Settlement in Guiana from earliest times

The various European nations which had engaged in the search for Guiana, all after its discovery, struggled to make settlements in the land and to possess it. The degree of success which attended the efforts of each was various and not always proportionate to the success which had attended the endeavour of each to discover.
No nation had sought more eagerly for Guiana than had Spain; and, alone of the competing nations, Spain had no success in colonizing the discovered land on the southern side of the Orinoco. France too made some efforts both to discover and settle, but without very important results. The two chief colonizing nations were the Dutch and the English; and of these, the former had from the first laboured to settle rather than explore.

From the date of the formation of the first successful settlement in 1580, for more than eighty years, till 1663, France, Holland and England were competing with more or less success against each other for the possession of Guiana. Each of these three nations at first tried to form settlements at various points along the whole coast; but each after a time succeeded in gaining a footing along a distinct part of the coast, the Dutch nearest the Orinoco, the English eastward of the Dutch and the French eastward of the English.
Despite their ultimate failure, to Spain belongs the merit of having founded the earliest settlement in Guiana. As early as 1531, or perhaps the following year, Diego De Ornaz founded a settlement at the mouth of the River Caroni, on the eastern bank of the Orinoco. This, which afterward received the name Santo Thomé de Guayana, was destroyed by the Dutch in 1579, and, being rebuilt near the old site, was again destroyed, as told by Keymis in 1618. A second settlement is also said to have been formed by Spaniards under Gaspar De Sotelle at Cayenne in 1568 but this, having endured for five years, was then destroyed by the Indians of the district.
But in 1593, Berreo, the Spanish governor of Trinidad, formerly took possession of Guiana for his master Philip the Second. Two years later Raleigh reached Guiana and broke the shadow of Spanish power along the whole of that coast…
All the French attempts to settle Guiana took place within 80 years (1580-1660), which formed the chief period of colonization. [After several attempts, disrupted by the native Indians] some [settlements] perhaps survived at Cayenne and formed the nucleus of the present French colony at that place…It represents the only successful attempt at colonization by the French in Guiana.
The story of the Dutch settlements…is one of far greater success… while most …settlements…perished through the wantonly provoked ill-will of the Indians, those of the Dutch, who exerted themselves to establish friendly relations with the Indians, flourished in spite of many vicissitudes…The Dutch, devoting themselves from the first simply to the establishment of a trade in the known and useful products of the Guiana coast, left it to other nations to search for the expected gold and other treasure…Moreover, certain similarities between the natural features of Guiana and those of their old homes in Holland made their new home less repellent and disheartening to the Dutch than to men of other countries. (TO BE CONTINUED) (From: ‘Timehri: being the journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana’ 2. The founding of the Colonies A.D. 1580 – 1745. Edited by E.F.Im Thurn. Vol 11:1883.)