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aUYENNB. 



GUYKNNE. 



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Uk«n pUoa in the etrcumaUnoei of the colony. Many of th* negro 

 Uboonn haTa become proprietorL and to tuppty the demand for 

 kbour there have bean brought to the colony maoy natires of Madain 

 and Coolie* from Madraa and Calcutta. The entimated value of 

 exporU from Brittah Guyana waa 978,20<U. in 1852. The oflScial 

 Talue of the imporia in 1852 was 964,9SSi: The number and tonnage 

 of rasaela belonging to Britiah Ouyana on December Slat 1853 were 

 aa followa : — SaUing-Teeaela, under SO ton* 49, tonnage 1141 ; above 

 60 tone 11, tonnage 803 ; with 1 iteam-yeaael of 69 tona. The tonnage 

 of veaaeli which entertd and cleared daring A52 amounted to 135,951 

 inwarda, and 109,474 outwards. 



The population of BriUsh Ouyana on March Slat' 1851 was 

 127,695 ; {ncludiog an estimate of 7000 for aborigines, with 445 

 sailors and 854 soldiers, the population was 135,994. Of this uiimber 

 86,451 were natives of British Ouyana, 7168 were African immigraut*, 

 7083 old Africans, 7682 Coolies, 7923 Madeirans, and 2088 English, 

 Scotch, Irish, Dutch, and Americans; the proportion of males to 

 femalea being as 6 to 5, arising from the large proportion of male 

 immigant labourers who have been brought during several years past 

 from the East Indies, St Uelena, Madeira, and the West India 

 iRlands. In December 1851 there were 41 episcopal churches and 

 chapels in the colony, with 10,210 attendauts ; of other chapels there 

 were 71, with 22,874 attindants. Tlie children at day-schools wore 

 8000 ; the number of schools was upwards of 100. The Demerara 

 Colonial Hospital, Small Pox Hospital, Seamen's Hospital, and Lima- 

 tic Asylum have been extensively useful. A penal setUement has 

 been established for some years, in which the convicts are employed 

 in public works, and thus made in i>art to work for their support. 



Dutch Ouyana, or Surinam, extends along the coast from the 

 Courantyne to the Mnrony, and between them inland to their sources. 

 Along the coast, and on the banks of the rivers, are many settlements 

 auil plantations. The Jews are numerous in this country ; and in the 

 interior is a village called Savanna inhabited by Jews, who cultivate 

 their plantations. The higher and hilly part of the country is occu- 

 pied chiefly by the Maroons, or runaway negroes, who have formed a 

 kind of iwlitical society. The Dutch colouy of Guyana It partly the 

 property of the town of Amsterdam. It exports sugar, coffee, cotton, 

 and cacao : the number of inhabitants in 1852 is given at 64,270, of 

 whom more than five-sixths are negroes. Paramaribo, the capital, is 

 situated on the bank of the river Surinam, about ten miles from the 

 ■ea. It is regularly built in the Dutch style, and has a population of 

 about 20,000. The streets, which are wide and straight, are planted 

 with orange-trees. The houses are generally two stories in height, 

 and built of wood. Near the town is the fortress Zelandia in which 

 the governor resides. 



French Ouyana extends along the coast from the river Marony 

 to the Oyapoc, which separates it from the empire of Brazil. Its 

 area is still chiefly covered with large forest-trees. There are some 

 atttlements, not of much extent, from which the French export sugar, 

 coffee, cotton, cacao, and amotto. The capital, Cayenne, situated on 

 the northern side of an island formed by the river Cayenne, is a 

 roLwtable place, with a shallow harbour. On the mainland is the 

 plantation La Oabrielle, where the experiment of transplanting from 

 Asia to America the pepper-vine, the clove-tree, and the nutmeg-tree 

 has been tried ; the pepper and clove have succeeded better than the 

 nutmeg : the population of French Ouyana in 1841 was 22,010. Since 

 the French revolution of 1 848 Cayenne island has been made a penal 

 ■ettlement, to which have been sent multitudes of persons whose 

 presence in Paris or in the province* was considered by the govern- 

 ment to be hazardous to the peace of the state. 



GUYENNE, or GUIENNE, and OASCOGNE, two old provinces 

 of France, forming together the largest of the thirty-two military 

 governments into which in ante-revolutionary times France was 

 divided. Tha government extended about 246 miles in extreme 

 length from east to weat, and about 205 miles in extreme breadth from 

 north to south. The area of Ouienne, the northern province, was 

 aitimated at 16,847 square miles, and that of Oascogne, the southern 

 province, at 10,271 square miles, together 26,118, forming an area 

 equal to more than half of England, watered by the Garonne, one of 

 the finest rivers of France, with ita feeders the Tarn, the Lot, the Dor- 

 dogne, and a number of (mailer tributaries, and by the Adour and its 

 feeden. The military government of Ouienne and Oascogne was bounded 

 If. by Saintonge and Augoumois ; E. by Limousin, Auvergne, and Lau- 

 guadoc ; a by Foix and the Pyrenees ; and W. by the Bay of Binay. 



OoKogne, which neu-ly coincides with the Aquitania of Julius Cntar 

 and the Novempopulana of Augustus, takes its name flrom the Oaaoones 

 or Vasoonaa, a Spanish people, who in early times settled in this part 

 of Fraooa. It included the countries weat of the Garonne, distinguished 

 by tha names of Couaerans, Comminges, Bigorre, Armsgnac, Condo- 

 mois, Manan, Landes, and Labour; and now forms the departments 

 of Landat, Gen^ Bautea-PrrAidea, Haute-Garonne, and part* of Baaaes- 

 Pyrdn^ and Ariige, undar which heads the particular features of 

 the ooontry are noticed. From this province the Bay of Biscay is 

 sometimes called the Gulf of Oascogne. 

 ' (Tatcnne lay to the north of Oascogne, and extended from the 



C^rennes Mountains to the Bay of Biscay, including the district* of 

 Ronergue, QuerOT, Agenoia, Pdrigord, Bajoulois, and Bondelais. It 

 now forms the departments of Gironde, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Dor- 

 dogne, Aveyron, and part of Tam-et-Qaronne. The entire government 

 of Ouienne and Oascogne was sometime* spoken of under the name of 

 Guienne. 



The capitjil of Ouienne was Bordeaux : among the other towns were 

 — Liboiu-ne, Bacas, Perigueux, Agen, Cahors, Montauban, Rhode* or 

 Rodez, Milhau, and Villefrnnclie. The capital of Oascogne was Auch : 

 the more important of the other towns were — Condom, St-Sever, Daz, 

 Bayonne, Pau, Tarbes, St. -Bertrand -de -Comminges, and St.-Lizier. 

 These town* are all noticed in this work either in separate articles or 

 under the name* of the departments to which they belong. 



Ouienne derives its name from the Aquitani, one of the three great 

 branches of the Gallic people whom Csaar found in possession of QauL 

 Theae Aquitani occupied the country south-weat of the Garonne, but 

 when Augustus divided Gaul into four provinces he gave the name of 

 Aquitania to the whole country from the Garonne to the Loire ; the 

 original coimtry of the Aquitani becoming one of the subdivisions of 

 the larger province, and taking the name of Novempopulana (that is, 

 the country of tha Nine Nations), from the number of principal tribe* 

 by which it was occupied. In thn decline of the Roman empire 

 Aquitania came into the handu of the Visigoths, who made Toulouse 

 tbeir capital ; but in 607 Clovis, king of the Franks, wrested Aquitania 

 from the Visigoths, and brought it under the dominion of the Frank*. 

 In 630 the kingdom of Aquitania, or Aquitaine, was re-established in 

 favour of Caribert, or Charibcrt, son of Clotaire II., one of the 

 Frankish kings of the Merovingian dynasty ; but it was soon reduced 

 from the rank of a kingdom to that of an hereditary duchy. Eudea, 

 duke of Aquitaine (688-735) was possessor by inheritance or conquest 

 of the whole country from the Pyrenees and the ocean to the Loire 

 and the RbAne, and even of some districts beyond the latter. Waifre, 

 grandson of Eudes, was defeated and despoiled of his territories by 

 Pepin le Bref, king of France, 760-768. 



The Gascons were originally a Spanish people, and were called by 

 the Romans Vascones. Under the Roman empire we find a portion 

 of the Vascones settled in the south of Gaul, in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of the Pyrenees. It was not till a.d. 602 that they submitted 

 to the Franks, to whom they became tributary. Their name may be 

 traced in several modem designations, Biscay (Provincias Vasoongadaa) 

 in Spain, the territory of the Basques in France, and in the mora 

 extended name of Oascogne, which appears in the Latin of the middle 

 ages under the forms Vascitania, Vasonia, and Oasconia. 



The Qascons were comprehended in the kingdom, afterwards the 

 duchy, of Aquitaine ; and though they remained near the Pyrenees 

 the name of Gaacogne was given to the country betwitcn the Pyrenees 

 and the Qaronne. It wa^ Loup 1 1, (son of Waifre aljove mentioned) 

 who surprised the rear-guard of Charlemagne on the return of that 

 monareh from Spain, 778, by means of an ambush in the valley 

 or pass of Roncevaux. Loup was soon after taken and hanged as a 

 traitor; but the Qascons were continually in rebellion against the 

 Carlovingian princes. 



In the year 781 Charlemagne restored the kingdom of Aquitaine, 

 and placed his son Louis le Debonnaire, then three years old, on the 

 throne. On the death of Charlemagne, Louis became emperor of tha 

 West and was succeeded in Aquitaine by his son Pepin 1., whose 

 kingdom included not only the country to the south-west of the Loire, 

 but a considerable territory on the right bank of that river. Pepin II., 

 son and successor of Pepin I., was deposed by his uncle Charles la 

 Chauve, whose sons, Charles and (loui* le Bdgue, were sncoesaively 

 kings of Aquitaine ; but on the acceesion of the latter to the throne at 

 France, on the death of Charles le Chauve, A.D. 877, Aquitaine was 

 tmited to the French monarchy. The duchy of Oascogne continued 

 after the extinction of the kingdom of Aquitaine, and it* duke* 

 exercised an authority independent of the kings of Franca 



The duchy of Aquitaine also survived the kingdom, and became 

 hereditary in the race of the counts of Poitiera These nobles subse- 

 quently acquired the duchy of Oascogne, and consolidated under their 

 sway a large territory in the south-west of France, including Poitou, 

 Limousin, Ouienne (excepting Queroy and Rouergue), and Oascogne ; 

 together with the suzerainty of the county of Auvergne. This rich 

 inheritance came by marriage into the possession of Henry Plantagenet, 

 afterwards Henry II. of England, and, united with his Norman and 

 At^evin inheritance, rendered the English kings as powerful in France 

 as the kings of Francs themselves. [Aquitaine.] By the sentence of 

 confiscation pronounced by the court of the peers of France against king 

 John these domains were confiscated to the cron-n ; and the sentence 

 wo* partly executed by Philippe Auguste. A portion however of the 

 duchy of Aquitaine forming tAe duchy of Ouienne, extending from the 

 Charente to the Pyrenees, remained to the Engliali, and was governed 

 by English noblemen sent over from time to time. It more than 

 recovered its extent and splendour for a short time under Edward 

 the Black Prince, but soon shrunk again in its dimensions, and 

 in the years 1462 and 1468 was subjugated by the troops of the 

 French king. 



