OF

UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE.

A REPRINT

OF THE LAST (1880) EDINBURGH AND LONDON EDITION
OF CHAMBERS'S ENCYCLOPÆDIA,

Telith Copious Additions by American Editors.

FIFTEEN VOLUMES,

VOLUME III,

NEW YORK:
AMERICAN BOOK EXCHANGE,

TRIBUNE BUILDING,

1880.

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

AMERICAN PUBLISHER'S NOTICE

THIS work, although based upon Chambers's Encyclopædia, whose distinguished
merit is widely known, differs from it in important respects. It could scarcely be
expected that an Encyclopædia, edited and published for a foreign market, would give
as much prominence to American topics as American readers might desire. To supply
these and other deficiencies the American Editors have inserted about 15,000 titles,
arranging the whole, including Chambers's Supplement, in a single alphabet. The
total number of titles is now about 40,000. The additions give greater fullness in the
departments of biography, geography, history, natural history, and general and applied
science. Scrupulous care has been taken not to mutilate or modify the original text of
the edition of 1880; no changes have been made except such verbal alterations as are
required by the omission of the wood-cuts. The titles of articles from Chambers's
Encyclopædia, either from the main work or from the Supplement, are printed in bold-
faced type-AMERICA. The titles of the American additions, whether of new topics or
of enlargements of the old, are printed in plain capitals-AMERICA. Should it appear
that an article from the English work and its American continuation disagree in any
points, the reader will readily refer the conflicting statements to their proper sources.

The labor of consultation will be much reduced by the catch-words in bold-faced
type at the top of the page, being the first and last titles of the pages which face each
other; and by the full title-words on the back of the volume, being the first and last
titles contained therein.

The word ante refers to Chambers's Encyclopædia, as represented in this issue.
Whenever the word (ante) follows a title in the American additions, it indicates that
the article is an enlargement of one under the same title in Chambers's Encyclopædia—
usually to be found immediately preceding.

LIBRARY OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE.

RAZEN SEA, the large metal vessel, probably of copper, oval shaped, with 12 oxen

vessel resting on their rumps. It was in the priest's court of Solomon's temple, and held water for the use of the servitors.

BRAZIL', the most extensive state of South America. Towards the interior, it borders on all the other states of South America except Chili and Buenos Ayres-on Uruguay, the Argentine Confederation, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, the United States of Colombia, Venezuela, and Guiana, English, Dutch, and French; while its sea-board, beginning about 200 m. to the n. of the Amazon, and reaching to within the same distance of the Plata, projects into the Atlantic fully 1000 m. to the e. of the direct line-pretty nearly a meridian-between its two extremes. This immense coun try extends between lat. 4° 30' n. and 33° s., and between long. 35° and 70° w., being, in round numbers, 2600 m. long and 2500 broad. The area, according to official accounts, is 3,200,000 sq. miles. But B. was not always, in point of extent, what it now is. The Portuguese, who, in 1500, accidentally discovered the s.e. coast of the country (but that only after one of the Pinzons had, on behalf of Spain, followed the shores of the continent from its eastern angle to the mouth of the Orinoco), claimed all between the Plata and the Amazon. Soon, however, the Spaniards of Buenos Ayres, feeling that the complete command of their mighty river was to them a necessary of life, colonized the left bank by founding Montevideo. But nearly twenty years earlier, B. had acquired more territory on the Amazon than it was to abandon on the Plata, having, in 1509, wrested from France, then at war with Portugal, what may now be designated Brazilian Guiana. It was only in 1531 that the Portuguese, busy as they were in India, here planted their first settlement. In 1578, B. fell, along with Portugal itself, under the power of Spain-a connection which, besides being essentially detrimental, speedily threw it as a prey into the hands of the Dutch republic; and though Portugal regained its own independence in 1640, it was not until 1654 that B. was entirely recovered from the Hollanders. Thenceforward, the colony entered on a new era. Supplanted, in a great measure, throughout the east by the Dutch, the mother-country was now directing most of its attention to its possessions on either side of the Atlantic. About a century and a half later, a still more beneficial change-and that, too, arising from the mother-country's own disasters-was inaugurated in the colony. In 1808, under the pressure of French invasion, the monarchy, in the persons of the royal family, was virtually transferred from Portugal to B., an event which, doubtless through British counsels and influence, was immediately followed by the opening of the ports to foreigners. As a remoter benefit, too, of an incident which had no paralled either in English or in Spanish America, B., on shaking off, like its neighbors, the European yoke altogether, found a merely nominal revolution sufficient for its purpose, establishing, or rather accepting, an hereditary empire instead of restless and precarious republicanism; and ever since the transition-period of 1821-25, this consolidated government, with subordinate institutions for local objects, has secured to B.'s twenty vast provinces comparative unity and peace. A war was undertaken in 1865, in concert with the Argentine republic and Uruguay (formerly a province of B.), against Paraguay, which terminated in the defeat of the Paraguayans; and in 1872 Paraguay ceded to B., as a war-indemnity, the long-disputed territory comprised between the Paraguay and the Paraná, n. of the Apa and Igatim. This territory has an extent of about 16,000 sq. miles.

The executive authority is vested in the emperor, who, besides being aided by a council of state, must act through responsible ministers. The legislature consists of two chambers, which sit four months every year. Both the deputies and the senators, who must have annual incomes respectively of 800 millreas and 1600 are indirectly elected by voters, who must possess 200 millreas per annum-the former for four years, and the latter for life. The senate, however, appears to represent the crown as well as the people, inasmuch as each constituency merely nominates three individuals for his majesty's choice of one. Justices of peace, also, are appointed by the respective com