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 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 Brazil had become independent the question dragged on until in 1890-1895 there were collisions in the contested territory between French and Brazilian adventurers. This compelled serious action, and a treaty of arbitration, preliminary to the settlement, was signed at Rio de Janeiro in 1897. French Guiana, according to official estimate, has an area of about 51,000 sq. m. The population is estimated at about 30,000; its movement is not rapid. Of this total 12,350 live at Cayenne, 10,100 were in the communes, 5700 formed the penal population, 1500 were native Indians (Galibi, Emerillon, Oyampi) and 500 near Maroni were negroes. Apart from Cayenne, which was rebuilt after the great fire of 1888, the centres of population are unimportant: Sinnamarie with 1500 inhabitants, Mana with 1750, Roura with 1200 and Approuague with 1150. In 1892 French Guiana was divided into fourteen communes, exclusive of the Maroni district. Belonging to the colony are also the three Safety Islands (Royale, Joseph and Du Diable--the last notable as the island where Captain Dreyfus was imprisoned), the Enfant Perdu Island and the five Remire Islands.