of races, represented by Chinese, Javanese, coolies from India
and the West Indies, negroes and about 2000 whites. Of non-Christian
immigrants there are about 6000 Mahommedans and
12,000 Hindus; and Jews number about 1200. The total
population was given in 1907 as 84,103, exclusive of Indians,
&c., in the forests. Nearly one-half of this total are in Paramaribo
and one-half in the districts. The population has shown
a tendency to move from the districts to the town; thus in
1852 there were 6000 persons in the town and 32,000 in the
districts.
The principal settlements have been made in the lower valley of the Surinam, or between that river and the Saramacca on the W. and the Commewyne on the E. The Surinam is the chief of a number of large rivers which rise in the Tumuc Humac range or the low hills between it and the sea, which they enter on the Dutch seaboard, between the Corentyn and the Maroni (Dutch Corantijn and Marowijne), which form the boundaries with British and French territories respectively. Between the rivers of Dutch Guiana there are remarkable cross channels available during the floods at least. As the Maroni communicates with the Cottica, which is in turn a tributary of the Commewyne, a boat can pass from the Maroni to Paramaribo; thence by the Sommelsdijk canal it can reach the Saramacca; and from the Saramacca it can proceed up the Coppename, and by means of the Nickerie find its way to the Corentyn. The rivers are not navigable inland to any considerable extent, as their courses are interrupted by rapids. The interior of the country consists for the most part of low hills, though an extreme height of 3800 ft. is known in the Wilhelmina Kette, in the west of the colony, about 3° 50′ to 4° N. The hinterland south of this latitude, and that part of the Tumuc Humac range along which the Dutch frontier runs, are, however, practically unexplored. Like the other territories of Guiana the Dutch colony is divided physically into a low coast-land, savannahs and almost impenetrable forest.
Meteorological observations have been carried on at five stations (Paramaribo, Coronie, Sommelsdijk, Nieuw-Nickerie and Groningen). The mean range of temperature for the day, month and year shows little variation, being respectively 77.54°–88.38° F., 76.1°–78.62° F. and 70.52°–90.14° F. The north-east trade winds prevail throughout the year, but the rainfall varies considerably; for December and January the mean is respectively 8.58 and 9.57 in., for May and June 11.26 and 10.31 in., but for February and March 7.2 and 6.81 in., and for September 2.48 and 2.0 in. The seasons comprise a long and a short dry season, and a period of heavy and of slight rainfall.
Products and Trade.—It has been found exceedingly difficult to exploit the produce of the forests. The most important crops and those supplying the chief exports are cocoa, coffee and sugar, all cultivated on the larger plantations, with rice, maize and bananas on the smaller or coast lands. Most of the larger plantations are situated on the lower courses of the Surinam, Commewyne, Nickerie and Cottica, and on the coast lands, rarely in the upper parts. Goldfields lie in the older rocks (especially the slate) of the upper Surinam, Saramacca and Maroni. The first section of a railway designed to connect the goldfields with Paramaribo was opened in 1906. The annual production of gold amounts in value to about £100,000, but has shown considerable fluctuation. Agriculture is the chief means of subsistence. About 42,000 acres are under cultivation. Of 30,000, persons whose occupation is given in official statistics, close upon 21,000 are engaged in agriculture or on the plantations, 2400 in gold-mining and only 1000 in trade. The exports increased in value from £200,800 in 1875 to £459,800 in 1899, and imports from £260,450 in 1875 to £510,180 in 1899; but the average value of exports over five years subsequently was only £414,000, while that of imports was £531,000.
Administration.—The colony is under a governor, who is president of an executive council, which also includes a vice-president and three members nominated by the crown. The legislative body is the states, the members of which are elected for six years by electors, of whom there is one for every 200 holders of the franchise. The colony is divided into sixteen districts. For the administration of justice there are three cantonal courts, two district courts, and the supreme court at Paramaribo, whose president and permanent members are nominated by the crown. The average local revenue (1901–1906) was about £276,000 and the expenditure about £317,000; both fluctuated considerably, and a varying subvention is necessary from the home government (£16,000 in 1902, £60,400 in 1906; the annual average is about £37,000). There are a civic guard of about 1800 men and a militia of 500, with a small garrison.
History.—The history of the Dutch in Guiana, and the compression of their influence within its present limits, belongs to the general history of Guiana (above). Surinam and the Dutch islands of the West Indies were placed under a common government in 1828, the governor residing at Paramaribo, but in 1845 they were separated. Slavery was abolished in 1863. Labour then became difficult to obtain, and in 1870 a convention was signed between Holland and England for the regulation of the coolie traffic, and a Dutch government agent for Surinam was appointed at Calcutta. The problem was never satisfactorily solved, but the interest of the mother-country in the colony greatly increased during the last twenty years of the 19th century, as shown by the establishment of the Surinam Association, of the Steam Navigation Company’s service to Paramaribo, and by the formation of a botanical garden for experimental culture at that town, as also by geological and other scientific expeditions, and the exhibition at Haarlem in 1898.
Authorities.—Among the older works on Surinam the first rank is held by Jan Jacob Hartsinck’s masterly Beschryving van Guiana, of de Wilde Kust, in Zuid Amerika (2 vols., Amsterdam, 1770). Extracts from this work, selected for their bearing upon British boundary questions, were translated and annotated by J. A. J. de Villiers (London, 1897). A valuable Geschiedenis der Kolonie van Suriname, by a number of “learned Jews,” was published at Amsterdam in 1791 and it was supplemented and so far superseded by Wolbers, Geschiedenis van Suriname (Amsterdam, 1861). See further W. G. Palgrave, Dutch Guiana (London, 1876); A. Kappler, Surinam, sein Land, &c. (Stuttgart, 1887); Prince Roland Bonaparte, Les Habitants de Surinam (Paris, 1884); K. Martin, “Bericht über eine Reise ins Gebiet des Oberen-Surinam,” Bijdragen v. h. Inst. voor Taal Land en Volkenkunde, i. 1. (The Hague); Westerouen van Meeteren, La Guyane néerlandaise (Leiden, 1884); H. Ten Kate, “Een en ander over Suriname,” Gids (1888); G. Verschuur, “Voyages aux trois Guyanes,” Tour du monde (1893). pp. 1, 49, 65; W. L. Loth, Beknopte Aardrijkskundige beschrijving van Suriname (Amsterdam, 1898), and Tijdschrift van het Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (1878), 79, 93; Asch van Wyck, “La Colonie de Surinam,” Les Pays-Bas (1898); L. Thompson, Overzicht der Geschiedenis van Suriname (The Hague, 1901); Catalogus der Nederl. W. I. ten Toonstelling te Haarlem (1899); Guide à travers la section des Indes néerlandaises, p. 323 (Amsterdam, 1899); Surinaamsche Almanak (Paramaribo, annually). For the language of the bush-negroes see Wullschlaegel, Kurzgefasste neger-englische Grammatik (Bautzen, 1854), and Deutsch neger-englisches Wörterbuch (Lobau, 1865).
III. French Guiana (Guyane).—This colony is situated between Dutch Guiana and Brazil. A delimitation of the territory belonging to France and the Netherlands was arrived at in 1891, by decision of the emperor of Russia. This question originated in the arrangement French Guiana. of 1836, that the river Maroni should form the frontier. It turned on the claim of the Awa or the Tapanahoni to be recognized as the main head-stream of the Maroni, and the final decision, in indicating the Awa, favoured the Dutch. In 1905 certain territory lying between the upper Maroni and the Itany, the possession of which had not then been settled, was acquired by France by agreement between the French and Dutch governments. The question of the exploitation of gold in the Maroni was settled by attributing alternate reaches of the river to France and Holland; while France obtained the principal islands in the lower Maroni. The additional territory thus attached to the French colony amounted to 965 sq. m. In December 1900 the Swiss government as arbitrators fixed the boundary between French Guiana and Brazil as the river Oyapock and the watershed on the Tumuc Humac mountains, thus awarding to France about 3000 of the 100,000 sq. m. which she claimed. This dispute was of earlier origin than that with the Dutch; dissensions between the French and the Portuguese relative to territory north of the Amazon occurred in the 17th century. In 1700 the Treaty of Lisbon made the contested area (known as the Terres du Cap du Nord) neutral ground. The treaty of Utrecht in 1713 indicated as the French boundary a river which the French afterwards claimed to be the Araguary, but the Portuguese asserted that the Oyapock was intended. After
