2 TlMEHRI. 
name of Guiana, is shared by the English, Dutch and 
French. From its level sea-coast this country rises, chiefly 
by step-like ascents, to the table-land of the interior. 
This table-land is in itself a swelling, grass-covered and 
treeless open country. But along the courses of the many 
streams and rivers which rise on this high plain, to flow 
down the eastward slope to the sea, are more or less 
extensive belts of trees ; and these belts, widening as 
the rivers themselves widen, approach each other nearer 
and nearer, till, toward the lower part of the seaward 
slope, they join and extend as one dense forest over 
the strip of alluvial coast-land which lies between the 
foot of that slope and the sea. Through this forest and 
over the grassy table-land are scattered Redmen of 
various tribes, but chiefly Caribs, differing from each 
other somewhat according to their tribes, differing also 
somewhat according as they live in the open country 
or in the forest, but, in the main, all in the same early 
stage of civilization. None of them are aboriginal in 
those parts ; but even those of them who reached their 
present places latest came before the earliest arrival of 
Europeans in America. The terrible persecution which, 
soon after the discovery of America, disturbed, confused, 
and even obliterated, the previous social condition of 
the Redmen of the greater part of that coast of America 
left almost untouched the Redmen of Guiana ; for it 
chanced that the earliest European settlers in these 
parts were Dutchmen, Englishmen and Frenchmen, 
who from the first strove rather, in so far as communi- 
cation and intercourse with the Red-skinned natives 
was quite unavoidable, to establish friendly relations with 
these, instead, as was the practice of the Spanish 
