The lure of the gold, purged, however, of its myth, has survived to our own day, for we all remember Great Britain’s effort, in her boundary dispute with Venezuela, to extend her Guiana boundary over the rich gold fields south of the Orinoco delta. Until 1624, the Spanish succeeded in holding Guiana against all comers; but in that year the Dutch West India Company gained a foothold at the head of the Essequibo delta, and was confirmed in its possession by the treaty of Münster in 1648, at the close of the war between Spain and the Netherlands. After this opening, other nations made haste to share in a partition of the rich territory. The French established a colony at Cayenne; the English made a settlement and called it Surreyham, after the Earl of Surrey—whence the present name of Surinam—and eventually the country was partitioned among the five nations: Brazil became the owner of that portion trailing off southward to the Amazon which Portugal had wrested from Spain, and which is now sometimes called Brazilian Guiana, although it is an integral part of the United States of Brazil; France still retains Cayenne, now known as French Guiana; the Dutch are now installed in the Surinam colony, which came into their possession at the time of the British occupation of New York, and is now called Dutch Guiana; Great Britain owns the three settlements at Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo, captured in 1803 from the Dutch and afterward ceded to her by the treaty of 1814, and which now constitute British Guiana, and, lastly, Venezuela, as successor to the title of Spain, owns the rest of the highlands, south of Parima and Pacarima, the territory formerly known as Spanish Guiana until the revolution of the Venezuelan colonists. British Guiana is 109,000 square miles in area—larger than the United Kingdom—and has a population of about 300,000, made up of 150,000 negroes, 100,000 East Indians, 15,000 Portuguese, 10,000 British and Europeans, and the balance of _mestizos_. It is divided into three counties, which correspond to the old settlements—Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo. Georgetown, the capital, is on the right bank of the Demerara River at its mouth. It is an attractive port city of about 60,000 inhabitants, heavily shaded with tropical trees, and presents the substantial appearance of most British colonial centers. Just now its interests are being rather neglected, but, as the shipping point of a sugar area productive enough to supply the mother country, it could be developed into one of the great ports of the Caribbean. The area of Dutch Guiana is 46,060 square miles, and its population numbers about 70,000. The capital, Paramaribo, is a city of some 30,000 inhabitants, located at the junction of the Surinam and Commewine rivers, about ten miles from the sea. The colony’s trade in coffee, cacao, rubber, timber, and gold has not yet been developed to such proportions as to make it self-supporting; it is still subsidized by the mother country.