The principal settlements have been made in the lower valley of the Surinam, or between that river and the Saramacca on the W. and the Commewyne on the E. The Surinam is the chief of a number of large rivers which rise in the Tumuc Humac range or the low hills between it and the sea, which they enter on the Dutch seaboard, between the Corentyn and the Maroni (Dutch Corantijn and Marowijne), which form the boundaries with British and French territories respectively. Between the rivers of Dutch Guiana there are remarkable cross channels available during the floods at least. As the Maroni communicates with the Cottica, which is in turn a tributary of the Commewyne, a boat can pass from the Maroni to Paramaribo; thence by the Sommelsdijk canal it can reach the Saramacca; and from the Saramacca it can proceed up the Coppename, and by means of the Nickerie find its way to the Corentyn. The rivers are not navigable inland to any considerable extent, as their courses are interrupted by rapids. The interior of the country consists for the most part of low hills, though an extreme height of 3800 ft. is known in the Wilhelmina Kette, in the west of the colony, about 3° 50′ to 4° N. The hinterland south of this latitude, and that part of the Tumuc Humac range along which the Dutch frontier runs, are, however, practically unexplored. Like the other territories of Guiana the Dutch colony is divided physically into a low coast-land, savannahs and almost impenetrable forest.
Meteorological observations have been carried on at five stations (Paramaribo, Coronie, Sommelsdijk, Nieuw-Nickerie and Groningen). The mean range of temperature for the day, month and year shows little variation, being respectively 77.54°-88.38° F., 76.1°-78.62° F. and 70.52°-90.14° F. The north-east trade winds prevail throughout the year, but the rainfall varies considerably; for December and January the mean is respectively 8.58 and 9.57 in., for May and June 11.26 and 10.31 in., but for February and March 7.2 and 6.81 in., and for September 2.48 and 2.0 in. The seasons comprise a long and a short dry season, and a period of heavy and of slight rainfall.
Products and Trade.—It has been found exceedingly difficult to exploit the produce of the forests. The most important crops and those supplying the chief exports are cocoa, coffee and sugar, all cultivated on the larger plantations, with rice, maize and bananas on the smaller or coast lands. Most of the larger plantations are situated on the lower courses of the Surinam, Commewyne, Nickerie and Cottica, and on the coast lands, rarely in the upper parts. Goldfields lie in the older rocks (especially the slate) of the upper Surinam, Saramacca and Maroni. The first section of a railway designed to connect the goldfields with Paramaribo was opened in 1906. The annual production of gold amounts in value to about £100,000, but has shown considerable fluctuation. Agriculture is the chief means of subsistence. About 42,000 acres are under cultivation. Of 30,000, persons whose occupation is given in official statistics, close upon 21,000 are engaged in agriculture or on the plantations, 2400 in gold-mining and only 1000 in trade. The exports increased in value from £200,800 in 1875 to £459,800 in 1899, and imports from £260,450 in 1875 to £510,180 in 1899; but the average value of exports over five years subsequently was only £414,000, while that of imports was £531,000.
Administration.—The colony is under a governor, who is president of an executive council, which also includes a vice-president and three members nominated by the crown. The legislative body is the states, the members of which are elected for six years by electors, of whom there is one for every 200 holders of the franchise. The colony is divided into sixteen districts. For the administration of justice there are three cantonal courts, two district courts, and the supreme court at Paramaribo, whose president and permanent members are nominated by the crown. The average local revenue (1901-1906) was about £276,000 and the expenditure about £317,000; both fluctuated considerably, and a varying subvention is necessary from the home government (£16,000 in 1902, £60,400 in 1906; the annual average is about £37,000). There are a civic guard of about 1800 men and a militia of 500, with a small garrison.
History.—The history of the Dutch in Guiana, and the compression of their influence within its present limits, belongs to the general history of Guiana (above). Surinam and the Dutch islands of the West Indies were placed under a common government in 1828, the governor residing at Paramaribo, but in 1845 they were separated. Slavery was abolished in 1863. Labour then became difficult to obtain, and in 1870 a convention was signed between Holland and England for the regulation of the coolie traffic, and a Dutch government agent for Surinam was appointed at Calcutta. The problem was never satisfactorily solved, but the interest of the mother-country in the colony greatly increased during the last twenty years of the 19th century, as shown by the establishment of the Surinam Association, of the Steam Navigation Company’s service to Paramaribo, and by the formation of a botanical garden for experimental culture at that town, as also by geological and other scientific expeditions, and the exhibition at Haarlem in 1898.
Authorities.—Among the older works on Surinam the first rank is held by Jan Jacob Hartsinck’s masterly Beschryving van Guiana, of de Wilde Kust, in Zuid Amerika (2 vols., Amsterdam, 1770). Extracts from this work, selected for their bearing upon British boundary questions, were translated and annotated by J. A. J. de Villiers (London, 1897). A valuable Geschiedenis der Kolonie van Suriname, by a number of “learned Jews,” was published at Amsterdam in 1791 and it was supplemented and so far superseded by Wolbers, Geschiedenis van Suriname (Amsterdam, 1861). See further W. G. Palgrave, Dutch Guiana (London, 1876); A. Kappler, Surinam, sein Land, &c. (Stuttgart, 1887); Prince Roland Bonaparte, Les Habitants de Surinam (Paris, 1884); K. Martin, “Bericht über eine Reise ins Gebiet des Oberen-Surinam,” Bijdragen v. h. Inst. voor Taal Land en Volkenkunde, i. 1. (The Hague); Westerouen van Meeteren, La Guyane néerlandaise (Leiden, 1884); H. Ten Kate, “Een en ander over Suriname,” Gids (1888); G. Verschuur, “Voyages aux trois Guyanes,” Tour du monde (1893). pp. 1, 49, 65; W. L. Loth, Beknopte Aardrijkskundige beschrijving van Suriname (Amsterdam, 1898), and Tijdschrift van het Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (1878), 79, 93; Asch van Wyck, “La Colonie de Surinam,” Les Pays-Bas (1898); L. Thompson, Overzicht der Geschiedenis van Suriname (The Hague, 1901); Catalogus der Nederl. W. I. ten Toonstelling te Haarlem (1899); Guide à travers la section des Indes néerlandaises, p. 323 (Amsterdam, 1899); Surinaamsche Almanak (Paramaribo, annually). For the language of the bush-negroes see Wullschlaegel, Kurzgefasste neger-englische Grammatik (Bautzen, 1854), and Deutsch neger-englisches Wörterbuch (Lobau, 1865).
III. French Guiana (Guyane).—This colony is situated between Dutch Guiana and Brazil. A delimitation of the territory belonging to France and the Netherlands was arrived at in 1891, by decision of the emperor of Russia. This question originated in the arrangement French Guiana. of 1836, that the river Maroni should form the frontier. It turned on the claim of the Awa or the Tapanahoni to be recognized as the main head-stream of the Maroni, and the final decision, in indicating the Awa, favoured the Dutch. In 1905 certain territory lying between the upper Maroni and the Itany, the possession of which had not then been settled, was acquired by France by agreement between the French and Dutch governments. The question of the exploitation of gold in the Maroni was settled by attributing alternate reaches of the river to France and Holland; while France obtained the principal islands in the lower Maroni. The additional territory thus attached to the French colony amounted to 965 sq. m. In December 1900 the Swiss government as arbitrators fixed the boundary between French Guiana and Brazil as the river Oyapock and the watershed on the Tumuc Humac mountains, thus awarding to France about 3000 of the 100,000 sq. m. which she claimed. This dispute was of earlier origin than that with the Dutch; dissensions between the French and the Portuguese relative to territory north of the Amazon occurred in the 17th century. In 1700 the Treaty of Lisbon made the contested area (known as the Terres du Cap du Nord) neutral ground. The treaty of Utrecht in 1713 indicated as the French boundary a river which the French afterwards claimed to be the Araguary, but the Portuguese asserted that the Oyapock was intended. After Brazil had become independent the question dragged on until in 1890-1895 there were collisions in the contested territory between French and Brazilian adventurers. This compelled serious action, and a treaty of arbitration, preliminary to the settlement, was signed at Rio de Janeiro in 1897. French Guiana, according to official estimate, has an area of about 51,000 sq. m. The population is estimated at about 30,000; its movement is not rapid. Of this total 12,350 live at Cayenne, 10,100 were in the communes, 5700 formed the penal population, 1500 were native Indians (Galibi, Emerillon, Oyampi) and 500 near Maroni were negroes. Apart from Cayenne, which was rebuilt after the great fire of 1888, the centres of population are unimportant: Sinnamarie with 1500 inhabitants, Mana with 1750, Roura with 1200 and Approuague with 1150. In 1892 French Guiana was divided into fourteen communes, exclusive of the Maroni district. Belonging to the colony are also the three Safety Islands (Royale, Joseph and Du Diable—the last notable as the island where Captain Dreyfus was imprisoned), the Enfant Perdu Island and the five Remire Islands.
A considerable portion of the low coast land is occupied by marshes, with a dense growth of mangroves or, in the drier parts, with the pinot or wassay palm (Euterpe oleracea). Settlements are confined almost entirely to the littoral and alluvial districts. The forest-clad hills of the hinterland do not generally exceed 1500 ft. in elevation; that part of the Tumuc Humac range which forms the southern frontier may reach an extreme elevation of 2600 ft. But the dense tropical forests attract so much moisture from the ocean winds that the highlands are the birthplace of a large number of rivers which in the rainy season especially pour down vast volumes of water. Not less than 15 are counted between the Maroni and the Oyapock. South-eastward from the Maroni the first of importance is the Mana, which is navigable for large vessels 10 m. from its mouth, and for smaller vessels 27 m. farther. Passing the Sinnamary and the Kourou, the Oyock is next reached, near the mouth of which is Cayenne, the capital of the colony, and thereafter the Approuage. All these rivers take their rise in a somewhat elevated area about the middle of the colony; those streams which rise farther south, in the Tumuc Humac hills, are tributaries of the two frontier rivers, the Maroni on the one hand or the Oyapock on the other.
Climate and Products.—The rainy season begins in November or December, and lasts till the latter part of June; but there are usually three or four weeks of good weather in March. During the rest of the year there is often hardly a drop of rain for months, but the air is always very moist. At Cayenne the average annual rainfall amounts to fully 130 in., and it is naturally heavier in the interior. During the hotter part of the year—August, September, October—the temperature usually rises to about 86° F., but it hardly ever exceeds 88°; in the colder season the mean is 79° and it seldom sinks so low as 70°. Between day and night there is very little thermometric difference. The prevailing winds are the N.N.E. and the S.E.; and the most violent are those of the N.E. During the rainy season the winds keep between N. and E., and during the dry season between S. and E. Hurricanes are unknown. In flora and fauna French Guiana resembles the rest of the Guianese region. Vegetation is excessively rich. Among leguminous trees, which are abundantly represented, the wacapou is the finest of many hardwood trees. Caoutchouc and various palms are also common. The manioc is a principal source of food; rice is an important object of cultivation; and maize, yams, arrowroot, bananas and the bread-fruit are also to be mentioned. Vanilla is one of the common wild plants of the country. The clove tree has been acclimatized, and in the latter years of the empire it formed a good source of wealth; the cinnamon tree was also successfully introduced in 1772, but like that of the pepper-tree and the nutmeg its cultivation is neglected. A very small portion of the territory indeed is devoted to agriculture, although France has paid some attention to the development of this branch of activity. In 1880 a colonial garden was created near Cayenne; since 1894 an experimental garden has been laid out at Baduel. About 8200 acres are cultivated, of which 5400 acres are under cereals and rice, the remaining being under coffee (introduced in 1716), cacao, cane and other cultures. The low lands between Cayenne and Oyapock are capable of bearing colonial produce, and the savannahs might support large herds; cereals, root-crops and vegetables might easily be grown on the high grounds, and timber working in the interior should be profitable.
Gold-mining is the most important industry in the colony. Placers of great wealth have been discovered on the Awa, on the Dutch frontier and at Carsevenne in the territory which formed the subject of the Franco-Brazilian dispute. But wages are high and transport is costly, and the amount of gold declared at Cayenne did not average more than 130,550 oz. annually in 1900-1905. Silver and iron have been found in various districts; kaolin is extracted in the plains of Montsinéry; and phosphates have been discovered at several places. Besides gold-workings, the industrial establishments comprise saw-mills, distilleries, brick-works and sugar-works.