though the latter is almost twenty-five times as large and has natural resources even more disproportionate.

Still it is not to be supposed that the condition of the French islands is prosperous. Far from it. In the days of slave-grown sugar these, like the other sugar islands of the West Indies, were veritable gold mines for their owners, but for two generations they have undergone almost continuous hard times and property values are but a fraction of what they once were. The local governments have been increasingly hard pressed to make ends meet, foreign commerce has not been prosperous and public revenues have fallen.1 Neither island has in recent years been self-supporting and the home country has been forced to the unwelcome expedient of subsidy to enable the governments to perform their work effectively. Meanwhile, scandals in the management of public affairs have contributed to make the islands play an unwelcome rôle in French public opinion.

French Guiana, covering 31,000 square miles on the mainland, is much less important commercially than are the islands. Since the abolition of slavery, in 1848, it has steadily declined and now tends to become merely a convict colony. Sugar production, formerly important, has practically disappeared. Only Only a few ruins mark

1 The foreign commerce of Martinique fell from 67,366,401 francs in 1882 to 34,937,260 in 1907. In 1912, it had risen to 50,222,225. That of Guadeloupe fell from 68,478,843, in 1882, to 29,850,001, in 1907; in 1912, it was 44,012,125 (Stephen Bonsal, The American Mediterranean, quoting statistics of the French Colonial Office for the years 1882 and 1907. The figures for 1912 are calculated from Daily Consular and Trade Reports, Sept. 27, 1913, quoting French customs returns).

the sites of former prosperous estates. Free white colonists will not go to the colony and the French Government has persisted in using it as a place to which convicts, especially political offenders, are to be transported. On March 5, 1911, the population of the settled fringe along the coast is reported as 49,009, of which 26,325 is urban. The convict colony numbers 6,465. There are in the back country some 12,000 men in the gold camps who produce practically all the exports. The export and import trade, except with the home country, is negligible. The annual drain on the home treasury reaches about $1,250,000, of which all but about $100,000 is due to the penal establishment.1

For the Netherlands, as for France, the West Indian colonies are the last visible remains of far-reaching colonial ambitions in America. Not only in the favored region, which has since become New York, did the Dutch once aspire to become large colonial proprietors. In 1636, they set out to conquer Brazil and by 1640 found themselves firmly established in Reçife and what were

1 See a protest against the continuation of the transportation system made by M. Boucon, in 1910, cited in James Rodway, Guiana, London, 1912, p. 149. See also pp. 152 and 171.

2 One small island, St. Martin, between Anguilla and St. Bartholomew, is partly owned by France, partly by the Netherlands. A number of other islets must be mentioned if the list of European property in the West Indies is to be complete. Among them are St. Bartholomew, belonging to France, and Saba and St. Eustatius, belonging to the Netherlands. At the latter, tradition has it, the flag of the United States received its first international salute.

then considered the six best provinces of Brazil. The colony prospered, but in 1654, hard pressed in war by the English, the Dutch were forced to surrender all their possessions in the region. Only a few moss-grown forts, such as that which is still pointed out to tourists at Bahia, remain to bear witness to the Dutch colonial ambitions in what has become the largest of South American republics. During their brief stay of a quarter of a century they had made Brazilian sugar and rum familiar in European markets, but on industry, agriculture, morals and religion they left no impress.

Of greater importance and more permanent results were the Dutch colonial efforts north of the Amazon in the region now known as Guiana. As early as 1656 they established their control in Cayenne, but lost the colony to the French in 1664, the same year England wrested from them their colony of New Amsterdam. Three years later they made good this loss by seizing the English colony of Surinam which, after many buffetings of fortune, still remains in their hands.

In foreign trade, Dutch Guiana compares only passably with regions similarly situated. It was formerly the most prosperous of the Guianas, but has now fallen far behind the British colony. The foreign trade is approximately half that of British Guiana and considerably less than half that of Costa Rica.1 The chief exports in the order of importance are balata, sugar, gold and cocoa. Rice is not reported among the exports,

1 Commercial Relations of the United States, 1911, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Washington, 1913, p. 109 et seq., gives the value of the foreign trade in 1911 as $6,990,101.

and bananas are still an unimportant factor in the foreign trade, though the country is eminently fitted to produce both. Sugar production has declined; it was formerly the mainstay of the colony, but only five plantations are reported as being worked in 1912.1 Sugar, alone, in British Guiana is now practically equal in value to the entire import and export trade of the Dutch colony. Like the French colony, Dutch Guiana is a drain on the home treasury, the deficit amounting to about a million guilders annually.2

The only other Dutch possession in America is the colony of Curaçao and its dependencies, Aruba and Bonaire. Especially since the abolition of slave labor, they have suffered from all the adversities which have at various times affected the West Indian region and, barring unforeseen developments, their resources are so meager and they lie so much to the side of the main routes of trade that their future holds only modest promise.

So far as they depend upon natural resources, the islands are poor indeed. Lying off the Venezuelan coast, they struggle against an oppressive climate. Their principal commercial interest, the transshipment of goods destined to Venezuela, is dependent upon public order in that much disturbed republic and upon its friendliness, which has been conspicuous in recent years by its absence. Small in size-no point is more than

1

2

Rodway, James, Guiana, London, 1912, p. 171.

Rodway, James, op. cit., p. 47.

3 Commerce Reports, Supplement, April 29, 1915. The colony of Curaçao includes also Saba and St. Eustatius.

four miles from the sea-the best soil is gradually being blown away by the trade winds or washed into the sea by heavy rains.

crop

In 1914, the sea was discolored six miles from the coast by the flooding off of the most valuable portion of the islands' surface. Though their fertility is diminishing, fertilizers guano and phosphate-are exported. A in four years is about the average, and cornmeal, the principal food of the common people, has to be purchased in the United States.1 Even under these adverse circumstances, however, the little group of islands makes a very creditable showing compared to the mainland colony. First among the exports are straw hats, constituting one-third of the total. On the making of these hats, indeed, a large proportion of the people depend for their livelihood.

The government is making strenuous efforts to restore the prosperity of the colony, especially by the introduction of sisal culture, but the task is a hard one. Local industry contributes little. The salt industry— Curaçao salt like that from Turks Islands once commanded the top of the market-has suffered an almost complete collapse. It needs no argument to prove that there is no great future for a colony which is without position of great advantage and whose chief products, besides the hats, fertilizers and salt already mentioned, are goatskins, divi-divi and aloes.

The Dutch policy toward the West Indian colonies is

1 Daily Consular and Trade Reports, April 20, 1914.

2 Commerce Reports, Supplement, July 1, 1915. The foreign trade in 1913 reached a total of $2,830,575.