Guiana was sighted by Columbus in 1498 and by Alonzo de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in the year following. Vicente Yañez Pinzon is credited with having sailed up some of the rivers in 1500 and Sir Walter Raleigh ascended the Orinoco in 1595 in quest of the mythical city El Dorado. Dutch traders reached Guiana in 1598 and by 1613 they had established several settlements on the coast of Demerara and Essequibo. Meanwhile English and French adventurers were endeavoring to obtain a foothold in Surinam and Cayenne, which they succeeded in doing in 1652. The colony of Essequibo was under the administration of the Dutch West India company from 1621 until 1791, when the company was dissolved. A Dutch settlement established on the Berbice river in 1624 was the beginning of the colony of that name, which was taken under the protection of the States-general of Holland in 1732. Demerara, formerly a dependency of Essequibo, became a separate colony in 1773. In 1781 the three colonies, Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice, were captured by British privateers. The following year they were taken by France, and restored to Holland in 1783. The British took possession a second time in 1796, retaining them for about six years, at the end of which period they passed back into the hands of Holland once more. The British occupied them in 1803 and they were formally ceded to Great Britain in 1815. The three colonies were consolidated into one under the name of British Guiana in 1831. Essequibo, Berbice and Demerara all produced a considerable amount of sugar during the Dutch régime. The plantations were on coast and river lands that had been diked and drained. Like all sugar-growing countries, this colony was adversely affected by the abolition of slavery, but owing to the success that attended the introduction of coolies from Hindustan, the labor situation never became so acute as it did in many islands of the West Indies. Traffic in African negro slaves was forbidden in 1808. After 1834 the sugar planters sought free laborers in the neighboring islands and in Madeira. Many people who had been deprived of their means of livelihood by the destruction of the vineyards of Madeira by disease settled in British Guiana. The importation of free negroes from British African possessions was sanctioned by the home government in 1840, and between that year and 1865 a large number of slaves taken by British war ships from Cuban and Brazilian slavers were landed in British Guiana, where they found employment as free laborers. This source of labor supply was cut off by the abolition of slavery in Brazil and other countries. In 1867 the importation of free blacks from British Africa was prohibited and the movement to supply laborers from China came to an end. The Chinese experiment was repeated in 1874 and 1878, but never since. The bringing in of British Indians, however, proved a success ever since the time it was first done in 1838. These laborers are indentured for five