archbishop of Paris, she opened a gorgeous house with a theatre seating five hundred spectators in the Chaussée d’Antin. In this Temple of Terpsichore, as she named it, the wildest orgies took place. In 1786 she was compelled to get rid of the property, and it was disposed of by lottery for her benefit for the sum of 300,000 francs. Soon after her retirement in 1789 she married Jean Etienne Despréaux (1748–1820), dancer, song-writer and playwright.
GUIMET, JEAN BAPTISTE (1795–1871), French industrial
chemist, was born at Voiron on the 20th of July 1795. He studied
at the École Polytechnique in Paris, and in 1817 entered the
Administration des Poudres et Salpêtres. In 1828 he was
awarded the prize offered by the Société d’Encouragement pour
l’Industrie Nationale for a process of making artificial ultramarine
with all the properties of the substance prepared from lapis
lazuli; and six years later he resigned his official position in
order to devote himself to the commercial production of that
material, a factory for which he established at Fleurieux sur
Saône. He died on the 8th of April 1871.
His son Émile Étienne Guimet, born at Lyons on the 26th of June 1836, succeeded him in the direction of the factory, and founded the Musée Guimet, which was first located at Lyons in 1879 and was handed over to the state and transferred to Paris in 1885. Devoted to travel, he was in 1876 commissioned by the minister of public instruction to study the religions of the Far East, and the museum contains many of the fruits of this expedition, including a fine collection of Japanese and Chinese porcelain and many objects relating not merely to the religions of the East but also to those of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. He wrote Lettres sur l’Algérie (1877) and Promenades japonaises (1880), and also some musical compositions, including a grand opera, Taï-Tsoung (1894).
GUINEA, the general name applied by Europeans to part of
the western coast region of equatorial Africa, and also to the
gulf formed by the great bend of the coast line eastward and then
southward. Like many other geographical designations the
use of which is controlled neither by natural nor political
boundaries, the name has been very differently employed by
different writers and at different periods. In the widest acceptation
of the term, the Guinea coast may be said to extend from
13° N. to 16° S., from the neighbourhood of the Gambia to Cape
Negro. Southern or Lower Guinea comprises the coasts of
Gabun and Loango (known also as French Congo) and the Portuguese
possessions on the south-west coast, and Northern or
Upper Guinea stretches from the river Casamance to and inclusive
of the Niger delta, Cameroon occupying a middle position. In
a narrower use of the name, Guinea is the coast only from Cape
Palmas to the Gabun estuary. Originally, on the other hand,
Guinea was supposed to begin as far north as Cape Nun, opposite
the Canary Islands, and Gomes Azurara, a Portuguese historian
of the 15th century, is said to be the first authority who brings
the boundary south to the Senegal. The derivation of the name
is uncertain, but is probably taken from Ghinea, Ginnie, Genni
or Jenné, a town and kingdom in the basin of the Niger, famed
for the enterprise of its merchants and dating from the 8th
century A.D. The name Guinea is found on maps of the middle
of the 14th century, but it did not come into general use in
Europe till towards the close of the 15th century.[1]
Although the term Gulf of Guinea is applied generally to that
part of the coast south of Cape Palmas and north of the mouth
of the Congo, particular indentations have their peculiar designations.
The bay formed by the configuration of the land between
Cape St Paul and the Nun mouth of the Niger is known as the
Bight of Benin, the name being that of the once powerful native
state whose territory formerly extended over the whole district.
The Bight of Biafra, or Mafra (named after the town of Mafra in
southern Portugal), between Capes Formosa and Lopez, is the
most eastern part of the Gulf of Guinea; it contains the islands
Fernando Po, Prince’s and St Thomas’s. The name Biafra—as
indicating the country—fell into disuse in the later part of
the 19th century.
The coast is generally so low as to be visible to navigators only within a very short distance, the mangrove trees being their only sailing marks. In the Bight of Biafra the coast forms an exception, being high and bold, with the Cameroon Mountains for background. At Sierra Leone also there is high land. The coast in many places maintains a dead level for 30 to 50 m. inland. Vegetation is exceedingly luxuriant and varied. The palm-oil tree is indigenous and abundant from the river Gambia to the Congo. The fauna comprises nearly all the more remarkable of African animals. The inhabitants are the true Negro stock.
By the early traders the coast of Upper Guinea was given names founded on the productions characteristic of the different parts. The Grain coast, that part of the Guinea coast extending for 500 m. from Sierra Leone eastward to Cape Palmas received its name from the export of the seeds of several plants of a peppery character, called variously grains of paradise, Guinea pepper and melegueta. The name Grain coast was first applied to this region in 1455. It was occasionally styled the Windy or Windward coast, from the frequency of short but furious tornadoes throughout the year. Towards the end of the 18th century, Guinea pepper was supplanted in Europe by peppers from the East Indies. The name now is seldom used, the Grain coast being divided between the British colony of Sierra Leone and the republic of Liberia. The Ivory coast extends from Cape Palmas to 3° W., and obtained its name from the quantity of ivory exported therefrom. It is now a French possession. Eastwards of the Ivory coast are the Gold and Slave coasts. The Niger delta was for long known as the Oil rivers. To two regions only of the coast is the name Guinea officially applied, the French and Portuguese colonies north of Sierra Leone being so styled.
Of the various names by which the divisions of Lower Guinea were known, Loango was applied to the country south of the Gabun and north of the Congo river. It is now chiefly included in French Congo. Congo was used to designate the country immediately south of the river of the same name, usually spoken of until the last half of the 19th century as the Zaire. Congo is now one of the subdivisions of Portuguese West Africa (see Angola). It must not be confounded with the Belgian Congo.
Few questions in historical geography have been more keenly discussed than that of the first discovery of Guinea by the navigators of modern Europe. Lancelot Malocello, a Genoese, in 1270 reached at least as far as the Canaries. The first direct attempt to find a sea route to India was, it is said, also made by Genoese, Ugolino and Guido de Vivaldo, Tedisio Doria and others who equipped two galleys and sailed south along the African coast in 1291. Beyond the fact that they passed Cape Nun there is no trustworthy record of their voyage. In 1346 a Catalan expedition started for “the river of gold” on the Guinea coast; its fate is unknown. The French claim that between 1364 and 1410 the people of Dieppe sent out several expeditions to Guinea; and Jean de Béthencourt, who settled in the Canaries about 1402, made explorations towards the south. At length the consecutive efforts of the navigators employed by Prince Henry of Portugal—Gil Eannes, Diniz Diaz, Nuno Tristam, Alvaro Fernandez, Cadamosto, Usodimare and Diego Gomez—made known the coast as far as the Gambia, and by the end
- ↑ Guinea may, however, be derived from Ghana (or Ghanata) the name of the oldest known state in the western Sudan. Ghana dates, according to some authorities, from the 3rd century A.D. From the 7th to the 12th century it was a powerful empire, its dominions extending, apparently, from the Atlantic to the Niger bend. At one time Jenné was included within its borders. Ghana was finally conquered by the Mandingo kings of Melle in the 13th century. Its capital, also called Ghana, was west of the Niger, and is generally placed some 200 m. west of Jenné. In this district L. Desplagnes discovered in 1907 numerous remains of a once extensive city, which he identified as those of Ghana. The ruins lie 25 m. W. of the Niger, on both banks of a marigot, and are about 40 m. N. by E. of Kulikoro (see La Géographie, xvi. 329). By some writers Ghana city is, however, identified with Walata, which town is mentioned by Arab historians as the capital of Ghanata. The identification of Ghana city with Jenné is not justified, though Idrisi seems to be describing Jenné when writing of “Ghana the Great.”
