SOUTMAN, Cornelius, South American explorer, born near Berbice, Dutch Guiana, in 1686 ; died in Harlem, Holland, in 1751. He studied at Leyden, and returned to Guiana after the death of his father to assume the management of his estate. The general peace of 1713 afforded him facilities to follow his natural tastes, and he explored the three Guianas, crossed to Brazil, and was making botanical researches on the banks of the Oyapoc river when an uprising of the negroes compelled him to flee, abandoning his papers, which were lost. He was captured in the basin of the Ouanari by his pursuers, and, although he was rescued from the stake by a party of friendly Indians. he never afterward completely recovered from the injuries that he had suffered. In 1728 he visited Batavia and the Sunda archipelago, doubled Cape Horn, visited Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, Saint Eustatius, and several of the West Indies, and made a valuable collection of medicinal plants. From 1732 till 1739 he was deputy governor of Surinam. Failing health decided him to reside in Europe, and he settled in Harlem, devoting his last years to the culture of tulips and endeavoring to naturalize in his fine garden tropical and medicinal plants from Guiana. His works include "Beschryving van Cayenne en Surinam, gelegen op het vaste landt van Guyana in Amerika" (The Hague, 1722); "Beschryving eener Reis in Zuid-Amerika, bevattende verschillende beschouvingen on trent medicinale planten in Brazilie en Guyana" (Amsterdam, 1729); "Reis naar Cayenne en in her binnenland van Guyana en Brazilie " (1732); "Beschryving van Batavia en van de Eilanden van het Sonda archipel" (1735) ; and "Geschiedenis der planten van Guyana, in orde gebracht volgens de sexueele methode" (Harlem, 1746).