Guyana

“ The name Guyana is said to mean flooded-country, and includes all that region between the Amazon and the Orinoco, so that there are not simply three Guianas, belonging to European powers, but five, including those of Brazil and Venezuela.
It is estimated that the immense State of Amazonas, largest in America, has only 150,000 inhabitants, of whom half are wild Indians. It was not until late that afternoon that we came upon a hut on stilts, made entirely of woven grass, yet with the exotic touch of a sheet-iron door in one end, reached only by a crude ladder of two rungs. ”

“ Guyana achieved independence from the UK in 1966 and became a republic in 1970. In 1989 Guyana launched an Economic Recovery Program, which marked a dramatic reversal from a state-controlled, socialist economy towards a more open, free market system. Results through the first decade have proven encouraging. ”

“ These show the pains I have taken with the government of Louis Philippe, King of France, in order to open a new line of commercial communication between Cayenne and French Guyana and the republics of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
But I have always thought that our America, by the intelligence of its people, was to make a great social and commercial change; and I have always thought that this change would operate by means of its gigantic and navigable rivers. This conception is corroborated by the announcement of the discovery of the gold regions of Carabaya. ”

“ Having examined the applications of Guyana for admission to the United Nations,
Recommends to the General Assembly that Guyana be admitted to membership in the United Nations.
This work is excerpted from an official document of the United Nations. The policy of this organisation is to keep most of its documents in the public domain in order to disseminate "as widely as possible the ideas (contained) in the United Nations Publications". ”

“ 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! ”

“ There is the history of British Guiana in a nutshell! A ceaseless struggle to people from overseas an empty land! The Portuguese came from Madeira. The blacks are descended from negro slaves brought here from Africa by the Dutch West India Company. No black slaves were ever brought to Demerara under British rule; for the slave trade was abolished by Parliament in 1807, and this Colony did not become definitely British until seven years later. The East Indians have all been introduced as indentured [22] labourers under a system of immigration which began in 1845 and ended in 1917. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Venezuela and Guiana are watered by the Orinoco and by several rivers that flow from the Amazonian mountains to the ocean. The whole coast is low and fertile, but hot and unhealthy. The principal product is sugar, raised by negroes and coolies. The interior is sultry and thickly wooded; it is inhabited by Indian tribes, the principal of which are the cannibal Caribs, and by negroes as uncivilized as any of the tribes in Africa. Guiana is controlled by the English, French, and Dutch. Cayenne, the prison for French convicts, is the capital of French Guiana. ”

“ Several small governments depend on plunder and the slave trade.
That part of Guinea known by the name of the Grain, and Ivory Coast, comes next in course. This coast extends about five hundred miles. The soil appears by account, to be in general fertile, producing abundance of rice and roots; indigo and cotton thrive without cultivation, and tobacco would be excellent, if carefully manufactured; they have fish in plenty; their flocks greatly increase, and their trees are loaded with fruit. They make a cotton cloth, which sells well on the Coast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The name of my forefather, who reigned in Guanhani when white men first came there was the same as mine, Buonahari. He was a good cacique, and the people loved him; he ruled the island, and none disputed his sway. Then there was great plenty in the land; the earth bore her fruits, and the people subsisted upon them. There were no fish caught with hook, or spear, or net; and no birds with snare or arrow. The people ate only what grew—the fruits of the ground and the corn, and about the hut of each man was the field of maize which he cultivated. ”

“ They cook the food, which they carry to the communal house; they also do all the work required in cultivating the gardens of yams, bananas, and vegetables. War, hunting, and fishing are the only pursuits of the men.
Three nations, Holland, Great Britain, and Germany, have divided New Guinea among them. The Dutch have the eastern half of the island. The British and Germans possess each about one-quarter, British New Guinea being situated opposite to Queensland, Australia. The British own the Solomon Islands to the eastward of New Guinea, also. ”

“ It would be useless, Rima; they are all savages, and live widely scattered in the forests, hunting with bow and arrow and the zabatana. Consider, then, how large Guayana is!"
"Guayana—Guayana! Do I not know all this is Guayana? But beyond, and beyond, and beyond? Is there no end to Guayana?"
"Yes; there northwards it ends at the Orinoco, a mighty river, coming from mighty mountains, compared with which Ytaioa is like a stone on the ground on which we have sat down to rest. You must know that Guayana is only a portion, a half, of our country, Venezuela. ”

“ The East Indian will certainly be the man of the future in Guiana if the immigration system is continued. Already he is ahead in British Guiana, and forms more than a third of the population of Surinam, if we include the Javanese. Though not so strong as the negro, he is more reliable, and without him there would be no Demerara or Surinam sugar. He enjoys better health in the Tropics [68] than other races, as is easily seen by the census returns of India and the death-rates on the plantations. ”

“ The Negro’s which are brought from Angola and Guinee, are so cruelly us’d, that they oftentimes through despair destroy themselves.
The whole Countrey of Guiana is by several modern Writers methodically divided into these inferior or lesser Provinces, 1. Rio de las Amazones. 2. Wiapoco, or Guiana, properly so call’d. 3. Orenoque; and 4. The Islands of Guiana. ”

“ There is no country which yieldeth more pleasure to the inhabitants, for those common [289] delights of hunting, hawking, fishing, fowling, and the rest, than Guiana does. I am resolved that, both for health, good air, pleasure, and riches, it cannot be equalled by any region in the East or West. To conclude: Guiana is a country that hath yet her maidenhead, never sacked, turned, nor wrought. The face of the earth hath not been torn, nor the virtue and salt of the soil spent ”

“ 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. ”

“ Latterly the West Indies have sunk into neglect by Europe. Except for the difficulties of the planters their history is almost a blank sheet. Few know .anything about the beautiful islands or the grand forests of the mainland. Even the discovery of gold in Guiana, which goes to confirm the reports of Ralegh, three centuries ago, is only known to a few. Ruin and desolation have fallen upon them since the peace of 1815 and the emancipation. Even the negro—the protégé of the benevolent—is no longer the object of interest he once was. ”

“ Besides, by keeping one good fort, or building one town of strength, the whole empire is guarded; and whatsoever companies shall be afterwards planted within the land, although in twenty several provinces, those shall be able all to reunite themselves upon any occasion either by the way of one river, or be able to march by land without either wood, bog, or mountain. Whereas in the West Indies there are few towns or provinces that can succour or relieve one the other by land or sea. By land the countries are either desert, mountainous, or strong enemies. ”

“ The life of the coloured folk, who so largely predominate among the population, offers many problems, whose solutions will doubtless work themselves out. The people of Guiana are possibly more varied than those of any other community in the world, with representations of every race—the European and Indo-European, the African negro, the Chinese, folk from Java and Annam, together with its own native races, and the white American, with many mixed breeds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In April of this year (1886) , the British and German Governments came to an arrangement by which the northern side of New Guinea together with New Britain, New Ireland, and the adjacent western half of the Solomon Group passed under the protection, or in other words into the practical possession, of Germany; whilst Great Britain by this arrangement was to consider the remaining islands of the Western Pacific and the south coast of New Guinea as her sphere of action. It is only in New Guinea that Great Britain has exercised her right. ”

“ To the south of Portuguese Guinea is the French Guinea colony, and still going south and east are the British colony of Sierra Leone, the republic of Liberia, the French colony of the Ivory coast, the British Gold Coast, German Togoland, French Dahomey, the British colony (formerly known as the Lagos colony) and protectorate of Southern Nigeria, the German colony of Cameroon, the Spanish settlements on the Muni river, the French Congo colony, and the small Portuguese enclave north of the Congo to which reference has already been made, which is administratively part of the Angola colony. ”

“ These three European colonies, the only ones by the way, in South America, British Guiana being the most westerly, French Guiana the eastern and Dutch Guiana between the others, have for their northern boundary the Atlantic Ocean. Venezuela is the western neighbor of British Guiana. Brazil touches each of these colonies as their 193southern border, also forming the western boundary of French Guiana. ”

“ Moreover, the Inland People are very jealous of those Negroes, who are under the Protection of the Factories; so that the account I have received from both when at peace (which has brought some of the former to the Sea side) has seemed so fabulous and contradictory, that it could not be depended upon; for the Negroes are very apt to impose on us. However, in this part called the Gold Coast, the Natives near the Sea side are much civilized, by their conversing with the Europeans, at their Settlements; and by going on board so many Ships to trade, as frequent this part of the Coast. ”

“ Great Britain owns the three settlements at Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo, captured in 1803 from the Dutch and afterward ceded to her by the treaty of 1814, and which now constitute British Guiana, and, lastly, Venezuela, as successor to the title of Spain, owns the rest of the highlands, south of Parima and Pacarima, the territory formerly known as Spanish Guiana until the revolution of the Venezuelan colonists. ”

“ Feeling that I am very ignorant and uneducated, I am going to have a look for myself and to try to learn something—though I sigh to think there is so much to learn in the world, and so little time to do it in!
In Sydney they told me I was mad to want to go to New Guinea; the natives murdered and dined on every one they could; the coast fevers and malarias killed off the remainder—and German New Guinea of all places! The very idea of visiting those Germans who had dared to set up a colony of their own so near British possessions! ”

“ In addition to those great island dominions in the Pacific, Great Britain possesses the Fiji Islands, the northern part of Borneo, and a large section of the extensive island of Papua or New Guinea, the remainder of which is held by Holland and Germany. In addition there are various coaling stations on the islands and coast of Asia. In the Mediterranean its possessions are Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus, and in America the great colony of Canada, a considerable number of the islands of the West Indies, and the districts of British Honduras and British Guiana. ”