THE GUIANA HIGHLAND

The Guiana Highlands, located at the intersection of Venuzuela, Brazil and Guyana, is a landscape of precipitous walls of grey or red sandstones, flat-topped moutains with elevations around 6000 feet, and immense waterfalls. The Highlands culminate in a sandstone tableland which includes Mt. Pacaraima and Mt. Roraima, the highest peak in the region (9219 feet).

The rivers that flow down from the tableland have innumerable rapids, both in the mountains and at the point where they enter the coastal plain, rendering the rivers useless for navigation. Both the coastlands and the mountains receive abundant rainfall and rainforest forms the principal original vegetation. But this little-known region also possesses wide stretches of savanna, similar to the savannas of central Brazil.

Along the northeastern flank of the Guiana Highlands lies the territory formerly known as "the three Guianas", colonies originally carved out by the British, the Dutch, and the French respectively: British Guiana (known today as the nation of Guyana), Dutch Guiana (Surinam today) and French Guiana. The latter was long the best known of the three territories, partly for its pepper (its capital city is Cayenne), but more particularly because of its unsavory reputation as a penal colony-the infamous Devil's Island is just off the coast-between 1789 and World War II, when the prisons were finally closed. Although Guyana and Surinam are now independent states, French Guiana, while no longer technically a colony of France, remains a "departement d'outre mer" or overseas territory of the French Union. Bauxite, used in the production of aluminum, is the most important export from all three of the former "three Guianas."

Nancy Lutkehaus