GUIANAS. — The name GUIANAS is generically given to that vast region (ca. 900,000 sq. km.) of mountainous terrain in South America enclosed between the lower courses of the Orinoco and the Amazon and bounded on the west by the Cassiquiare. It consists of a series of ancient uplifts now leveled into a series of plateaus, deeply cut by rivers and sloping northward, where they descend to the sea in a narrow, flat, and unhealthy alluvial strip, while their steeper side faces inland (maximum elevation 2,632 m. in the Roraima Mountains). Given the climate (equatorial, very rainy), the dominant landscape is forest; the rivers are numerous and water-rich, but interrupted by
GUGLIELMOTTI, ALBERTO — PORTRAIT.