French Guiana: From Devil's Island To Cape de Gaulle

If the world were flat, the end of the earth would undoubtedly be French Guiana. A remote, jungle-shrouded patch on the northeast shoulder of South America, one-sixth the size of metropolitan France (see map), the colony is so stagnant that its population has increased by only 10,000 in 350 years, to its present total of 31,000 inhabitants. French Guiana's chief contributions to mankind so far have been one of history's most infamous prisons, Devil's Island, and the loan of the name of its sleepy capital, Cayenne, to a famous variety of pepper. But now at last the lethargic land is...

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