It was called by the discoverers "the wild coast," and is accessible only by the mouths of its rivers the shores being every where lined with dangerous banks, or covered with impenetrable forests.

Its appearance from the sea is singularly wild and uncultivated, and it is so low and flat that, as it is approached, the trees along the beach are the first objects visible.

The soil, however, is fertile, and adapted to every variety of tropical production, sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, and cacao being its staple commodities.
To the distance of thirty or forty miles from the sea coast the land continues level, and in the rainy season some districts are covered with water.

Indeed, the whole country bordering on the coast is intersected with swamps, marshes, rivers, artificial canals, and extensive intervals.

This renders it unhealthy; and many natives of a more genial clime have perished in the provinces of Guiana by pestilential fevers.
These marshes and forests are nurseries of reptiles.