is comprised in meadow plains, where considerable herds of cattle and horses find pasturage, and the remainder is included in plantatious, where the usual cultivated productions of the tropics flourish. Sugar, cotton, and tobacco are raised for export, and cacao and indigo to some extent, while over a considerable part of the country coffee grows wild. The soil is every where rich, with underlying sandstone or granite, and the scenery of the interior is remarkable for its beauty and occasionally for its boldness; one waterfall, 369 feet wide, making a single leap of 822 feet into the valley of the Essequibo, and one precipice of 1,500 feet from the flat top of a mountain being veiled in the waters and spray of numerous cascades.

CLIMATIC FEATURES.

Situated just north of the equator, and washed by the northward branch of the great equatorial current, the Guianas are necessarily intensely tropical, especially along the extensive low and marshy coast. The character of the heat of the South American tropics, where the earth is not generally arid, is usually misjudged by people not familiar with it and its effect. It seldom rises to the intensity there that it does in Washington or New York, and consequently sunstroke there is scarcely known; but it manifests its power through a generally high average, which varies little, compared with the variations in what are called temperate regions, between night and day, or between the various seasons. Therefore a uniformly hot climate may be a generally healthy one, requiring other coincident influences or causes to make it otherwise. Heat decreases with elevation with remarkable rapidity in the tropics, as surely as elsewhere also; so that, while geographically equatorial, a climate may actually attain or lose any known degree of temperature measurement.

Naturally, perhaps, as the coast and river regions of the Guianas and of South America generally contain the larger part of the civilized population, reports of climate and its effects are in great part confined to them; and these regions of greatest heat, low elevation, stagnant wa ters, and rapidly growing and decaying vegetation give untruthfully their naturally bad character to more extensive and naturally salubrious interior or adjoining ones. It is true that the coast of the Guianas is hot and unhealthy, with little exception; and it is equally true that back from the lowlands the climate is agreeable, even delightful, and favorable to health. This rule applies to the most of Spanish America. Of British Guiana the Encyclopædia Britannica states that— the climate, especially in the interior, is healthy. The even temperature is considered suited for pulmonary complaints, and tubercular consumption is unknown. The thermometer seldom rises above 90° or falls below 75° F. At Georgetown the mean annual temperature is 81.20.

The average annual rainfall for the five years ending with 1877 was 74 inches.

Of Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, the same authority states that, though

the climate is moist and hot, "like a Turkish bath," it seems to agree with European constitutions. The mean annual temperature is 80.40 F.; the mean of the coldest month is 78° and of the hottest 99°. The average rainfall for eight years at various points was as follows: Paramaribo, 101 inches per year; Gelderland, 108; Groningen, 91; Nickerie, 67, and Monbijou, 129.

M. Alfred Rombaud, in "Colonial France," gives the mean annual temperature of French Guiana at 28° C. (82.4° F.), the maximum temperature at 310 (87.8° F.), with rare exceptions, and the minimum at 230 (73.4° F.). This statement coincides substantially with that of the work before cited. He states also that the annual rainfall is from 3 to

4 meters (118 to 157 inches), and that the rainy days number 160 to 180

in the year.

In all the Guiana region there are the two tropical seasons, the wet and the dry, with some variations, as in other similar regions, which give to the generally rainy season a little time of abatement, and to the generally dry one some days of rain.

AGRICULTURAL AREA AND PRODUCTIONS.

It would not be far out of the way to say that nearly all of the area of the Guianas is suited to agricultural utilization, for the low lands inundated by the sea have been partly reclaimed by a system of dikes, and may be still further to a much greater extent, and form the richest sugar plantations. The interior, upon the hill and mountain sides, is suited admirably to coffee culture, even where it is useful for little besides, and the proportion of waste land is not excessive. But, like the most of South America, this naturally prolific region is nearly all undeveloped, especially in the portion pertaining to France, which has no present industrial significance, except that which pertains to a small penal colony.

In 1889 British Guiana had 81,660 acres in cultivation, of which 78,110 were in sugar cane, and there were in addition 12,833 acres in villages, and ninety-two cattle farms. In 1888 Dutch Guiana had in cacao plantations 21,712 acres, and in sugar 4,120. This area was divided into 470 large and small properties. The whole area definitely reported in the two colonies as under cultivation was therefore only 120,325 acres, including village areas, or 188 square miles, or a little over one-thousandth part. There was, however, some land in Dutch Guiana devoted to bananas, rice, coffee, cotton, fruit, etc., not specifically accounted for. The field and forest productions of the Guianas, it has been stated, are those of the tropics in all their varieties. The principal articles are shown under the classification of exports.

FOREIGN COMMERCE.

The trade of French and Dutch Guiana is not separately stated in the commercial reports of the home governments. In the first it is unimportant and in the last the exports are nearly all of cane products.

The American consul states the production of sugar to have been as follows in Dutch Guiana for three years: In 1884, 16,181,172 pounds; 1885, 11,976,016 pounds; 1886, 15,395,751 pounds. The amounts exported to various countries in 1886 were as follows, according to the same authority: *

Of the amount destined for North America, according to our own official reports, the United States received 1,976,587 pounds, valued at $40,837. In 1886 363,000 pounds of sugar, 263,000 refined, were imported into Dutch Guiana. At the rate per pound of the sugar imported from that colony into the United States, according to the amount and value above given from our Treasury report, the total value of the sugar shipped, as per the foregoing table, was only $2,224,700. In 1888 the trade with this country had fallen to a low figure, which now is gradually increasing, but still cacao leads sugar in an increasing amount in the exports to us.

The British consular reports for 1891 state the total export of Dutch Guiana in 1890 at $1,721,816, the imports at $2,173,763, and the total trade at $3,895,579, and that this was an increase over the previous year. Imports from the United States were mostly of provisions and lumber.

Relative to the foreign trade of British Guiana, the following table from the British trade reports shows the value by leading articles for a series of years:

The following table, from the same source, with amounts reduced as above from pounds sterling to dollars, shows the distribution of this trade:

The following table shows the commerce of the Guianas, separate and total, with the United States, according to the official reports of this country, for the years named ending June 30:

Nearly all the values in the imports shown above were in field were forest products, and of the exports, in sugar, especially from British

Guiana.

The decrease of exportation of coffee and increase of that of cacao from Dutch Guiana to the United States keep pace with similar changes in production there.

CONCLUSION.

The naturally fertile and considerable region of the three Guianas has been and is likely to be slower in development than others of South America not dependent upon foreign centers of government. Larger than either Ecuador, Paraguay, or Cruguay; more accessible by thousands of miles to the trade of Europe and North America than either of those countries, and possessing equal though partially dissimilar advantages for soil production; still, divided and dependent, it exhibits none of the enterprise of the age or of adjacent nations. Under such conditions, which are likely to continue indefinitely, with so little to offer to progressive people, it is doubtful that industrial enterprises could continue there without Asiatic and convict labor, and the remnant from times of slavery by which it dubiously profits. In the new world the three Guianas are political and social anomalies.