanish, Portugueze, and Dutch, are the only nations which possess settlements in this part of Terra Firma, excepting the small colony of Cayenne, belonging to the French, which is situated between the river Marawina and Cape Orange. The dominions in Guiana, subject to Spain, are situated on the banks of the Oronoque, and those of Portugal extend along the shores of the river Amazon. The Dutch settlements, which spread along the coasts of the Atlantic ocean, and reach from Cape Nassau to the river Marawina, are Essequibo, Demerary, Berbice, and Surinam2 ”

“ Cayenne is the seat of the government of French Guiana, and was formerly a penal settlement for political offenders. Food as well as clothing is exorbitantly dear, the only cheap articles of consumption being bread and French wines. The temperature of Cayenne is between 76° and 88° Fahr. throughout the year; but the heat is tempered by easterly winds. Between December and March a north wind blows, unfavourable to weak constitutions. Yellow and other fevers often attack the 589 inhabitants of the town, but the climate, though moist, is as a whole healthy. (See Guiana.) ”

“ A landscape in Hindu-inhabited British Guiana
Indentured East Indians enjoying a Saturday half-holiday before one of their barrack villages
Prisoners at work on a leaking dam in Ciudad Bolívar on the Orinoco
The trackless llanos of Venezuela
609Indians of many tribes, negroes wild and tame, Hindus, Madrassees, Javanese, “taki-taki,” French déportés, tropical Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Englishmen, Chinese, Portuguese, and chaotic mixtures of all of these—one could spend a life-time in the three Guianas. Many a Frenchman has in the smallest of them. The Pilgrim Fathers first planned to come to Guiana ”

“ And the shining glory of this conquest will eclipse all those so far-extended beams of the Spanish nation. There is no country which yieldeth more pleasure to the inhabitants, either for those common delights of hunting, hawking, fishing, fowling, and the rest, than Guiana doth; it hath so many plains, clear rivers, and abundance of pheasants, partridges, quails, rails, cranes, herons, and all other fowl; deer of all sorts, porks, hares, lions, tigers, leopards, and divers other sorts of beasts, either for chase or food. ”

“ THE GUIANAS On the northeastern shoulder of the continent lies a huge block of territory as large as France and Spain combined. It is in reality an island, since it is bounded on the north and east by the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Amazon River, and on the northwest and west by the continuous waterway formed by the Orinoco, the Casiquiare and the Negro rivers, the last named an affluent of the Amazon. Like the north Andean republics, the Guiana country is made up of mountains, highlands, and low-lying plains, and lies wholly in the tropics ”

“ This river of Orenoque is navigable for ships little less than 1,000 miles, and for lesser vessels near 2,000. By it, as aforesaid, Peru, Nuevo Reyno and Popayan may be invaded: it also leadeth to the great empire of Inga, and to the provinces of Amapaia and Anebas, which abound in gold. His branches of Casnero, Manta, Caura descend from the middle land and valley which lieth between the easter province of Peru and Guiana; and it falls into the sea between Maranon and Trinidad in two degrees and a half. ”

“ It is governed by the same laws, and the emperor and people observe the same religion, and the same form and policies in government as were used in Peru, not differing in any part. And I have been assured by such of the Spaniards as have seen Manoa, the imperial city of Guiana, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, that for the greatness, for the riches, and for the excellent seat, it far exceedeth any of the world, at least of so much of the world as is known to the Spanish nation. It is founded upon a lake of salt water of 200 leagues long, like unto Mare Caspium. ”

“ British Guiana, as first seen from the shoal-water near the Demerara lightship, is a mournful and monotonous picture. Mud flats, fringed with courida and mangrove, stretch endlessly along the shore. Never a hill is to be seen. ”

“ It can therefore hardly be regained, if any strength be formerly set down, but in one or two places, and but two or three crumsters (Dutch, Kromsteven or Kromster, a vessel with a bent prow) or galleys built and furnished upon the river within. The West Indies have many ports, watering places, and landings; and nearer than 300 miles to Guiana, no man can harbour a ship, except he know one only place, which is not learned in haste, and which I will undertake there is not any one of my companies that knoweth, whosoever hearkened most after it. ”

“ Apart from the savages, the general impression of Guiana remaining with me is that of a great hot-house, in which everything was as improbably huge as in one of Gustave Dore's illustrations—where I came across apricots as big as my head, and caimans ten yards long. As regards the inhabitants, I recollect Creoles, enervated by the climate, who were as kindly as they were intelligent; pale-faced women, languorous and seductive, with soft low murmuring voices; and lastly, just as I passed through, a negro drum-major of the National Guard, with a great big busby and a plume that was a dream! ”

“ It hath divers beasts which the Indies have not; the Spaniards confessed that they found grains of gold in some of the rivers; but they having a purpose to enter Guiana, the magazine of all rich metals, cared not to spend time in the search thereof any further. This island is called by the people thereof Cairi, and in it are divers nations. Those about Parico are called Jajo, those at Punta de Carao are of the Arwacas (Arawaks) and between Carao and Curiapan they are called Salvajos. ”

“ We descried afar off three other canoas as far as we could discern them, after whom we hastened with our barge and wherries, but two of them passed out of sight, and the third entered up the great river, on the right hand to the westward, and there stayed out of sight, thinking that we meant to take the way eastward towards the province of Carapana; for that way the Spaniards keep, not daring to go upwards to Guiana, the people in those parts being all their enemies, and those in the canoas thought us to have been those Spaniards that were fled from Trinidad, and escaped killing. ”

“ A land the size of England, Scotland, and Wales combined; a population equal to that of Hertfordshire, and a cultivated area less than one-fifth the size of Kent; a land for the greater part unknown and unsurveyed, whose only roads extend along the seaboard and for a few miles up the banks of its main rivers—such is British Guiana, ever since the close of the Napoleonic Wars a possession of the British Crown, the only one in South America, and rich in unexplored possibilities. ”

“ Usually, in going to the Guianas, the route is through the Bahama group, by way of the Crooked Island Channel, thence through the Windward Passage, between Cuba and Haiti and across the Caribbean sea by the east end of Jamaica. But Mr. Sargent wished to go further to the eastward so as to pass among the Leeward Islands, perhaps landing there to await the return of the bark from the coast. This plan could be followed without detriment, as a little delay in reaching Guiana was more than likely to result in an improved market for the cargo. ”

“ Now that it hath pleased God to send us safe to our ships, it is time to leave Guiana to the sun, whom they worship, and steer away towards the north. I will, therefore, in a few words finish the discovery thereof. Of the several nations which we found upon this discovery I will once again make repetition, and how they are affected. At our first entrance into Amana, which is one of the outlets of Orenoque, we left on the right hand of us in the bottom of the bay, lying directly against Trinidad, a nation of inhuman Cannibals, which inhabit the rivers of Guanipa and Berbeese. ”

“ And my old pilot, a man of great travel, brother to the cacique Toparimaca, told me that those were called the plains of the Sayma, and that the same level reached to Cumana and Caracas, in the West Indies, which are a hundred and twenty leagues to the north, and that there inhabited four principal nations. The first were the Sayma, the next Assawai, the third and greatest the Wikiri, by whom Pedro Hernandez de Serpa, before mentioned, was overthrown as he passed with 300 horse from Cumana towards Orenoque in his enterprise of Guiana. ”

“ Little, however, does the average colonist or the chance visitor to British Guiana see of the wonder and beauty of South America. The forest builds an impenetrable barrier, keeping him a close prisoner upon seaside mud flats, which are in the main a dreary waste of uncultivated land. Lack of labour renders it impossible for more than a small fraction even of the coastal fringe to be made to yield its increase. ”

“ Of these people those that dwell upon the branches of Orenoque, called Capuri, and Macureo, are for the most part carpenters of canoas; for they make the most and fairest canoas; and sell them into Guiana for gold and into Trinidad for tabacco, in the excessive taking whereof they exceed all nations. And notwithstanding the moistness of the air in which they live, the hardness of their diet, and the great labours they suffer to hunt, fish, and fowl for their living, in all my life, either in the Indies or in Europe, did I never behold a more goodly or better-favoured people or a more manly. ”

“ Those that are past their younger years make all their bread and drink, and work their cotton-beds, and do all else of service and labour; for the men do nothing but hunt, fish, play, and drink, when they are out of the wars.
I will enter no further into discourse of their manners, laws, and customs. And because I have not myself seen the cities of Inga I cannot avow on my credit what I have heard, although it be very likely that the emperor Inga hath built and erected as magnificent palaces in Guiana as his ancestors did in Peru ”

“ A wide belt of low land borders the ocean side of Guiana on the north-east of the continent, where white men dwell, in houses elevated on piles of timber, among sugar-estates and cotton-plantations, tall windmills, and numerous canals crowded with shipping, which would present a thoroughly Dutch scene were it not for the stately cocoa-nut and cabbage-palms rising amid them, the dark-skinned labourers, the blue sky, and burning heat. The province is, however, for the most part a region of rugged mountains, dense forests, open savannahs, broad streams, cataracts, waterfalls, and rapids ”