chapter 5, and foot-note.

"The term Creole is commonly applied in books to the native of a Spanish colony descended from European ancestors, while often the popular acceptation conveys the idea of an origin partly African. In fact, its meaning varies in different times and regions, and in Louisiana alone has, and has had, its broad and its close, its earlier and its later, significance. For instance, it did not here first belong to the descendants of Spanish, but of French settlers. But such a meaning implied a certain excellence of origin, and so came early to include any native of French or Spanish descent by either parent, whose pure non-mixture with the slave race entitled him to social rank. Much later the term was adopted by, not conceded to, the natives of European-African, or Creole-African blood, and is still so used among themselves. At length the spirit of commerce availed itself of the money value of so honored a title, and broadened its meaning to take in any creature or thing of variety or manufacture peculiar to Louisiana, that might become an object of sale, as Creole ponies, chickens, cows, shoes, eggs, wagons, baskets, cabbages, etc. ... There are no English, Scotch, Irish, Western, or Yankee Creoles, these all being included under the distinctive term 'Americans.' ... There seems to be no more serviceable definition of the Creoles of Louisiana or of New Orleans than to say they are the French-speaking, native, ruling class."

_G. E. Waring, Jr., and G. W Cable, History and Present Condition of New Orleans (Tenth Census of the U. S., volume 19, page 218)._

CREONES, The.

See BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

CRESCENT, The Order of the.

A Turkish Order instituted in 1799 by the reforming sultan, Selim III. Lord Nelson, after the victory of Aboukir, was the first to receive this decoration.

CRESPY IN VALOIS, Treaty of (1544).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547.

CRETAN LABYRINTH,

See LABYRINTHS.

CRETE.

"The institutions of the Cretan state show in many points so great a similarity to those of Sparta, that it is not surprising if it seemed to the ancients as though either Crete were a copy of Sparta, or Sparta of Crete. Meanwhile this similarity may be explained, apart from intentional imitation, by the community of nationality, which, under like conditions, must produce like institutions. For in Crete, as in Laconia, Dorians were the ruling people, who had subdued the old inhabitants of the island and placed them in a position of subordination. ... It is, however, beyond doubt that settlements were made in Crete by the Phoenicians, and that a large portion of the island was subject to them. In the historical period, it is true, we no longer find them here; we find, on the contrary, only a number of Greek states, all moreover Dorian. Each of these consisted of a city with its surrounding district, in which no doubt also smaller cities in their turn were found standing in a relation of subordination to the principal city. For that each city of the 'ninety-citied' or 'hundred-citied' isle, as Homer calls it, formed also an independent state, will probably not be supposed. As independent states our authorities give us reason to recognize about seventeen. The most important of these were in earlier times Cnossus, Gortyn and Cydonia."-

_G. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece: The State,