CHAPTER IV. 



FRENCH GUIANA. 



I. 



French Guiana Proper. 



ERE Frencli Guiana increased by the addition of tlie contested region 

 extending from its recognised frontiers southwards to the Ara- 

 guari estuarj^ 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 has 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, roving 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 Maroni and Oyapok 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 way ; 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, 



