The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

CHAPTER IV.
FRENCH GUIAKA.
French Guiana Proper.
ERE French Guiana Increased by the addition of the contested region
extending from its recognised frontiers southwards to the Ara-
guari estuary, it would equal the British territory in superficial
area ; but in respect of population, trade, industry, political and
social life, no comparison is possible between the two colonies.
Of all the French possessions beyond the seas not one h:is prospered less than
Guiana. Its story cannot be told without a feeling of humiliation, and the
example of this territory is usually chosen to show the incapacity of the French as
a colonising people, as if the country had ever been a colony in the strict sense of
the word.
No really spontaneous stream of immigration has ever been directed from
France to Guiana ever since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when some
French freebooters, ro\'ing the seas, established a few ports of refuge or
refitting stations at favourable points along the seaboard. All who, during the
last 250 years, have landed on these shores between the Maroui and 03'apok estu-
aries, have come either as colonial officials and soldiers, or else in gangs of slaves
and hired labourers, or even in convoys of criminals and convicts often of the
worst type.
Essays at Colonisation.
The country has never been quickened by the spirit of free colonisation.
The very sites of the settlements were often selected beforehand by administrators
who had never visited the colony. Impracticable decrees issued from Paris were
carried out in a haphazard waj' ; no preparations were made on the spot for the
reception of the new arrivals, who consequently perished in thousands, camping
without food or shelter on the banks of swampy creeks. Even those who had
been more favoured by fortune, and who had obtained some cover and supplies.