DUTCH GUIANA. 57 



continually encroaching on the land. The inhabitants, disheartened and com- 

 pelled to retreat constantly towards the interior, at last dispersed, and nothing 

 remained except a little group of cottages at the entrance of the estuary. 



According to Palgrave, the rapid advance of the sea at this point is due to a 

 subsidence of the land, and not, as the residents supposed, to a change in the 

 direction of the winds and currents, giving more force to the breakers. This 

 observer speaks of "a broad, triangular space of shallow water, lashed into seeth- 

 ing waves by wind and current, where, a few feet under the surface, lies what 

 was once the busy area of populous streets. Meanwhile the breakers, not content 

 with the mischief already done, continue ceaselessly tearing away the adjoining 

 land bit by bit. Ptight in front a large house, left an empty shell, without doors 

 or window-frames, by its fugitive inhabitants, is on the point of sinking and 

 disappearing among the waters that, unopposed, wash to and fro through the 

 ground floor. Close by the victorious sea has invaded the gardens of the neigh- 

 bouring dwellings, and will evidently soon take possession of the buildings them- 

 selves. Farther on a few isolated fragments of what was once a carefully 

 constructed sea- dam rise like black specks among the yeasty waters, and the 

 new earth- wall built to protect what yet remains of Nickerie has a desponding, 

 makeshift look, as if aware that it will not have long to wait for its turn of 

 demolition." * 



Groningen, another colony of which its promoters had great expectations, has 

 proved even a greater failure than Nickerie. It was founded in 1843 near the 

 Saramacca estuary, and peopled with Frisians carefully chosen for the purpose 

 of introducing " white labour " into these equatorial regions. But the enter- 

 prise met the fate that invariably overtakes all such experiments. Of the 384 

 settlers about one half were dead within six months, and most of the survivors 

 had to remove to the neighbouring plantations. Several have prospered as artisans 

 and gardeners in Paramaribo, but Groningen itself has all but disappeared. It 

 stood about midway between Paramaribo and Batavia, which lies a few miles to 

 the south-west on the right bank of the CojDpename estuary. 



Here is a lazaretto, where the patients are maintained by their friends and 

 families. But the village lies too near the settled districts, and another leper- 

 house is to be established on the right bank of the Upper Surinam in the unin- 

 habited district of Grand Châtillon. Nowhere are the ravages of this loath- 

 some malady more destructive than in Dutch Guiana, especially among the 

 blacks and people of colour. In 1893 nearly a thousand were said to be tainted. 



Paramaribo. 



Unlike Georgetown and New Amsterdam, Paramaribo, capital of Dutch 

 Guiana, does not lie on the sea coast. In this region the form and character of 

 the seaboard has required the towns and settlements of the plantations to be 

 established in the relatively dry zone, which is traversed by the coast streams 

 flowing parallel with the strip of swampy mangrove-covered foreshore. Para- 



* Dutch Guiana, p. 17. 



