French Guiana
French Guiana is the only one of the three Guianas not to achieve independance. The others are now called Guyana and Surinam. It forms part of the Guiana highlands, but is mainly low lying because of river erosion. There is a swampy coastal plain, with mangroves. Dense, tropical, hardwood forests cover most of the interior. The climate is hot and wet. The population is mostly Creole, with Native American, black, French, Lebanese, Chinese, Brazilian, and Southeast Asian minorities. In 1503 the Spanish were the first European settlers, followed in 1643 by the French who founded Cayenne, the capital. French rule began officially in 1667. From 1852 to 1939 France used the territory as a penal colony, and Devil's Island became notorious. The country was made an overseas department of France in 1946. It is the site of the European Space Agency's rocket-launching base, one of only a handful of spaceports on Earth, where a departing rocket enjoys the greater takeoff velocity imparted by the more rapid Eastward spin of the planet's equatorial regions.