Guinea

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

2026 Editor's Note: This page uses language about race that was commonplace when the book was published and is offensive by today's standards. The text has been left exactly as it was printed, rather than cut or softened, so that the historical record — including how ordinary such language once was — is preserved. (Ed: ET 2026-07-22) the name formerly given a large section of the W. coast of Senegal, in about 14° Africa, from the N. lat., to Cape Negro, in 16° S. lat. It was divided into two parts, Upper and Lower Guinea, the dividing line being taken variously as the equator, the Gaboon, and the Ogoway. The states and political territories comprised within this long stretch of coast-line, commencing from the N., were as follows: the English French colony of Senegal, the settlements on the Gambia, the Portuguese territory of Bissao or Bissajos, the coastal fringe before Futa-Jallon, Sierra Leone, the free negro republic of Liberia, the Ivory and Gold Coasts, the Slave Coast, the Niger delta, and the Kameruns in Upper Guinea; and in Lower Guinea, the Spanish settlements on Corisco Bay, Gaboon, the Kongo Free State, and the Portuguese territories of Ambriz, Angola, and Benguela. The coastline is throughout tolerably uniform, and numerous shallow everywhere flat, with lagoons separated from the ocean by narrow spits of sand, lying parallel to the coast. Proceeding inland, the country rises to the central plateau of the continent by a series of broad terracelike steps, down which the longer rivers are generally precipitated in cataracts and rapids. The Genoese claim to have been the first European navigators to reach, in. 1291, the coasts of Guinea. They were, however, first regularly visited by merchant adventurers from Rouen and Dieppe from 1364 onward, but not colonized till the end of the 15th century, when the Portuguese, under the enterprising Prince Henry the Navigator, sent out, in 1481, the first colonies to this part of the world.