captured ships, Sir Walter Raleigh was induced to ascend the
Orinoco in search of El Dorado in 1595, to send Lawrence
Keymis on the same quest in the following year, and in 1617
to try once again, with the same intrepid lieutenant, an expedition
fraught with disaster for both of them. As early as
1580 the Dutch had established a systematic trade with the
Spanish main, but so far as is known their first voyage to Guiana
was in 1598. By 1613 they had three or four settlements on
the coast of Demerara and Essequibo, and in about 1616 some
Zeelanders settled on a small island, called by them Kyk ober al
(“see over all”), in the confluence of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni
rivers. While the Dutch traders were struggling for a footing
in Essequibo and Demerara, English and French traders were
endeavouring to form settlements on the Oyapock river, in
Cayenne and in Surinam, and by 1652 the English had large
interests in the latter and the French in Cayenne. In 1663
Charles II. issued letters patent to Lord Willoughby of Parham
and Lawrence Hyde, second son of the earl of Clarendon, granting
them the district between the Copenam and Maroni rivers,
a province described as extending from E. to W. some 120 m.
This colony was, however, formally ceded to the Netherlands
in 1667 by the peace of Breda, Great Britain taking possession
of New York. Meanwhile the Dutch West India Company,
formed in 1621, had taken possession of Essequibo, over which
colony it exercised sovereign rights until 1791. In 1624 a Dutch
settlement was effected in the Berbice river, and from this grew
Berbice, for a long time a separate and independent colony.
In 1657 the Zeelanders firmly established themselves in the
Pomeroon, Moruca and Demerara rivers, and by 1674 the Dutch
were colonizing all the territory now known as British and
Dutch Guiana. The New Dutch West Indian Company, founded
in that year to replace the older company which had failed,
received Guiana by charter from the states-general in 1682.
In the following year the company sold one-third of their territory
to the city of Amsterdam, and another third to Cornelis van
Aerssens, lord of Sommelsdijk. The new owners and the
company incorporated themselves as the Chartered Society of
Surinam, and Sommelsdijk agreed to fill the post of governor of
the colony at his own expense. The lucrative trade in slaves
was retained by the West Indian Company, but the society
could import them on its own account by paying a fine to the
company. Sommelsdijk’s rule was wise and energetic. He
repressed and pacified the Indian tribes, erected forts and
disciplined the soldiery, constructed the canal which bears his
name, established a high court of justice and introduced the
valuable cultivation of the cocoa-nut. But on the 17th of June
1688 he was massacred in a mutiny of the soldiers. The “third”
which Sommelsdijk possessed was offered by his widow to William
III. of England, but it was ultimately purchased by the city of
Amsterdam for 700,000 fl. The settlements in Essequibo progressed
somewhat slowly, and it was not until immigration was
attracted in 1740 by offers to newcomers of free land and immunity
for a decade from taxation that anything like a colony
could be said to exist there. In 1732 Berbice placed itself under
the protection of the states-general of Holland and was granted
a constitution, and in 1773 Demerara, till then a dependency of
Essequibo, was constituted as a separate colony. In 1781 the
three colonies, Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice, were captured
by British privateers, and were placed by Rodney under the
governor of Barbados, but in 1782 they were taken by France,
then an ally of the Netherlands, and retained until the peace
of 1783, when they were restored to Holland. In 1784 Essequibo
and Demerara were placed under one governor, and Georgetown—then
called Stabroek—was fixed on as the seat of government.
The next decade saw a series of struggles between the colonies
and the Dutch West India company, which ended in the company
being wound up and in the three colonies being governed directly
by the states-general. In 1796 the British again took possession,
and retained the three colonies until the peace of Amiens in
1802, when they were once again restored to Holland, only to
be recaptured by Great Britain in 1803, in which year the
history proper of British Guiana began.
I. British Guiana, the only British possession in S. America, was formally ceded in 1814–1815. The three colonies were in 1831 consolidated into one colony divided into three counties, Berbice extending from the Corentyn river to the Abary creek, Demerara from the Abary to the British Guiana. Boerasirie creek, Essequibo from the Boerasirie to the Venezuelan frontier. This boundary-line between British Guiana and Venezuela was for many years the subject of dispute. The Dutch, while British Guiana was in their possession, claimed the whole watershed of the Essequibo river, while the Venezuelans asserted that the Spanish province of Guayana had extended up to the left bank of the Essequibo. In 1840 Sir Robert Schomburgk had suggested a demarcation, afterwards known as the “Schomburgk line”; and subsequently, though no agreement was arrived at, certain modifications were made in this British claim. In 1886 the government of Great Britain declared that it would thenceforward exercise jurisdiction up to and within a boundary known as “the modified Schomburgk line.” Outposts were located at points on this line, and for some years Guianese police and Venezuelan soldiers faced one another across the Amacura creek in the Orinoco mouth and at Yuruan up the Cuyuni river. In 1897 the dispute formed the subject of a message to congress from the president of the United States, and in consequence of this intervention the matter was submitted to an international commission, whose award was issued at Paris in 1899 (see Venezuela). By this decision neither party gained its extreme claim, the line laid down differing but little from the original Schomburgk line. The demarcation was at once undertaken by a joint commission appointed by Venezuela and British Guiana and was completed in 1904. It was not found practicable, owing to the impassable nature of the country, to lay down on earth that part of the boundary fixed by the Paris award between the head of the Wenamu creek and the summit of Mt. Roraima, and the boundary commissioners suggested a deviation to follow the watersheds of the Caroni, Cuyuni and Mazaruni rivers, a suggestion accepted by the two governments. In 1902 the delimitation of the boundary between British Guiana and Brazil was referred to the arbitration of the king of Italy, and by his reward, issued in June 1904, the substantial area in dispute was conceded to British Guiana. The work of demarcation has since been carried out.
Towns, &c.—The capital of British Guiana is Georgetown, at the mouth of the Demerara river, on its right bank, with a population of about 50,000. New Amsterdam, on the right bank of the Berbice river, has a population of about 7500. Each possesses a mayor and town council, with statutory powers to impose rates. There are nineteen incorporated villages, and ten other locally governed areas known as country districts, the affairs of which are controlled by local authorities, known as village councils and country authorities respectively.
Population.—The census of 1891 gave the population of British Guiana as 278,328. There was no census taken in 1901. By official estimates the population at the end of 1904 was 301,923. Of these some 120,000 were negroes and 124,000 East Indians; 4300 were Europeans, other than Portuguese, estimated at about 11,600, and some 30,000 of mixed race. The aborigines—Arawaks, Caribs, Wapisianas, Warraws, &c.—who numbered about 10,000 in 1891, are now estimated at about 6500. In 1904 the birth-rate for the whole colony was 30.3 per 1000 and the death-rate 28.8.
Physical Geography.—The surface features of British Guiana may be divided roughly into four regions: first, the alluvial seaboard, flat and below the level of high-water; secondly, the forest belt, swampy along the rivers but rising into undulating lands and hills between them; thirdly, the savannahs in and inland of the forest belt, elevated table-lands, grass-covered and practically treeless; and fourthly, the mountain ranges. The eastern portion of the colony, from the source of its two largest rivers, the Corentyn and Essequibo, is a rough inclined plain, starting at some 900 ft. above sea-level at the source of the Takutu in the west, but only some 400 at that of the Corentyn in the west, and sloping down gradually to the low alluvial flats about 3 ft. below high-water line. The eastern part is generally forested; the western is an almost level savannah, with woodlands along the rivers. The
