Chapter 39

districts of the state, and railways connect it with the mineral regions of north central Alabama. The principal tributary of the Alabama is the Canaba (about 200 m. long), which enters it about 10 m. below Selma. Of the rivers which form the Alabama, the Coosa crosses the mineral region of Alabama, and is navigable for light-draft boats from Rome, Georgia (where it is formed by the junction of the Oostenaula and Etowah rivers), to about 117 m. above Wetumpka (about 102 m. below Rome and 26 m. below Greensport), and from Wetumpka to its junction with the Tallapoosa; the channel of the river has been considerably improved by the Federal government. The navigation of the Lallapoosa river (which has its source in Paulding county, Georgia, and is about 250 m. long) is prevented by shoals and a 60-ft. fall at Tallassee, a few miles N. of its junction with the Coosa. The Alabama is navigable throughout the year. In 1878 the Federal government undertook to make a channel tho length of the Alabama 200 ft. wide and 4 ft. deep; an amendment in 1891 provided for a 6-ft. channel at low water, and in June 1907 this work was reported as ``10% completed'' at an expenditure of $303,650. The Mobile river is navigable for vessels of about 14 ft. draft. The Alabama is an important carrier of cotton, cotton seed, fertilizer, cereals, lumber, naval stores, &c.; and in the fiscal year 1906-1907 the freight tonnage was 417,041 tons.

ALABASTER, or ARBLASTIER, WILLIAM (1567--1640), English Latin poet and scholar, was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, in 1567. He was, so Fuller states, a nephew by marriage of Dr John Still, bishop of Bath and Wells. His surname, sometimes written Arblastier, is one of the many variants of arbalester, a cross-bowman. Alabaster was educated at Westminster school, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1583. He became a fellow, and in 1592 was incorporated of the university of Oxford. About 1502 he produced at Trinity College his Latin tragedy of Roxana.1 It is modelled on the tragedies of Seneca, and is a stiff and spiritless work. Fuller and Anthony a Wood bestowed exaggerated praise on it, while Samuel Johnson regarded it as the only Latin verse worthy of notice produced in England before Milton's elegies. Roxana is founded on the La Dalida (Venice, 1567) of Luigi Groto, known as Cieco di Hadria, and Hallam asserts that it is a plagiarism (Literature of Europe, iii. 54). A surreptitious edition in 1632 was followed by an authorized version a plagiarii unguibus vindicata, aucta et agnita ab Aithore, Gulielmo, Alabastro. One book of an epic poem in Latin hexameters, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, is preserved in MS. in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. This poem, Elisaeis, Apotheosis poetica, Spenser highly esteemed. ``Who lives that can match that heroick song?'' he says in Colin Clout's come home again, and begs ``Cynthia'' to withdraw the poet from his obscurity. In June 1596 Alabaster sailed with Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, on the expedition to Cadiz in the capacity of chaplain, and, while he was in Spain, he became a Roman Catholic. An account of his change of laith is given in an obscurely worded sonnet contained in a MS. copy of Divine Meditations, by Mr Alabaster (see J. P. Collier, Hist. of Eng. Dram. Poetry, ii. 341). He defended his conversion in a pamphlet, Seven Motives, of which no copy is extant. The proof of its publication only remains in two tracts, A Booke of the Seuen Planets, or Seuen wandring motives of William Alablaster's (sic) wit . . ., by John Racster (1598), and An Answer to William Alabaster. his Motives, by Roger Fenton (1599). From these it appears that Alabaster was imprisoned for his change of faith in the Tower of London during 1598 and 1599. In 1607 he published at Antwerp Apparatus in Revelationem Jesu Christi, in which his study of the Kabbalah was turned to account in a mystical interpretation of scripture which drew down the censure alike of Protestants and Catholics. The book was placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum at Rome early in 1610. Alabaster says in the preface to his Ecce sponsus veni (1633), a treatise on the time of the second advent of Christ, that he went to Rome and was there imprisoned by the Inquisition but succeeded in escaping to England and again embraced the Protestant faith. He received a prebend in St Paul's cathedral, London, and the living of Therlield, Hertfordshire. He died in 1640. Alabaster's other cabalistic writings are Commenitarius de Beslia Apocalyptica (1621) and Spiraculum tubarum . . . . (1633), a mystical interpretation of the Pentateuch. It was by these theological writings that he won the praise of Robert Herrick, who calls him ``the triumph of the day'' and the ``one only glory of a million'' (``To Doctor Alabaster'' in Hesperides, 1648). He also published (1637) Lexicon Pentaglottoni, Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum. Talmudico-Rabbinicci et Arabicum.

See T. Fuller, Worthies of England (ii. 343); J. P. Collior, Bibl. and Crit. Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (vol. i. 1865); Pierre Bayle, Dictionary, Historical and Critical (ed. London, 1834); also the Athenaeum (December 26, 1903), there Sir Bertram Dobell describes a MS. in his possession containing forty-three sonnets by Alabaster.

1 For an analysis of the play see an article on the Latin university plays in the Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft (Weimar, 1898)

ALABASTER, a name applied to two distinct mineral substances, the one a hydrous sulphate of lime and the other a carbonate of lime. The former is the alabaster of the present day, the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients. The two kinds are readily distinguished from each other by their relative hardness. The modern alabaster is so soft as to be readily scratched even by the finger-nail (hardness= 1.5 to 2), whilst the stone called alabaster by the ancients is too hard to be scratched in this way (hardness=3), though it yields readily to a knife. Moreover, the ancient alabaster, being a carbonate, effervesces on being touched with hydrochloric acid, whereas the modern alabaster when so treated remains practically unaffected.

Ancient Alabaster.---This substance, the ``alabaster'' of scripture, is often termed Oriental alabaster, since the early examples came from the East. The Greek name alabastrites is said to be derived from the town of Alabastron, in Egypt, where the stone was quarried, but the locality probably owed its name to the mineral; the origin of the mineral-name is obscure, and it has been suggested that it may have had an Arabic origin. The Oriental alabaster was highly esteemed for making small perfume-bottles or ointment vases called alabastra; and this has been conjectured to be a possible source of the name. Alabaster was also employed in Egypt for Canopic jars and various other sacred and sepulchral objects. A splendid sarcophagus, sculptured in a single block of translucent Oriental alabaster from Alabastron, is in the Soane Museum, London. This was discovered by Giovanni Beizoni, in 1817, in the tomb of Seti I., near Thebes, and was purchased by Sir John Soane, having previously been offered to the British Museum for

Oriental alabaster is either a stalagmitic deposit, from the floor and walls of limestone-caverns, or a kind of travertine, deposited from springs of calcareous water. Its deposition in successive layers gives rise to the banded appearance which the marble often shows on cross-section, whence it is known as onyx-marble or alabaster-onyx, or sometimes simply as onyx--a term which should, however, be restricted to a siliceous mineral. The Egyptian alabaster has been extensively worked near Suez and near Assiut; there are many ancient quarries in the hills overlooking the plain of Tell el Amarna. The Algerian ony.xmarble has been largely quarried in the province of Oran. In Mexico there are famous deposits of a delicate green variety at La Pedrara, in the district of Tecali, near Puebla. Onyx-marble occurs also in the district of Tehuacan and at several localities in California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Virginia.

Modern Alabaster.--- When the term ``alabaster'' is used without any qualification it invariably means, at the present day, a finely granular variety of gypsum (q.v..) This mineral, or alabaster proper, occurs in England in the Keuper marls of the Midlands, especially at Chellaston in Derbyshire, at Fauld in Staffordshire and near Newark in Nottinghamshire. At all these localities it has been extensively worked. It is also found, though in subordinate quantity, at Watchet in Somersetshire, near Penarth in Giamorganshire, and elsewhere. Iii Cumberland and Westmorland it occurs largely in the New Red rocks, but at a lower geological horizon. The alabaster of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire is found in thick nodular beds or ``floors,'' in spheroidal masses known as ``balls'' or ``bowls.'' and in smaller lenticular masses termed ``cakes.'' At Chellaston. where the alabaster is known as ``Patrick,'' it has been worked into ornaments under the name of ``Derbyshire spar''---a term applied also to fluor-spar. The finer kinds of alabaster are largely employed as an ornamental stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration, and for the srails of staircases and halls Its softness enables it to be readily carved into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it inapplicable to outdoor work. The purest alabaster is a snow-white material of fine tiniforni grain, but it is often associated with oxide of iron, which produces brown clouding and veining in the stone. The coarser varieties of alabaster are converted by calcination into plaster of Paris, whence they are sometimes known as ``plaster stone.''

On the continent of Europe the centre of the alabaster trade is Florence. The Tuscan alabaster occurs in nodular masses, embedded in limestone, interstratified with marls of Miocene and Pliocene age. The mineral is largely worked, by means of underground galleries, in the district of Volterra. Several varieties are recognized---veined, spotted, clouded, agatiform, &c. The finest kind, obtained principally from Castellina, is sent to Florence for figure-sculpture, whilst the common kinds are carved locally, at a very cheap rate, into vases, clock-cases and various ornamental objects, in which a large trade is carried on, especially in Florence, Pisa and Leghorn. In order to diminish the translucency of the alabaster and to produce an opacity suggestive of true marble, the statues are immersed in a bath of water and gradually heated nearly to the boiling-point--an operation requiring great care, for if the temperature be not carefully regulated, the stone acquires a dead-white chalky appearance. The effect of heating appears to be a partial dehydration ofthegypsum. If properly treated, it Very closely resembles true marble, and is known as mormo di Castellina. It should be noted that sulphate of lime (gypsum) was used also by the ancients, and was employed, for instance, in Assyrian sculpture, so that some of the ancient alabaster is identical with the modern stone.

Alabaster may be stained by digesting it, after heing heated, in various pigmentary solutions; and in this way a good imitation of coral has been produced (alabaster coral).

See M. Carmichael, Report on the Volterra Alabaster Industry, Foreign Office, Miscellaneous Series, No. 352 (London, 1895): A. T. Metcalfe, ``The Gypsum Deposits of Nottingham and Derbyshire,'' Transactions of the Federated Institution, vol. xii. (1896), p. i107; J . G. Goodchild, ``The Natural Uistory of Gypsum''' Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, vol. x. (1888), p. 425; George P. Merrill, ``The Onyx Marbles,'' Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1893, p. 539. (F. W. R.*)

ALACOQUE, or AL COQ, MARGUERITE MARIE (1647--1690), French nun and mystic, was born at Lauthecourt, a village in the diocese of Autun, on the 22nd of July 1647. She would seem to have been from the first of a morbid and unhealthy temperament, and before the age of thirteen was the subject of a paralytic seizure. Having been cured of this, as she believed, by the intercession of the Holy Virgin, she changed her name to Marie and vowed to devote her life to her service. In May 1671 she entered the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial, in the diocese of Autun, and took the final vows in November 1672. Though her reading was confined to the lives of the saints, she taught in the school kept by the nuns for the girls of the neighbourhood, to whom she endeared herself by her kindly disposition. The appalling austerities, however, to which she was allowed to subject herself quickly affected her mental and bodily health. Hallucinations, to which she had been always subject, became more and more frequent. She conceived herself to be specially favoured by Christ, who appeared to her in the most extravagant forms. At last, by dint of fasting and lacerating her flesh, she succeeded in reducing herself to such a state of ecstatic suffering that she belies'ed herself to be undergoing in her own person the Passion of the Lord. Her reward was the supreme vision in which Christ revealed to her His heart burning with divine love, and even, so she afflrmed, exchanged it with hers, at the same time bidding her establish, on the Friday following, the feast of Corpus Christi, a festival in honour of His Sacred Heart. It was not till ten years later, in 1685, that the festival was first celebrated at Paray, and not till after the death of Marguerite, on the 17th of October 1690, that the cult of the Sacredheart, fostered by the Jesuits and the subject of violent controversies within the church, spread throughout France and Christendom. (See SACRED HEART.) .

Marguerite Alacoque was beatified by Pius IX. in 1864. Her short devotional writing, La Devotion au Sacre-Coeur de Jesus, was published by J. Croiset in 1698, and is now very popular among Roman Catholics.

See Bishop Languet, Vie de la venerable Marguerite-Marie (Paris, 1724), translated and edited by F. W. Faber (1847): Mgr. Bougaud, Histoire de la bienheureuse Marguerite-Marie (Paris, 1874); G. Tckell, S.J., The Life ofblessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, with some account of the devotion to the Sacred Heart (London, 18O9); b. B. H. R. . Capefigue, Marie Marguerite Al-Coq (Paris, 1866).

ALAGOAS, a maritime state of Brazil, bounded N. and W. by the state of Pernambuco, S. and W. by the state of Sergipe, and E. by the Atlantic. It hasan area of 22,584 sq. m. A dry, semibarren plateau, fit for grazing only, extends across the W. part of the state, breaking down into long fertile valleys and wooded ridges towards the coast, giving the country a mountainous character. The coastal plain is filled with lakes (logoas), in some cases formed by the blocking up of river outlets by beach sands. The valleys and slopes are highly fertile and produce sugar, cotton, tobacco, Indian corn, rice, mandioca and Iruits. Hides and skins, mangabeira rubber, cabinet woods, castor beans and rum are also exported. Cattle-raising was formerly a prominent industry, but it has greatly declined. Manufactures have been developed to a limited extent only, though protective tariff laws have been adopted for their encouragement. The climate is hot and humid, and fevers are prevalent in the hot season. The capital, Maceio, is the chief commercial city of the state, and its port (Jaragua) has a large foreign and coastwise trade. The principal towns are Alagoas, formerly the capital, picturesquely situated on Lake Manguaba, 15 m. S.W. of Maceio, and Penedo, a small port on the lower Sao Francisco, 26 m. above the river's mouth. Before 1817 Alagoas formed part of the capitania of Pernambuco, but in that year the district was rewarded with a separate government for refusing to join a revolution, and in 1823 became a province of the empire. The advent of the republic in 1889 changed the province into a state.

ALAIN DE LILLE [Alanus de Insulis] (c. 1128-1202), French theologian and poet, was born, probably at Lille, some years before 1128. Little is known of his life. He seems to have taught in the schools of Paris, and he attended the Lateran Council in 1179. He afterwards inhabited Montpellier (he is sometimes called Alanus de Montepessulano), lived for a time outside the walls of any cloister, and finally retired to Citeaux, where he died in 1202. He had a very widespread reputation during his lifetime and his knowledge, more varied than profound, caused him to be called Doctor universalis. Among his very numerous works two poems entitle him to a distinguished place in the Latin literature of the middle ages; one of these, the De planctu naturae, is an ingenious satire on the vices of humanity; the other, the Anticlaudianus, a treatise on morals, the form of which recalls the pamphlet of Claudian against Rufinus, is agreeably versified and relatively pure in its latinity. As a theologian Alain de Lille shared in the mystic reaction of the second half of the 12th century against the scholastic philosophy. His mysticism, however, is far from being as absolute as that of the Victorines. In the Anticlaudianus he sums up as follows: Reason, guided by prudence, can unaided discover most of the truths of the physical order; for the apprehension of religious truths it must trust to faith. This rule is completed in his treatise, Ars catholicae fidei, as follows: Theology itself may be demonstrated by reason. Alain even ventures an immediate application of this principle, and tries to prove geometrically the dogmas defined in the Creed. This bold attempt is entirely factitious and verbal, and it is only his employment of various terms not generally used in such a connexion (axiom, theorem, corollary, etc.) that gives his treatise its apparent originality. Alain de Lille has often been confounded with other persons named Alain, in particular with Alain, archbishop of Auxerre, Alan, abbot of Tewkesbury, Alain de Podio, etc. Certain facts of their lives have been attributed to him, as well as some of their works: thus the Life of St Bernard should be ascribed to Alain of Auxerre and the Commentary upon Merlin to Alan of Tewkesbury. Neither is the philosopher of Lille the author of a Memoriale rerum difficilium, published under his name; and it is exceedingly doubtful whether the Dicta Alani de lapide philocophico really issued from his pen. On the other hand, it now seems practically demonstrated that Alain de Lille was the author of the Ars catholicae fidei and the treatise Contra haereticos.

The works of Alain de Lille have been published by Migne, Patrologia latina, vol. ccx. A critical edition of the Anticlaudianus and of the De planctu naturae is given by Th. Wright in vol. ii. of the Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century (London, 1872). See Haureau, Memoire sur la vie et quelques oeuvres d'Alain de Lille (Paris, 1885); M. Baumgartner, Die Philosophie des Alanus de Insulis (Munster, 1896). (P. A.)

ALAIS, a town of southern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gard, 25 m. N.N.W. of Nimes on the Paris-Lyon railway, on which it is an important junction. Pop. (1906) 18,987. The town is situated at the foot of the Cevenues, on the left bank of the Gardon, which half surrounds it. The streets are wide and its promenades and fine plane-trees make the town attractive; but the public buildings, the chief of which are the church of St Jean, a heavy building of the 18th century, and the citadel, which serves as barracks and prison, are of small interest. Pasteur prosecuted his investigations into the silkworm disease at Alais, and the town has dedicated a bust to his memory. There is also a statue of the chemist J. B. Dumas. Alais has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a lycee and a school of mines. The town is one of the most important markets for raw silk and cocoons in the south of France, and the Gardon supplies power to numerous silkmills. It is also the centre of a mineral field. which yields large quantities of coal, iron, zinc and lead; its blast-furnaces, foundries, glass-works and engineering works afford employment to many workmen.

In the 16th century Alais was an important Huguenot centre. In 1629 the town was taken by Louis XIII., and by the peace of Alais the Huguenots gave up their right to places de surete (garrison towns) and other privileges. A bishopric was established there in 1694 but suppressed in 1790.

ALAJUELA, the capital of the province of Alajuela, in Costa Rica, Central America, on the`transcontinental railway, 15 m. W. of San Jose. Pop. (1904) 4860. Alajuela is built at the southern base of the volcano of Poas (8895 ft.) and Overlooks the fertile plateau of San Jose. Its central square, adorned with a handsome bronze fountain, contains the municipal buildings, and a large but unattractive cathedral. The town covers a considerable area; the detached white houses of its suburbs are surrounded by trees and flowering shrubs. Alajuela is the centre of the Costa Rican sugar trade, and an important market for coffee. Its products are exported from Puntarenas, on the Pacific Ocean, 32 m. W. The province of Alajuela includes the territory of the Guatusos Indians, along the northern frontier; the towns of Atenas, Grecia, Naranjo and San Ramon (all with less than 5000 inhabitants), and the gold-mines of Aguacate, a little north of Atenas.

ALAMANNI, or ALLEMANNI, a German tribe, first mentioned by Dio Cassius, under the year 213. They apparently dwelt in the basin of the Maine, to the south of the Chatti. According to Asinius Quadratus their name indicates that they were a conglomeration of various tribes. There can be little doubt, however, that the ancient Hermunduri formed the preponderating element in the nation. Among the other elements may be mentioned the Juthungi, Bucinobantes, Lentienses, and perhaps the Armalausi. From the 4th century onwards we hear also of the Suebi or Suabi. The Hermunduri had apparendy belonged to the Suebi, but it is likely enough that reinforcements from new Suebic tribes had now moved westward. In later times the names Alamanni and Suebi seem to be synonymous. The tribe was continually engaged in conflicts with the Romans, the most famous encounter being that at Strassburg, in which they were defeated by Julian, afterwards emperor, in the year 357, when their king Chonodomarius was taken prisoner. Early in the 5th century the Alamanni appear to have crossed the Rhine and conquered and settled Alsace and a large part of Switzerlafid. Their kingdom lasted until the year 405, when they were conquered by Clovis, from which time they formed part of the Frankish dominions. The Alamannic and Swabian dialects are now spoken in German Switzerland, the southern parts of Baden and Alsace, Wurttemberg and a small portion of Bavaria.

See Dio Cassius lxvii. ff.; Ammianus Marcellinus, passim; Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, book ii.; C. Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstamme (Munich, 1837), pp. Ro5 ff.; O. Bremer in H. Paul, Grundriss der Permanischen Philologie (2nd ed., Strassburg, 1900), vol. iii. pp. 930 h. (F. G. M. B.)

ALAMANNI, or ALEMANNI, LUIGI (1405-1556), Italian statesman and poet, was born at Florence. His father was a devoted adherent of the Medici party, but Luigi, smarting under a supposed injustice, joined with Others in an unsuccessful conspiracy against Giulio de' Medici, afterwards POpe Clement VII. He was obliged in consequence to take refuge in Venice, and, on the accession of Clement, to flee to France. When Florence shook off the papal yoke in 1527, Alamanni returned, and took a prominent part in the management of the affairs of the republic. On the restoration of the Medici in 1530 he had again to take refuge in France, where he composed the greater part of his works. He was a favourite with Francis I., who sent him as ambassador to Charles V. after the peace of Crepy in 1544. As an instance of his tact in this capacity, it is related that, when Charles interrupted a complimentary address by quoting from a satirical poem of Alamanni's the words---

``l' aquila grifagna, Che per piu devorar, duoi rostri porta''

(Two crooked bills the ravenous eagle bears, The better to devour),

the latter at once replied that he spoke them as a poet, who was permitted to use fictions, but that he spoke now as an ambassador, who was obliged to tell the truth. The ready reply pleased Charles, who added some complimentary words. After the death of Francis, Alamanni enjoyed the confidence of his successor Henry II., and in 1551 was sent by him as his ambassador to Genoa. He died at Amboise on the 18th of April 1556. He wrote a large number of poems, distinguished by the purity and excellence of their style. The best is a didactic poem, La Coltivazione (Paris, 1546), written in imitation of Virgil's Georgics. His Opere Toscane (Lyons, 1532) consists of satirical pieces written in blank verse. An unfinished poem, Avarchide, in imitation of the Iliad, was the work of his old age and has little merit. It has been said by some that Alamanni was the first to use blank verse in Italian poetry, but the distinction belongs rather to his contemporary Giangiorgio Trissino. He also wrote a poetical romance, Girone il Cortese (Paris, 1548); a tragedy, Antigone; a comedy, Flora; and other poems. His works were published, with a biography by P. Raffaelli, as Versi e prose di Luigi Alamanni (Florence, 1859).

See G. Naro, Luigi Alamanni e la coltivazione (Syracuse, 1897), and C . Corso, Un decennio di patriottismo di Luigi Alamanni (Palermo, 1898).

ALAMEAGH, or ALUMBAGH, the name of a large park 01 walled enclosure, containing a palace, a mosque and other buildings, as well as a beautiful garden, situated about 4 m. from Lucknow, near the Cawnpore road, in the United Provinces of India. It was converted into a fort by the mutineers in 1857, and after its capture by the British was of importance in connexion with the military operations around Lucknow. (See INDIAN MUTINY and OUTRAM, SIR JAMES.)

ALAMEDA, a residential city of Alameda county, California, U.S.A., on an artificial island about 5 m. long and 1 m. wide, on the E. side of San Francisco bay, opposite to and about 6 m. from San Francisco, and directly S. of Oakland, from which it is separated by a drainage canal, spanned by bridges. Included within the limits of the city is Bay Farm island, with an area of about 3 sq. m. Pop. (1870) 15571 (1880) 5708; (1890) 11,165; (1900) 16,464, of whom 4175 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 23,383. Alameda is served by the Southern Pacific railway, and is connected by an electric line with Oakland and Berkeley. Its site is low and level and its plan fairly regular. Among the city's manufactures are terra-cotta tiles, pottery, rugs, refrigerators and salt. The city owns and operates the electriclighting plant; the water-works system is privately owned, and the water supply is obtained from deep wells at San Leandro. A settlement existed here before the end of the Mexican period. In 1854 it was incorporated as a town and in 1885 was chartered as a city. In 1906 the city adopted a freehold charter, centralizing power in the mayor and providing for a referendum. The county was organized in 1853.

ALAMOS DE BARRIENTOS, BALTASAR (1555-1640), Spanish scholar, was born at Medina del Campo in 1555. His friendship with Antonio Perez caused him to be arrested in 1590 and imprisoned for nearly thirteen years. His 7Acito espanol ilustrado con aforismos (Madrid, 1614) is the only work which bears his name, but he is probably the author of the Discurso del gobierno ascribed to Perez. Through the influence of Lerma (to whom the Tacito is dedicated) and of Olivares, he subsequently attained high official position.

See L'Art de gouverner, ed. J. M. Guardia (Paris, 1867); P. J. Pidal, Historia de las alteraciones de Aragon en el reinado de Felipe II. (Madrid, 1862), vol. iii. pp. 29-30; A. Perez, Relaciones (Geneva, 1654), pp. 86-88.

ALAND ISLANDS, an archipelago at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia, about 25 m. from the coast of Sweden, and 15 from that of Finland. The group, which forms part of the Finnish province of Abo-Bjorneborg, consists of nearly three hundred islands, of which about eighty are inhabited, the remainder being desolate rocks. These islands form a continuation of a dangerous granite reef extending along the south coast of Finland. They formerly belonged to Sweden, and in the neighbourhood the first victory of the Russian fleet Over the Swedes was gained by Peter the Great in 1714. They were ceded to Russia in 1809. They occupy a total area of 1426 sq. km., and their present population is estimated at about 19,000. The majority of these occupy the island of Aland, upon which is situated the town of Mariehamn with a population of 1171. The inhabitants are mostly of Swedish descent, and are hardy seamen and fishermen. The surface of the islands is generally sandy, the soil thin and the climate keen; yet Scotch fir, spruce and birch are grown; and rye, barley, flax and vegetables are produced in sufficient quantity for the wants of the people. Great numbers of cattle are reared; and cheese, butter and hides, as well as salted meat and fish, are exported. There are several excellent harbours (notably that of Ytternas), which were at one time of great importance to Russia from the fact that they are frozen up for a much briefer period than those on the coast of Finland.

The Aland Islands occupy a position of the greatest strategic importance, commanding as they do both the entrance to the port of Stockholm and the approaches to the Gulf of Bothnia, through which the greater part of the trade of Sweden is carried on. When, by the 4th article of the treaty of Fredrikshavn (Friedrichshamn), 5/17 September 1809, the islands were ceded to Russia, together with the territories forming the grand-duchy of Finland on the mainland, the Swedes were unable to secure a provision that the islands should not be fortified. The question was, however, a vital one not only for Sweden but for Great Britain, whose trade in the Baltic was threatened. In 1854, accordingly, during the Crimean War, an Anglo-French force attacked and destroyed the fortress of Bomersund, against the erection of which Palmerston had protested without effect some twenty years previously. By the ``Aland Convention,'' concluded between Great Britain, France and Russia on the 30th of March 1856, it was stipulated that ``the Aland Islands shall not be fortified, and that no military or naval establishments shall be maintained or created on them.'' By the 33rd article of the treaty of Paris (1856) this convention, annexed to the final act, was given ``the same force and validity as if it formed part thereof,'' Palmerston declaring in the House of Commons (May 6) that it had ``placed a barrier between Russia and the north of Europe.,' Some attention was attracted to this arrangement when in 1906 it was asserted that Russia, under pretext of stopping the smuggling of arms into Finland, was massing considerable naval and military forces at the islands. The question of the Aland Islands created some discussion in 1907 and 1908 in connexion with the new North Sea agreements, and undoubtedly Russia considered the convention of 1856 as rather humiliating. But it was plainly shown by other powers that they did not propose to regard it as modified or open to question, and the point was not definitely and officially raised.

See the article by Dr Verner Soderberg in the National Review, No. 392, for April 1908.

ALANI (Gr. 'Alanoi,'Alaunoi; Chinese 'O-lan-na; since the 9th century A.D. they have been called As, Russ. Jasy, Georgian Ossi), the easternmost division of the Sarmatians (see SCYTHIA), Iranian nomads with some Altaic admixture. First met with north of the Caspian, and later (c. 1st century A.D.) spreading into the steppes of Russia, the Alans made incursions into both the Danubian and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman empire. By the Huns they were cut into two portions, of which the western joined the Germanic nations in their invasion of southern Europe, and, following the fortunes of the Vandals, disappeared in North Africa. Those of the eastern division, though dispersed about the steppes until late medieval times, were by fresh invading hordes forced into the Caucasus, where they remain as the Ossetes. At one time partially Christianized by Byzantine missionaries, they had almost relapsed into heathenism, but are now under Russian influence returning to Christianity. (E. II. M.)

ALANCON, HERNANDO DE, Spanish navigator of the 16th century, is known only in connexion with the expedition to the coast of California, of which he was leader. He set sail on the 9th of May 1540 with orders from the Spanish court to await at a certain point on the coast the arrival of an expedition by land under the command of Vasquez de Coronado. The junction was not effected, though Alarcon reached the appointed place and left letters, which were afterwards found by Diaz, another explorer. Alarcon was the first to determine with certainty that California was a peninsula and not an island, as had been supposed. He made a careful survey of the coast, ascended the Rio del Tizon Or Rio de Buena Guia (Colorado) for 85 Spanish m., and was thus able on his return to New Spain in 1541 to construct an excellent map of California.

See Herrera, Decade VI. book ix. ch. 15; vol. vi. fol. 212 of Madrid edition of 1730.

ALARCON, JUAN RUIZ DE (1518?-1639), Spanish dramatist, was born about 1581 at Tlacho (Mexico), where his father was superintendent of mines. He came to Europe in 1600, studied law at Salamanca, and in 1608 went back to Mexico to compete for a professorial chair. Returning to Spain in 1611, he entered the household of the marquis de Salinas, became a successful dramatist, and was nominated a member of the council of the Indies in 1623. He died at Madrid on the 4th of August 1639. His plays were published in 1628 and 1634; the most famous of these is La Verdad sospechosa, which was adapted by Corneille as the Menteur. Alarcon had the misfortune to be a hunchback, to be embittered by his deformity, and to be constantly engaged in personal quarrels with his rivals; but his attitude in these polemics is always dignified, and his crushing retort to Lope de Vega in Los pechos privilegiados is an unsurpassable example of cold, scornful invective. More than any other Spanish dramatist, Alarcon is preoccupied with ethical aims, and his gift of dramatic presentation is as brilliant as his dialogue is natural and vivacious. It has been alleged that his foreign origin is noticeable in his plays, and there is some foundation for the criticism; but his workmanship is exceptionally conscientious, and in El Tejedor de Segovia he had produced a masterpiece of national art, national sentiment and national expression. (J. F.-K.)

ALARCON, PEDRO ANTONIO DE (1833-1891), Spanish writer, was born on the 10th of March 1833 at Guadix. He graduated at the university of Granada, studied law and theology privately, and made his first appearance as a dramatist before he was of age. Deciding to follow literature as a profession, he joined with Torcuato Tarrago y Mateos in editing a Cailiz newspaper entitled El Eco de Occidente. In 1853 he travelled to Madrid in the hope of finding a publisher for his continuation of Espronceda's celebrated poem, El Diablo Mundo. Disappointed in his object, and finding no opening at the capital, he settled at Granada, became a radical journalist in that city, and showed so much ability that in 1854 he was appointed editor of a republican journal, El Latigo, published at Madrid. The extreme violence of his polemics led to a duel between him and the Byronic poet, Jose Heriberto Garcia Quevedo. The earliest of his novels, El Final de Norma, was published in 1855, and though its construction is feeble it brought the writer into notice as a master of elegant prose. A small anthology, called Mananias de Abril y Mayo (1856), proves that Alarcon was recognized as a leader by young men of promise, for among the contributors were Castelar, Manuel del Palacio and Lopez de Ayala. A dramatic piece, El Hijo prodigo, was hissed off the stage in 1857, and the failure so stung Alarcon that he enlisted under O'Donnell's command as a volunteer for the war in Morocco. His Diario de un testigo de la guerra de Africa (1859) is a brilliant account of the expedition. The first edition, amounting to fifty thousand copies, was sold within a fortnight, and Alarcon's name became famous throughout the peninsula. The book is not in any sense a formal history; it is a series of picturesque impressions rendered with remarkable force. On his return from Africa Alarcon did the Liberal party much good service as editor of La Politica, but after his marriage in 1866 to a devout lady, Paulina Contrera y Reyes, he modified his political views considerably. On the overthrow of the monarchy in 1868, Alarcon advocated the claims of the duc de Montpensier, was neutral during the period of the republic, and declared himself a Conservative upon the restoration of the dynasty in December 1874. These political variations alienated Alarcon's old allies and failed to conciliate the royalists. But though his political influence was ruined, his success as a writer was greater than ever. The publication in the Revista Europea (1874) of a short story, El Sombrero de tres picos, a most ingenious resetting of an old popular tale, made him almost as well known out of Spain as in it. This remarkable triumph in the picturesque vein encouraged him to produce other works of the same kind; yet though his Cuentos amatorios (1881), his Historietas nacionales (1881) and his Narracionies inverosimiles (1882) are pleasing, they have not the delightful gaiety and charm of their predecessor. In a longer novel, El Escandalo (1875), Alarcon had appeared as a partisan of the neo-Catholic reaction, and this change of opinion brought upon him many attacks, mostly unjust. His usual bad fortune followed him, for while the Padicals denounced him as an apostate, the neo-Catholics alleged that El Escandalo was tainted with Jansenism. Of his later volumes, written in failing health and spirits, it is only necessary to mention El Capitan Veneno and the Historia de mis libros, both issued in 1881. Alarcon was elected a member of the Spanish Academy in 1875. He died at Madrid on the 20th of July 1891. His later novels and tales are disfigured by their didactic tendency, by feeble drawing of character, and even by certain gallicisms of style. But, at his best, Alarcon may be read with great pleasure. The Diario de un testigo is still unsurpassed as a picture of campaigning life, while El Sombrero de tres picos is a very perfect example of malicious wit and minute observation. (J. F.-K.)

ALARD, JEAN DELPHIN (1815-1888), French violinist and teacher, was born at Bayonne on the 8th of May 1815. From 1827 he was a pupil of F. A. Habeneck at the Paris Conservatoire, where he succeeded P. de Sales Baillot as professor in 1843, retaining the post till 1875. His playing was full of fire and point, and his compositions had a great success in France, while his violin school had a wider vogue and considerably greater value. Mention should also be made of his edition in 40 parts of a selection of violin compositions by the most eminent masters of the 18th century, Les Maitres classiques du violon (Schott). Alard died in Paris on the 22nd of February 1888.

ALARIC (Ala-reiks, ``All-ruler''), (c. 370-410), Gothic conqueror, the first Teutonic leader who stood as a conqueror in the city of Rome, was probably born about 370 in an island named Peuce (the Fir) at the mouth of the Danube. He was of noble descent, his father being a scion of the family of the Balthi or Bold-men, next in dignity among Gothic warriors to the Amals. He was a Goth and belonged to the western branch of that nation --sometimes called the Visigoths--who at the time of his birth were quartered in the region now known as Bulgaria, having taken refuge on the southern shore of the Danube from the pursuit of their enemies the Huns.

In the year 394 he served as a general of foederati (Gothic irregulars) under the emperor Theodosius in the campaign in which he crushed the usurper Eugenius. As the battle which terminated this campaign, the battle of the Frigidus, was fought near the passes of the Julian Alps, Alaric probably learnt at this time the weakness of the natural defences of Italy on her northeastern frontier. The employment of barbarians as foederali, which became a common practice with the emperors in the 4th century, was both a symptom of disease in the body politic of the empire and a hastener of its impending ruin. The provincial population, crushed under a load of unjust taxation, could no longer furnish soldiers in the numbers required for the defence of the empire; and on the other hand, the emperors, ever fearful that a brilliantly successful general of Roman extraction might be proclaimed Augustus by his followers, preferred that high military command should be in the hands of a man to whom such an accession of dignity was as yet impossible. But there was obviously a danger that one day a barbarian leader of barbarian troops in the service of the empire might turn his armed force and the skill in war, which he had acquired in that service, against his trembling masters, and without caring to assume the title of Augustus might ravage and ruin the countries which he had undertaken to defend. This danger became a reality when in the year 395 the able and valiant Theodosius died, leaving the empire to be divided between his imbecile sons Arcadius and Honorius, the former taking the eastern and the latter the western portion, and each under the control of a minister who bitterly hated the minister of the other.

In the shifting of offices which took place at the beginning of the new reigns, Alaric apparently hoped that he would receive one of the great war ministries of the empire, and thus instead of being a mere commander of irregulars would have under his orders a large part of the imperial legions. This, however, was denied him, and he found that he was doomed to remain an oflicer of foederati. His disappointed ambition prompted him to take the step for which his countrymen were longing, for they too were grumbling at the withdrawal of the ``presents,'' in other words the veiled ransom-money, which for many years they had been accustomed to receive. They raised him on a shield and acclaimed him as a king; leader and followers both resolving (says Jordanes the Gothic historian) ``rather to seek new kingdoms by their own labour, than to slumber in peaceful subjection to the rule of others.''

Alaric struck first at the eastern empire. He marched to the neighbourhood of Constantinople, but finding himself unable to undertake the siege of that superbly strong city, he retraced his steps westward and then marched southward through Thessaly and the unguarded pass of Thermopylae into Greece. The details of his campaign are not very clearly stated, and the story is further complicated by the plots and counterplots of Rufinus, chief minister of the eastern, and Stilicho, the virtual regent of the western empire, and the murder of the former by his rebellious soldiers. With these we have no present concern; it is sufficient to say that Alaric's invasion of Greece lasted two years (395-396), that he ravaged Attica but spared Athens, which at once capitulated to the conqueror, that he penetrated into Peloponnesus and captured its most famous cities, Corinth, Argos and Sparta, selling many of their inhabitants into slavery. Here, however, his victorious career ended. Stilicho, who had come a second time to the assistance of Arcadius and who was undoubtedly a skilful general, succeeded in shutting up the Goths in the mountains of Pholoe on the borders of Elis and Arcadia. From thence Alaric escaped with difficulty, and not without some suspicion of connivance on the part of Stilicho. He crossed the Corinthian Gulf and marched with the plunder of Greece northwards to Epirus. Next came an astounding transformation. For some mysterious reason, probably connected with the increasing estrangement between the two sections of the empire, the ministers of Arcadius conferred upon Alaric the government of some part--it can hardly have been the whole--of the important prefecture of Illyricum. Here, ruling the Danubian provinces, he was on the confines of the two empires, and, in the words of the poet Claudian, he ``sold his alternate oaths to either throne,'' and made the imperial arsenals prepare the weapons with which to aim his Gothic followers for the next campaign. It was probably in the year 400 (but the dates of these events are rather uncertain) that Alaric made his first invasion of Italy, co-operating with another Gothic chieftain named Radagaisus. Supernatural influences were not wanting to urge him to this great enterprise. Some lines of the Roman poet inform us that he heard a voice proceeding from a sacred grove, ``Break off all delays, Alaric. This very year thou shalt force the Alpine barrier of Italy; thou shalt penetrate to the city.'' The prophecy was not at this time fulfilled. After spreading desolation through North Italy and striking terror into the citizens of Pome, Alaric was met by Stilicho at Pollentia (a Roman municipality in what is now Piedmont), and the battle which then followed on the 6th of April 402 (Easter-day) was a victory, though a costly one for Rome, and effectually barred the further progress of the barbarians. Alaric was an Arian Christian who trusted to the sanctity of Easter for immunity from attack, and the enemies of Stilicho reproached him for having gained his victory by taking an unfair advantage of the great Christian festival. The wife of Alaric is said to have been taken prisoner after this battle; and there is some reason to suppose that he was hampered in his movements by the presence with his forces of large numbers of women and children, having given to his invasion of Italy the character of a national migration. After another defeat before Verona, Alaric quitted Italy, probably in 403. He had not indeed ``penetrated to the city,'' but his invasion of Italy had produced important results; it had caused the imperial residence to be transferred from Milan to Ravenna, it had necessitated the withdrawal of the Twentieth Legion from Britain, and it had lirobably facilitated the great invasion of Vandals, Suevi and Alani into Gaul, by which that province and Spain were lost to the empire. We next hear of Alaric as the friend and ally of his late opponent Stilicho. The estrangement between the eastern and western courts had in 407 become so bitter as to threaten civil war, and Stilicho was actually proposing to use the arms of Alaric in order to enforce the claims of Honorius to the prefecture of Illyricum. The death of Arcadius in May 408 caused milder counsels to prevail in the western cabinet, but Alaric, who had actually entered Epirus, demanded in a somewhat threatening manner that if he were thus suddenly bidden to desist from war, he should be paid handsomely for what in modern language would be called the expenses of mobilization. The sum which he named was a large one, 4000 pounds of gold (about L. 160,000 sterling), but under strong pressure from Stilicho the Roman senate consented to promise its payment.

Three months later Stilicho himself and the chief ministers of his party were treacherously slain in pursuance of an order extracted from the timid and jealous Honorius; and in the disturbances which followed the wives and children of the barbarian foederati throughout Italy were slain. The natural consequence was that these men to the number of 30,000 flocked to the camp of Alaric. clamouring to be led against their cowardly enemies. IIe accordingly crossed the Julian Alps, and in September 408 stood before the walls of Rome (now with no capable general like Stihcho to defend her) and began a strict blockade.

No blood was shed this time; hunger was the weapon on which Alaric relied. When the ambassadors of the senate in treating for peace tried to terrify him with their hints of what the despairing citizens might accomplish, he gave with a laugh his celebrated answer, ``The thicker the hay, the easier mowed!'' After much bargaining, the famine-stricken citizens agreed to pay a ransom of more than a quarter of a million sterling, besides precious garments of silk and leather and three thousand pounds of pepper. Thus ended Alaric's first siege of Rome.

At this time, and indeed throughout his career, the one dominant idea of Alaric was not to pull down the fabric of the empire but to Secure for himself, by negotiation with its rulers, a regular and recognized position within its borders. His demands were certainly large---the concession of a block of territory 200 m. long by 150 wide between the Danube and the Gulf of Venice (to be held probably on some terms of nominal dependence on the empire), and the title of commander-in-chief of the imperial army. Yet large as the terms were, the emperor would probably have been well advised to grant them; but Honorius was one of those timid and feeble folk who are equally unable to make war or peace, and refused to look beyond the question of his own personal safety, guaranteed as it was by the dikes and marshes of Ravenna. As all attempts to conduct a satisfactory negotiation with this emperor failed before his impenetrable stupidity, Alaric, after instituting a second siege and blockade of Rome in 409, came to terms with the senate, and with their consent set up a rival emperor and invested the prefect of the city, a Creek named Attalus, with the diadem and the purple robe. He, however, proved quite unfit for his high position; he rejected the advice of Alaric and lost in consequence the province of Africa, the granary of Rome, which was defended by the partisans of Honorius. The weapon of famine, formerly in the hand of Alaric, was thus turned against him, and loud in consequence were the murmurs of the Roman populace. Honorius was also greatly strengthened by the arrival of six legions sent from Constantinople to his assistance by his nephew Theodosius II. Alaric therefore cashiered his puppet emperor Attalus after eleven months of ineffectual rule, and once more tried to reopen negotiations with Honorius. These negotiatio1(s would probably have succeeded but for the malign influence of another Goth, Sarus, the hereditary enemy of Alaric and his house. When Alaric found himself once more outwitted by the machinations of such a foe, he marched southward and began in deadly earnest his third, his ever-memorable siege of Rome. No defence apparently was possible; there are hints, not well substantiated, of treachery; there is greater probability of surprise. However this may be--for our information at this point of the story is miserably meagre----on the 24th of August 410 Alaric and his . Goths burst in by the Salarian gate on the north-east of the city, and she who was of late the mistress of the world lay at the feet of the barbarians. The Goths showed themselves not absolutely ruthless conquerors. The contemporary ecclesiastics recorded with wonder many instances of their clemency: the Christian churches saved from ravage; protection granted to vast multitudes both of pagans and Christians who took refuge therein; vessels of gold and silver which were found in a private dwelling, spared because they ``belonged to St. Peter''; at least one case in which a beautiful Roman matron appealed, not in vain, to the better feelings of the Cothic soldier who attempted her dishonour; but even these exceptional instances show that Rome was not enlirely spared those scenes of horror which usually accompany the storming of a besieged city. We do not, however, hear of any damage wrought by fire, save in the case of Sallust's palace, which was situated close to the gate by which the Goths had made their entrance; nor is there any reason to attribute any extensive destruction of the buildings of the city to Alaric and his followers.

His work being done, his fated task, and Alaric having penetrated to the city, nothing remained for him but to die. He marched southwards into Calabria. He desired to invade Africa, which on account of its corn crops was now the key of the position; but his ships were dashed to pieces by a storm in which many of his soldiers perished. He died soon after, probably of fever, and his body was bulied under the river-bed of the Busento, the stream being temporarily turned aside from its course while the grave was dug wherein the Gothic chief and some of his most precious spoils were interred. When the work was finished the river was turned back into its usual channel, and the captives by whose hands the labour had been accomplished were put to death that none might learn their secret. He was succeeded in the command of the Gothic army by his brotherin-law, Ataulphus.,

Our chief authorities for the career of Alaric are the historian Orosius and the poet Claudian, both strictly contemporary; Zosimus, a somewhat prejudiced heathen historian, who lived probably about half a century after the death of Alaric; and Jordanes, a Goth who wrote the history of his nation in the year 551, basing his work on the earlier history of Cassiodorus (now lost), which was written about 520. (T. II.)

ALARIC II. (d. 507), eighth king of the Goths in Spain, succeeded his father Euric or Evaric in 485. His dominions not only included the whole of Spain except its north-western corner, but also Aquitaine and the greater part of Provence. In religion Alaric was an Arian, but he greatly mitigated the persecuting policy of his father Euric towards the Catholics and authorized them to hold in 506 the council of Agde. He displayed similar wisdom and liberality in political affairs by appointing a commission to prepare an abstract of the Roman laws and imperial decrees, which should form the authoritative code for his Roman subjects. This is generally known as the Breviarium Alaricianuni, or Breviary of Alaric (q.v..) Alaric . was of a peaceful disposition, and endeavoured strictly to main- tain the treaty which his father had concluded with the Franks, whose king Clovis, however, desiring to obtain the Gothic province in Gaul, found a pretext for war in the Arianism of Alaric. The intervention of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths and father-in-law of Alaric, proved unavailing. The two armies met in 507 at the Campus Vogladensis, near Poitiers, where the Goths were defeated, and their king, who took to flight, was overtaken and slain, it is said, by Clovis himself.

ALA-SHEHR (anc. Philadelphia), a town of Asia Minor, in the Aidin vilayet, situated in the valley of the Kuzu Chai (Cogamus), at the foot of the Boz Dagh (Mt. Tmolus) 83 m. E. of Smyrna (105 by railway). Pop. 22,000 (Moslems, 17,000; Christians, 5000). Philadelphia was founded by Attalus II. of Pergamum about 150 B.C., became one of the ``Seven Churches'' of Asia, and was called ``Little Athens'' on account of its festivals and temples. It was subject to frequent earthquakes. Philadelphia was an independent neutral city, under the influence of the Latin Knights of Rhodes, when taken in . 1390 by Sultan Bayezid I. and an auxiliary Christian force

under the emperor Manuel II. after a prolonged resistance, when all the other cities of Asia Minor had surrendered. Twelve years later it was captured by Timur, who built a wall with the corpses of his prisoners. A fragment of the ghastly structure is in the library of Lincoln cathedral. The town is connected by railway with Afium-Kara-Hissar and Smyrna. It is dirty and ill-built; but, standing on elevated ground and commanding the extensive and fertile plain of the Hermus, presents at a distance an imposing appearance. It is the seat of an archbishop and has several mosques and Christian churches. There are small industries and a fair trade. From one of the mineral springs comes a heavily charged water known in commerce as ``Eau de Vals,'' and in great request in Smyrna.

See W. M. Ramsay, Letters to the Seven Ghurches (Ioo4). ALASKA, formerly called RUSSIAN AMERICA, a district of the United States of America, occupying the extreme northwestern part of North America and the adjacent islands. The name is a corruption of a native word possibly meaning ``mainland'' or ``peninsula.'' The district of Alaska comprises, first, all that part of the continent W. of the 141st meridian of W longitude from Greenwich;secondly,the eastern Diomede island in Bering Strait, and all islands in Bering Sea and the Aleutian chain lying E. of a line drawn from the Diomedes to pass midway between Copper Island, off Kamchatka, and Attu Island of the Aleutians; thirdly, a narrow strip of coast and adjacent islands N. of a line drawn from Cape Muzon, in lat. 54 deg. 40, N., E. and N. up Portland Canal to its head, and thence, as defined in the treaty of cession to the United States, quoting a boundary treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia, following ``the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast', to the 141st meridian, provided that when such line runs more than ten marine leagues from the ocean the limit ``shall be formed by a line parallel to the windings of the coast and which shall never exceed the distance of ten marine leagues therefrom.'' The international disputes connected with this description are referred to below.

Physical Features.---Alaska is bounded on the N. by the Arctic Ocean, on the W. by the Arctic Ocean and Bering Strait, on the S. and S.W. by the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean, and on the E. by Yukon Territory and British Columbia. It consists of a compact central mass and two straggling appendages running from its S.W. and S.E. corners, and sweeping in a vast arc over 16 degrees of latitude and 58 degrees of longitude. These three parts will be referred to hereafter respectively, as Continental Alaska, Aleutian Alaska and the ``Panhandle.'' The range of latitude from Point Barrow in the Arctic Ocean to Cape Muzon is almost 17 degrees---as great as from New Orleans to Duluth; the range of longitude from Attu Island to the head of Portland Canal is 58 degrees---considerably greater than from New York to San Francisco. The total area is about 586,400 sq. m. The general ocean-coast line is about 4750 m., and, including the islands, bays, inlets and rivers to the head of tide water, is about 26,000 m. in length (U.S. Coast Survey 1889). The entire southern coast is very irregular in outline; it is precipitous, with only very slight stretches of beach or plain. Its elevation gradually decreases as one travels W. toward the Aleutians. A great submarine platform extends throughout a large part of Bering Sea. The western and northern coasts are regular in outline with long straight beaches; and shallows are common in the seas that wash them. On the Arctic there is a broad coastal plain. Of the islands of Alaska the more important are: at the S.E. extremity and lying close inland, the Alexander Archipelago, whose principal islands from N.W. to S.E. are Chicagof, Baranof, Admiralty, Kupreanof, Kuiu. Prince of Wales (the largest of the archipelago and of all the islands about Alaska, measuring about 140 m. in length and 40m.inwidth), Etolin and Revillagigedo; S.W. of the mainland, two groups--.-(1) Kodiak, whose largest island, of the same name, is 40 m. by 100 m., and may be considered a continuation of the Kenai Peninsula, and whose W. continuation, S. of Alaska Peninsula, consists of the Semidi, Shumagin and Sannak clusters; (2) the Aleutian Islands (q.v.) sweeping 1200 m. W.S.W. from the end of Alaska Peninsula, W. of the mainland, in Bering Sea, the Pribilof Islands, about 500 m. S. of Cape Prince of Wales, the small Hall and St Matthew Islands, about 170 m. S.W. of the same cape, St Lawrence Island (100 m. and 10 to 30 m. wide), which is about half way between the last mentioned pair of islets and Cape Prince of Wales and Nunivak Island, near the mainland and due E. of St Matthew; and in the middle of Bering Strait the Diomede Islands, which belong in part to Russia.

Very little was known about Alaska previous to 1896, when the gold discoveries in the Klondike stimulated public interest regarding it. Since 1895, however, the explorations of the United States Geological Survey and the Department of War, and other departments of the government, have fully established the main features of its physiography. It has mountains, plateaus and lowlands on a grand scale. ``In a broad way, the larger features of topography correspond with those of the western states. There is a Pacific Mountain system, a Central Plateau region, a Rocky Mountain system, and a Great Plains region. These four divisions are well marked, and show the close geographic relation of this area to the southern part of the Continent.'' The orographic features of the Pacific Mountain system trend parallel to the coast-line of the Gulf of Alaska, changing with this at the great bend beyond the N., and of the Panhandle from S.E. and N.W. to N.E. and S.W. and running through the Alaska Peninsula. The Pacific Mountain system includes four ranges. The Coast Range of the Panhandle attains a width of 100 m., but has no well-defined crest line. The range is characterized by the uniformity of summit levels between 5O00 and 6000 ft. Continuing the Coast Range, with which it is closely associated---the Chilkat river lies between them---is the St Elias Range (a term now used to include not only the mountains between Cross Sound and Mt. St Elias, but the Chugach, Kenai, Skolai and Nutzotin mountains); among its peaks are: Mt. Crillon ( 15,900 ft.), Mt. Fairweather ( 15,290 ft.), Mt. Vancouver (15,666 ft.), Mt. Wrangell (17,500 ft., an active volcano) in the Nutzotin Mountains, Mt. St Elias (18,024 ft.) and, in Canadian territory, Mt. Logan (19,539 ft.). The Aleutian Range, of whose crest the Aleutian Islands are remnants, fills out the system near the coast. The Alaskan Range, connecting with the Nutzotin and Skolai branches of the St Elias Range, lies a little farther inland; it is splendidly marked by many snowy peaks, including Mt. Foraker (17,000 ft.) and Mt. Mckinley. The latter, which on the W. rises abruptly out of a marshy country, offers the obstacles of magnificent, inaccessible granite cliffs and large glaciers to the mountaineer; it is the loftiest peak in North America (ca. 20,300 ft.). In the Alaskan Range and the Aleutian Range there are more than a dozen live volcanoes, several of them remarkable; the latter range is composed largely of volcanic material. Evidences of very recent volcanic activity are abundant about Cook Inlet. The Rocky Mountain system extends from Canada (the Tukon territory) into N.E. Alaska, which it crosses near the Arctic Coast in a broad belt composed of several ranges about 6000 ft. in altitude. There is no well-defined crest line; the axis of the system is roughly parallel to the Pacific Mountain system, but runs more nearly E. and W. in Alaska. Between the Pacific Mountain and the Rocky Mountain systems lies the vast Central Plateau region, or Yukon plateau. Finally, between the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic Ocean is the Arctic Slope region, a sloping plain corresponding to the interior plains of the United States.

First Physiographic Region.---The Panhandle is remarkably picturesque. The maze of islands, hundreds in number, of the Alexander Archipelago (area about 13,000 sq. m.) are remnants of a submerged mountain system; the islands rise 3000 to 5000 ft. above the sea, with luxuriantly wooded tops and bald, sheer sides scarred with marks of glacial action; the beachless coast is only a narrow ledge between the mountains and the sea, and unlike the coast of Norway, to which in outline it is not dissimilar, is bold, steep and craggy. Through the inner channels, sheltered from the Pacific by the island rampart, runs the ``inland passage,'' the tourist route northward from Seattle, Washington. The inter-insular straits are carried up into the shore as fjords heading in rivers and glaciers. Thus the Stikine river continues Sumner Strait and the Taku continues Cross Sound. The Stikine, Taku and Alsek rivers all cross the mountains in deep-cut canyons. Everywhere the evidences of glacial action abound. Most remarkable are the inlets known as Portland Canal and Lynn Canal (continuing Chatham Strait). The first is very deep, with precipitous shores and bordering mountains 5000 to 6000 ft. high; the second is a noble fjord 100 m. long and on an average 6 m. wide, with magnificent Alpine scenery. It is subject in winter to storms of extraordinary violence, but is never closed by ice. Both Portland Canal and Lynn Canal are of historical importance, as the question of the true location of the first and the commercial importance to Canada or to the United States of the possession of the second, were the crucial contentions in the disputes over the Alaska-Canadian boundary. At the head of Lynn Canal, the only place on the whole extent of the south-eastern Alaskan coast where a clear-cut waterparting is exhibited between the sea-board and interior drainage, the summits of the highest peaks in the Coast Range are 8000 to 9000 ft. above the sea. White Pass (2888 ft.) and Chilkoot Pass (3500 ft.), at the head of the Lynn Canal, are the gateway to the mining country of the Klondike and Upper Y(ukon. They are the highest points that one meets in travelling from Skagway along the course of the Yukon to`Bering Sea.

Prior to the opening (in August 1900) of the railway between Skagway and White Horse, Canada (110 m.), by way of the White Pass, all transportation to the interior was effected by men and pack-animals (and for a time by a system of telpherage) over these passe 1/3 and the Chilkat or Dalton trail; the building of the railway reduced carriage rates to less than a tenth of their former value, and the Chilkat and Chilkoot Passes were no longer used. The coast region above the Panhandle shows on a smaller and diminishing scale the same characteristic features, gradually running into those of the Aleutians. Out of the Alaska and Nutzotin mountains two great rivers flow southward: the Copper, practically unnavigable except for small boats, because of its turbulence and the discharge of glaciers into its waters; and the Susitna, also practically unnavigable. Both of these rivers have their sources in lofty mountain masses, and are swift and powerful streams carrying with them much silt; their passes over the water-parting N. of the Kenai Peninsula are through gorges from 4000 to 10,000 ft. in depth. The Copper, the Susitna and its tributary, the Yentna, as well as the Skwentna, a tributary of the Yentna from the west, all run through picturesque canyons, and their upper courses are characterized by glacial and torrential feeders. Their valleys are well timbered.

The glaciers of the Panhandle and throughout the rest of the Pacific region are most remarkable---extraordinary alike for their number and their size. They lie mainly between 56 deg. and 61 deg. N. lat., in a belt 1000 m. long, of which the central part, some 350 or 500 m. long and 80 m. to 100 m. wide, has been described as one great confluent neve field. Thousands of Alpine glaciers from one to fifteen miles long fill the upper valleys and canyons of the mountains. More than a hundred almost reach the sea, from which they are separated by detrital lowland or terminal moraines. Other glaciers are of the Piedmont type. Greatest of these and of Alaskan glaciers is the Malaspina, a vast elevated plateau of wasting ice, 1500 sq. m. in area (nearly a tenth the area of all Switzerland), touching the sea at only one point, though fronting it for 50 m. behind a fringing foreland of glacial debris. It is fed by Alpine glaciers, among them one of the grandest in Alaska, the Seward, which descends from Mt. Logan. It is more than 50 m. long, and more than 3 m. broad at its narrowest point, and several times in its course flows over cascades, falling hundreds of feet. Of tide-water glaciers the most remarkable is probably the Muir. It has an area of 350 sq. m.; the main trunk, which is 30 to 40 m. broad, is fed by 26 tributaries, 20 of which are each greater than the Mer de Glace, and pushes its bergs into the sea from ice cliffs almost 2 m. wide, standing IOO to 200 ft. above the water, and extending probably 700 to 1000 ft. beneath its surface. It has been calculated that the average daily discharge of the Muir in summer is 30,000,000 cubic ft. Its course, which is only about 13 m., has a slope of 100 ft. per mile, and the main current moves 7 ft. daily. The Character of the Muir was greatly altered by an earthquake in 1899. There are some 30 tide-water glaciers---a considerable number of them very noteworthy. The Valdez is 30 m. long and 5000 ft. in altitude. Most of the Alaskan glaciers are receding, but not all of them; and at times there is a general advance. The Muir receded 1.6 m. from 1879--1890, the Childs about 600 yards in 17 years; others over 4, 7 or 10 m. in 20 years.

The Aleutian Islands (q.v.), like the Alexander Archipelago, are remnants of a submerged mountain system. Their only remarkable features are the volcanoes on the easterly islands, already mentioned.

Continental Alaska.---Continental Alaska in the interior is essentially a vast plateau. ``The traveller between the main drainage areas of the interior is struck by the uniform elevation of the interfluminal areas. Rounded hills, level meads and persistent flat-topped ridges, composed of rocks of varying structure, rise to about the same level and give the impression that they are the remnants of a former continuous surface. Occasional limited areas of rugged mountains rise above this level, and innumerable stream valleys have been incised below it; but from the northern base of the St Elias and Alaskan ranges to the southern foothills of the Rocky Mountain system, and throughout their length, the remnants of this ancient level are to be seen. In height it varies from about 5000 ft. close to the bases of the mountain systems to less than 3000 ft. in the vicinity of the main lines of drainage, and slopes gradually towards the north.'' The Seward Peninsula is particularly rugged. This great plateau drains westward through broad, gently flowing streams, the network of whose tributary waters penetrates every corner of the interior and offers easy means of communication. Both the main streams and the smaller tributaries often flow through deep canyons. The Yukon is one of the great drainage systems of the world. The Yukon itself has a length of more than 2000 m. and bisects the country from E. to W. Behind the bluffs that form in large part its immediate border its basin is a rolling country, at times sinking into great dead levels like the Yukon flats between Circle City and the Lower Ramparts, some 30,000 sq. m. in area. Of the two great affluents of the Yukon, the Tanana is for the most part unnavigable, while the Koyukuk is navigable for more than 450 m. by river steamers, and for more than 500 m. above its mouth shows no appreciable diminution in volume. A low water-parting divides the Yukon valley from the Kuskokwim, the second river of Alaska in size, navigable by steamers for 600 m. Torrential near its source, it is already a broad, sluggish stream at its confluence with the East Kuskokwim. The tides rise 50 ft. near its mouth and the tide-head is 100 m. above the mouth.

Rocky Mountains. --The Rocky Mountain system in Alaska is higher and more complex than in Canada. About 100 m. wide at the international boundary, where the peaks of the British Mountains on the N. and of the Davidson Mountains On the S. are 7000 to 8000 ft. high, the system runs W.S.W. as the Endicott Mountains, two contiguous ranges of about 5000 to 6000 ft., and as these ranges separate, the northern becomes the De Long, the southern the Baird Mountains, whose elevation rapidly decreases toward the coast-line. The system is sharply defined on the north and less so on the south.

Arctic Slope Region.---The Arctic Slope region is divided into the Anuktuvuk Plateau about 80 m. wide, with a maximum altitude to the S. of 2500 ft., and between the plateau and the Arctic Ocean the Coastal Plain. Very little is known of either part of the region.

Climate.--From the foregoing description of the country it is evident that the range of climate must be considerable. That of the coast and that of the Yukon plateau are quite distinct. The Panhandle, along with the lisiere (foreland), westward to Cook Inlet might be called temperate Alaska, its climate being similar to that of the N.W. coast of the United States; while to the westward and northward the winters become longer and more severe. d/he cause of the mild climate of the Panhandle, formerly supposed to be the Japanese current, or Kuro Shiwo, is now held to be the general eastward drift of the waters of the North Pacific in the direction of the prevalent winds. To the warmth and moisture brought by this means the coastal region owes its high equable temperature, its heavy rainfall (80-110 in.) and its superb vegetation. The mean annual temperature is from 54 deg. to 60 deg. F. Winter sets in about the 1st of December and the snow is gone save in the mountains by the 1st of May. The thermometer rarely registers below zero F. or above 75 deg. F.; the difference between the midwinter and midsummer averages is seldom more than 25 deg. . The summer is relatively dry, the autumn and winter wet. The vapour-laden sea air blowing landward against the girdle of snow and glaciers on the mountain barriers a few miles inland drains its moisture in excessive rain and snow upon the lisiere, shrouding it in well-nigh unbroken fog and cloud-bank. Only some 60 to 100 days in the year are clear. In passing from the Sitkan district westward toward Kodiak and the Aleutians (q.v.) the climate becomes even more equable, the temperature a little lower and the rainfall somewhat less; i the fogs at first less dense, especially near Cook Inlet, where the climate is extremely local, but more and more persistent along the Aleutians. The clear days of a year at Unalaska can be counted on the fingers; five days in seven it actually rains or snows. Bering Sea is covered with almost eternal fog. Along the coast N. of Alaska Peninsula the rainfall diminishes to 10 in. or less within the Arctic circle; the summer temperature is quite endurable but the winters are exceedingly rigorous.2 East of the mountains in south-eastern Alaska the atmosphere is dry and bracing, the temperature ranging from -14 deg. to 92 deg. F. In the farther interior, in the valleys of the Yukon, the Tanana, the Copper and the Sushitna the summers are much the same in character, the winters much more severe. On the Yukon at the international boundary the mean of the warmest month is higher than that of the warmest month at Sitka, 500 m. southward. At some points in the Upper Yukon valley the range of extreme temperatures is as great as from --75 deg. to 90 deg. F.3 The mean heat of summer in the upper valley is about 60 deg. to 70 deg. F., and at some points in the middle and lower valley even higher.4 By the middle of September snow flurries have announced the imminence of winter, the sipaller streams congeal, the earth freezes, the miner perforce abandons his diggings, and navigation ceases even on the Yukon in October. All winter snows fall heavily. The air is dry and quiet, and the cold relatively uniform. In midwinter in the upper valley the sun rises only a few degrees above the horizon for from four to six hours a day, though very often quite obscured. In December, January, February and March the thermometer often registers lower than -50 deg. F., and the mean temperature is -20 deg. . In May the rivers open, the cleared land thaws out, and by June the miner is again at work. Summer is quickly in full ascendancy. In May and June the sun shines from eighteen to twenty hours and diffused twilight fills the rest of the day. The rainfall is light, from 10 to 25 in. according to the year or the locality. Dull weather is unknown. All nature responds in rich and rapid growth to the garish light and intense heat of the long, splendid days. But the Alaska summer is the uncertain season at times the nights are cold into July, at times snow falls and there are frosts in mid-August; sometimes rain is heavy, or again there is a veritable drought. In the great river valleyss. of the Yukon basin climatic conditions are much less uniform.

Fauna anid Flora.---The fauna of Alaska is very rich and surprisingly varied. The lists of insects, birds and mammals are especially noteworthy.5 Of these three classes, and of other than purely zoological interest, are mosquitoes, which swarm in summer in the interior in vast numbers; sea fowl, which are remarkably abundant near the Aleutians; moose, and especialiv caribou, which in the past were very numerous in the interior and of extreme economic importance to the natives. The destruction of the wild caribou has threatened to expose the Indians to wholesale starvation, hence the effort which the United States government has made to stock the country with domestic reindeer from Siberia. This effort made under the direction of the Bureau of Education has been eminently successful, and in the future the reindeer seems certain to contribute very greatly to the food, clothing, means of shelter and miscellaneous industries of the natives; and not less to the solution of the problems of communication and transportation throughout the interior. It is, however, the fish and the fur-bearing animals of its rivers and surrounding seas that are economically most distinctive of and important to Alaska. The fishing grounds extend along the coast from the extreme south-east past the Aleutians into Bristol Bay. Herring are abundant, and cod especially so. There are probably more than 100,000 sq. m. of cod-banks from 22 to 00 fathoms deep in Bering oea and E. or the Alaska Peninsula. Salmon are to be found in almost incredible numbers. Of marine mammals, whales are hunted far to the N. in Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, but are much less common than formerly, as are also the walrus, the sea otter and the fur seal. All these are disappearing before commercial greed. The walrus is now found mainly far N.; the sea otter, once fairly common throughout the Aleutian district, is now rarely found even on the remoter islands; the fur seal, whose habitat is the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea, has been considerably reduced in numbers by pelagic hunting. There are half-a-dozen species of hair seals and sea-lions. The number of fur-bearing land animals is equally large. Sables, ermine, wolverines, minks, land otters, beavers and musk-rats have always been importantitemsin the fur trade. There are black, grizzly and polar bears, and also two exclusively Alaskan species, the Kodiak and the glacier bear. The grey wolf is common; it is the basal stock of the Alaskan sledge-dog. The red fox is widely distributed, and the white or Arctic fox is very common along the eastern coast of Bering Sea; a blue fox, once wild, is now domesticated on Kodiak and the Aleutians, and on the southern continental coast, and a black fox, very rare, occurs in south-eastern Alaska; the silver fox is very rare.

The Alaskan flora is less varied than the fauna. The forests of the coastal region eastward from Cook Inlet, and particularly in south-eastern Alaska, are of fair variety, and of great richness and value. The balsam fir and in the south the red cedar occur in scant quantities; more widely distributed, but growing only under marked local conditions, is the yellow or Alaska cedar, a very hard and durable wood of fine grain and pleasant odour. The Oregon alder is fairly common. Far the most abundant are coast and Alpine hemlocks and the tide-land or Sitka spruce. The last is not confined to this part of Alaska, but is the characteristic and universal tree. It is of primary economic importance to thenatives,who use it for the most variouspurposcs. On the islands of the Alexander Archipelago and on Prince William Sound it grows to gigantic size; even on the Koyukuk and the middle Yukon it attains in places a diameter of 2 ft. In 1002 a forest reservation comprising the largest part of the Alexander Archipelago was created by the United States government. The separation of the coast and interior floras is almost complete; only along the mountain passes and river valleys, and rarely there, is there an exchange of species. Timber, however, is fairly abundant along the entire course of the Yukon above Anvik (about 400 m. from the mouth), along the great tributaries of the Yukon, and, so far as explorations have re vealed, along every stream in central Alaska; and the woods of the interior consist almost entirely of spruce. On the Yukon flats it grows in a vast forest impenetrably dense.6 The timber line, which in the I,anhandle and along the southern coast of the continental mass runs from 1800 to 2400 ft., frequently rises in the interior plateau even to 4000 ft. Next in importance after spruce, in the interior, is birch, and then balsam poplar. Thickets of alders and willows in wet places and new-made land, aspens and large cottonwoods west of the characteristic spruce area (as on Seward Peninsula), are also common. Toward the Arctic circle, the timber becomes, of course, sparse, low, gnarled and distorted. The willows in the Arctic drainage basin shrink to shrubs scarcely knee-high. Bushes are common in western Alaska, but undergrowth is very scanty in the forests. Crasses grow luxuriantly in the river bottoms and wherever the tundra moss is destroyed to give them footing. Most distinctive is the ubiquitous carpeting of mosses, varying in colours from the pure white and cream of the reindeer moss to the deep green and brown of the peat moss, all conspicuously spangled in the briefsummer with bright flowers of the higher orders, heavy blossoms on stunted stalks. The thick peat moss or tundra of the undrained lowlands covers probably at least a quarter of Alaska; the reindeer moss grows both on the lowlands and the hills.7 Sedges available for forage grow in the tundra. In August berries are fairly abundant over the interior; one of them, the salmon or cloud berry, preserved in seal oil for the winter, is an important food of the natives. The grasses are killed by the frosts in September. The western timber limit is on Kodiak Island. The Aleutian Islands (q.v.) are almost destitute of trees, but are covered with a luxuriant growth of herbage. Climatic differences cannot account for the treeless condition of the country W. of this point, and the true explanation lies probably in the fact that in winter, when the seeds of the coastal forests ripen and are released, the prevalent winds W. of Kodiak are damp and blow from the S. and S.W., while the spread of the seeds requires dry winds blowing from the N. and N.W. Such favourable conditions occur only rarely.

The Soil of Alaska seems to be in Jtself rich, and quite capable of agricultural development; the great impediment to this is in . the briefness of the summer. Contrary, however, to the once universal belief, the experiments of the department of agriculture of the United States have definitely proved that hardy vegetables in great variety can readily be produced in the coastal region and at various stations in the Yukon valley; and presumably, therefore, all over the interior S. of the Arctic circle, save along Bering Sea; also that there is little doubt of the practicability of successfully cultivating buckwheat, barley and oats, and possibly also rye and wheat; that grasses for grazing grow generally and often in abundance; and in general that the possibilities of interior Alaska as a live-stock country are very cons18erable. It is calculated that a twentieth of south-eastern Alaska is available for agriculture, and that of the entire country 100,000 sq. m. are pasturable or tillable.

Indiistrl'.---The fur and fish resources of Alaska have until recently held first place in her industries. Herrings furnish oil and guano, and the young fish are packed as ``sardines'' at Juneau. Cod can be taken with comparatively little danger or hardship. During the Russian occupation a small amount was shipped to California and the Sandwich Islands. The take since 1879 has been practically constant. The take of halibut is increasing steadily. The salmon industry dates from 1878. The total output (in 1901, 100,000,000 lb.; in 1006, about 72,000,000 lb.), which since 1900 has been more than half the total salmon product of the United States, is more than ten' times the product of all other fish.8 On the Karluk river, Kodiak Island, is the greatest salmon fishery in the world. More than 3,000,000 salmon have been canned here in one season. The second salmon stream is the Nushagak, flowing into Bristol Bay; this bay is the richest fishing field of Alaska, furnishing in 1901, 35% of the total production. The recklessly wasteful manner in which these fisheries are conducted, and the inadequate measures taken by the United States government for their protection, threaten the entire industry with destruction. From 1867 to 1902 the value of the total fishery product was estimated at $60,000,000. The fur-seal industry has been better protected but still unavailingly. (See SEAL FIsheries and BERINO SEA ARBITRATION.) The value of the fur seals taken from 1868 to 1902 was estimated at $35,000,000 and that of other furs at $17,000,000. The walrus, hunted for its ivory tusks, and the sea otter, rarest and most valuable of Alaskan fur animals, are near extermination; the blue fox is now bred for its pelt on the Aleutians and the southern continental coast; the skins of the black and silver fox are extremely rare, and in general the whole fur industry is discouragingly decadent. The whale fishery also has greatly fallen off; there is no profit on the oil and the whales are sought for the baleen alone; they are much less numerous too than they once were, and have to be sought farther and farther north.

Minerals.--The timber resources of Alaska are untouched and the serious exploitation of her minerals is very recent. As early as 1861 gold discoveries were made on the Stikine river; repeated discoveries, culminating in the Cassiar district ``boom,'' were made in British Columbia from 1857 to 1874; colourings along the Yukon were reported in 1866-1867 and systematic prospecting of the upper river began about 1873. Juneau was founded in 1880; the same year the opposition of the Indians was withdrawn that had prevented the crossing of the mountain passes to the interior, and after 1880 repeated and scattered discoveries were made on the Lewes, Pelly, Stewart and other streams of the Upper Yukon country in Canada. As early as 1883-1885 there was a considerable mining excitement due to these discoveries, and a much greater one in 1887 after the discovery of coarse gold on Forty Mile Creek in American territory; but these were as nothing to the picturesque and feverish rush that followed the location of the first Klondike claim in Canadian territory in August 1896. (SEE KLONDIKE.) The mines in American territory were temporarily deserted for the new diggings. Other gold districts are scattered over the whole interior of Alaska. Nome (q.v.) was the scene of a great gold mining stampede in 1900. The quartz mines near Juneau are among the greatest stamp mills of the world (SEE JUNEAU.) The product of gold and silver (of the latter some 1.3% of the total) from 1895 to 1901 was more than $32,000,000 from Alaska proper (not including that from the Canadian Tukon fields) as against a production of $5,000,000 in 1880-1896. The gold product of the Canadian Yukon territory from 1896-1903 was about $96,000,000, as estimated by the Canadian Geological Survey. In 1905 the product of gold from Alaska was valued at $15,630,000 (mines report); and from 1880 to 19djec the production of gold, according to the estimate of A. H. Brooks, was more than $100,000,000. The gravest problem of mining in the interior country, even graver than that presented by the climate, is transportation; in 1900 the Tanana fields, for example, were provisioned from Circle City, about 125 m. distant, at the rate of a cent per lb. mile (i.e. $2000 for moving a ton 100 m.). Even higher rates prevailed in the copper country in 1902. Various other minerals in addition to gold have been discovered, and several of them, notably copper and silver (the latter appearing with the gold deposits), may probably be profitably exploited. In 1905 the product of copper was valued at $759,634, that of silver at $80,165 (mines report). Coal, and in much larger quantities lignite, have been found in many parts of Alaska. Most important, because of their location, are deposits along the Alaska Peninsula and between Circle City and Dawson. The latter furnishes fuel to the river steamboats, and it is hoped may eventually supply the surrounding mining region. There are valuable deposits of gypsum on Chicagof Island, and marble quarries are being developed on Prince of Wales Island.

As against $7,200,000 paid for Alaska in 1867, the revenues returned to the United States in the years 1867--1903 totalled $9,555,909 (namely, rental for the Fox and Pribilof Islands, $999,200; special revenue tax on seal-skins, $7,597,351; Alaskan customs, $528,558; public lands, $28,928; other sources $401,872). It has been estimated that in the same period the United States drew from Alaska fish, furs and gold to the value of about $150,000,000; that up to 1903 the imports from the states aggregated $i00,000,000; and that $25,000,000 of United States capital was invested in Alaska.

Since 1896 communication with the outer world has been greatly increased. Alaskan mails leave the states daily, many post-offices are maintained, mail is regularly delivered beyond the Arctic circle, all the more important towns have telegraphic communication with the states,9 there is one railway in the interior through Canadian territory from Skagway, and other railways are planned. The total mileage in 1906 was 136 m. In that year the Alaskan Central Railroad (from Seward to Fairbanks, 463 m.) was chartered; 45 m. of this road were in operation in 1905. One long military road as an ``All American'' route from Valdez has long been built.

Population.---The population in 1867 at the time of the cession from Russia is estimated at 30,000, of which two-thirds were Eskimo and other Indians. Population returned in 1880, 33,426; in 1890, 32,052; in 1900, 63,592, of whom approximately 48% were whites, 46% natives and 6% Japanese and Chinese; (1910 census) 64,356. The Asiatics are employed in the salmon canneries. The natives of Alaska fall under four ethnologic races: the Eskimo or Innuit---of these the Aleuts are an offshoot; the Haidas or Kaigani, found principally on Prince of Wales Island and thereabouts; the Thlinkits, rather widely distributed in the ``Panhandle''; and the Tinnehs or Athapascans, the stock race of the great interior country. In 1800 the pure-blooded natives numbered 23,531, of whom 6000 were Haidas, Thlinkits or other natives of the coastal region, 1000 Aleuts, 3400 Athapascans and 13,100 Eskimo. The natives have adopted many customs of white civilization, and on the Aleutians, and in coastal Alaska, and in scattered regions in the interior acknowledge Christianity under the forms of the Orthodox Greek or other churches. The rapid exhaustion in late years of the caribou, seals and other animals, once the food or stockin-trade of the Aleuts and other races, threatens more and more the swift depletion of the natives. They have also felt the fatal influence of the liquor traffic. From 1893 to 1895 the United States expended $55,000 to support the natives of the Fur Seal Islands. This policy threatens to become a continued necessity throughout much of Alaska. There is a small government Indian reservation on Afognak Island, near Kodiak. The white population is extremely mobile, and few towns have an assured or definite future. The prosperity of the mining towns of the interior is dependent on the fickle fortune of the gold-fields, for which they are the distributing points. Sitka, Juneau (the capital) and Douglas, both centres of a rich mining district, Skagway, shipping point for freight for the Klondike country (see these titles), and St Michael, the ocean port for freighting up the Yukon, are the only towns apparently assured of a prosperous future. Wrangell (formerly Fort St Dionysius, Fort Stikine and Fort Wrangell), founded in 1833, is a dilapidated and torpid little village, of some interest in Alaskan history, and of temporary importance from 1874 to 1877 as the gateway to the Cassiar mines in British Columbia. Its inhabitants are chiefly Thlinkit Indians.

Government.---Alaska, by an act of Congress approved the 7th of May 1906, received the power to elect a delegate to Congress. Before this act and the elections of August 1906 Alaska was a governmental district of the United States without a delegate in Congress. Its administration rests in the hands of the various executive departments, and is partly exercised by a governor and other resident officials appointed by the president. It is a military district, a customs district (since 1868), is organized into a land district, and constitutes three judicial divisions. In 1867-1877 the government was in the hands of the department of war, although the customs were from the beginning collected by the department of the treasury, with which the effective control rested from 1877 until the passage of the so-called Organic Act of 17th May 1884. This act extended over Alaska the laws of the state of Oregon so far as they should be applicable, created the judicial district and a land district, put in force the mining laws of the United States, and in general gave the administrative system the organization it retained up to the reforms of 1899-1900. The history of government and political agitation has centred since then in the demand for general land legislation and for an adequate civil and criminal law, in protests against the enforcement of a liquor prohibition law, and in agitation for an efficiently centralized administration. As the general land laws of the United States were not extended to Alaska in 1884, there was no means, generally speaking, of gaining title to any land other than a mining claim, and so far as any method did exist its cost was absolutely prohibitive. After partial and inadequate legislation in 1891 and 1898, the regular system of land surveys was made applicable to Alaska in 1899, and a generous homestead law was provided in 1903. An adequate code of civil and criminal law and provisions for civil government under improved conditions were provided by Congress in 1899 and 1900. The agitation over prohibition dates from 1868; the act of that year organizing a customs district forbade the importation and sale of firearms, ammunition and distilled spirits; the Organic Act of 1884 extended this prohibition to all intoxicating liquors. The coast of Alaska offers exceptional facilities for smuggling, and liquor bas always been very plentiful; juries have steadily refused to convict offenders, and treasury officials have regularly collected revenue from saloons existing in defiance of law. The prohibition law is still upon the statute-books. The chief weaknesses in the colonial administration of the territory, particularly prior to 1900---but only to a slightly less extent since---have been decentralization and a lax civil service. The concomitants of these have been irresponsibility and inefficiency. The governor has represented the president without possessing much power; the department of war has had illdefined duties; the department of justice has, in theory, had charge of the general law; the department of the interior has administered the land law; the agents of the bureau of education have superintended the stocking of Alaska with reindeer; the United States Fish Commission has investigated the condition of marine life without having powers to protect it. The treasury department has charted the coasts, sought to enforce the prohibition law, controlled and protected the fur seals and fisheries, and incidentally collected the customs. Since the creation of the department of commerce and labour (1903), it has taken over from other departments some of these scattered functions. All in all, the government has proved itself without power to protect the most valuable industries of the district, and for many years there has been talk of a regular territorial government. The paucity of permanent residents and the poverty of the local treasury seem to make such a solution an impossibleone.

History.---The region now known as Alaska was first explored by the Russian officers Captain Vitus Bering and Chirikov in I 741 They visited parts of the coast between Dixon Entrance and Cape St Elias, and returned along the line of the Aleutians. Their expedition was followed by many private vessels manned by traders and trappers. Kodiak was discovered in 1763 and a settlement effected in 1784. Spanish expeditions in 1774 and 1775 visited the south-eastern coast and laid a foundation for subsequent territorial claims, one incident of which were the Nootka Sound seizures of 1789. Captain James Cook in 1778 made surveys from which the first approximately accurate chart of the coast was published; but it was reserved for Vancouver in 1793-1794 to make the first charts in the modern sense of the intricate south-eastern coast, which only in recent years have been superseded by new survel's. Owing to excesses committed by private traders and companies, who robbed, massacred and hideously abused the native Indians, the trade and regulation of the Russian possessions were in 1799 confided to a semi-official corporation called the Russian-American Company for a term of twenty years, afterwards twice renewed for similar periods. A monopoly of the American trade had previously been granted in 1788 to another private company, the Shohkof. Alexander Baranov (1747--1819); chief resident director of the American companies (1790-1819), one of the early administrators of the new company, became famous through the successes he achieved as governor. He founded Sitka (q.v.) in 1804 after the massacre by the natives of the inhabitants of an eadier settlement (1799) at an adjacent point. The headquarters of the company were at Kodiak until 1805, and thereafter at Sitka. In 1821 Russia attempted by ukase to exclude navigators from Bering Sea and the Pacific coast of her possessions, which led to immediate protest from the United States and Great Britain. This led to a treaty with the United States in 1824 and one with Great Britain in 1825, by which the excessive demands of Russia were relinquished and the boundaries of the Russian possessions were permanently fixed. The last charter of the Russian-American Company expired on the 31st of December 1861, and Prince Maksutov, an imperial governor, was appointed to administer the affairs of the territory. In 1864 authority was granted to an American company to make explorations for a proposed Russo-American company's telegraph line overland from the Amur river in Siberia to Bering Strait, and through Alaska to British Columbia. Work was begun on this scheme in 1865 and continued for nearly three years, when the success of the Atlantic cable rendered the construction of the lme unnecessary and it was given up, but not until important explorations had been made. In 1854 a Californian company began importing ice from Alaska. Very soon thereafter the first Official overtures by the United States for the purchase of Russian America were made during the presidency of James Buchanan. In 1867, by a treaty signed on the 30th of March, the purchase was consummated for the sum of $7,200,o00, and on the 18th of October 1867 the formal transfer of the territory was made at Sitka.

Since its acquisition by the United States the history of Alaska has been mainly that of the evolution of its administrative system described above, and the varying fortunes of its fisheries and sealing industries. Since the gold discoveries a wonderful advance has been made in the exploration of the country. A military reservation has been created with Fort Michael as a centre. The two events of greatest general interest have been the Fur Seal Arbitration of 1893 (see BERING SEA ARBITRATION), and the . Alaska-Canadian boundary dispute, settled by an international tribunal of British and American jurists in London in 1903. The boundary dispute involved the interpretation of the words, quoted above, in the treaties of 1825 and 1867 defining the boundary of the Russian (later American) possessions, and also the determining of the location of Portland Canal, and the question whether the coastal girdle should cross or pass around the heads of the fjords of the coast. The tribunal was an ad-)udication board and not an actual court of arbitration, since its function was not to decide the boundary but to settle the meaning of the Anglo-Russian treaty, which provided for an ideal (and not a physical) boundary. This boundary did not fit in with geographical facts; hence the adjudication was based upon the motive of the treaty and not upon the literal interpretation of such elastic terms as ``ocean,', ``shore'' and ``coast-line.'' The award of the tribunal made in October 1903 was arrived at by the favourable vote of the three commissioners of the United States and of Lord Alverstone, whose action was bitterly resented by the two Canadian commissioners; it sustained in the main the claims of the United States.

AUTHORITIES.---W. H. Dall and M. Baker, ``List of Charts, Maps, and Publications relating to Alaska'', in United States Pacific Coast Pilot, 1879; Monthly Catalogue United States Public Documents, No. 37 (1898), and Bulletin 227, United States Geological Surve8' (1904), for official documents; H. H. Bancroft, Alaska 1710--f8&5) pp. 595-609; and various other bibliographies in titles mentioned below, especially in Brooke's The Geography and Geology of Alaska.

General.--United States Monthly Summary of Commerce Finance, July 1903, ``Commercial Alaska, 1867-1903. Area, Popula tion, Productions, Commerce . . .''; W. H. Dall, Alaska and its Resources (Boston, 1870); C. Sumner, Speech on ``Cession of Russian-America to the United States,'' in Works, vol. xi. (Boston, 1875): C. H. Merriam, editor, Halrriman Alaska Expedition (New York, 1901-1904, 3 vols.).

Physiography and Climate.---United States Department of War, Explorations in Alaska, 1864-1900 (Washington, 1901); United States Geological Survey, Annual Reports since 1897---``The Geography and Geology of Alaska: A Summary of Existing Knowledge,'' by Alfred H. Brooks (Washington, 1905; Professional Paper, No. 45), with various maps (see National Geographic Mag., May 1904, lor a map embodying all knowledge then known); ``Altitudes in Alaska'' (Bulletin 100, by H. Gannett); ``Geographic Dictionary of Alaksa'' (Bulletin 299, Washington, 1906), by M. Baker; United States Post Office, ``Map of Alaska'' (1901); United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, Bulletins and maps; Bulletin American Geographieal Society, February 1902, F. S. Schrader, ``Work of the United States Geological Survey in Alaska''; Journal of Franklin Institute, October and November 1904, W. R. Abercrombie---``The Copper River Country of Alaska''; I. C. Russell, Glaciers of North America. . . . Ivan Petroff, Report

Industries.--United States Census, 1880, Ivan Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries and Resources of Alaska; United States Census, 1890 and 1900; on reindeer, Fifteenth Annuat Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska, by Sheldon Jackson (Washington, 1906); on agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture, Experiment Stations, Bulletin Nos. 48, 62, 82 . . . (1898-1900); Seal and Salmon Fisheries and General Industries of Alaska, 1868-1805 (Washington, 1898) (United States Treasury, also 55 Congress, 1 Session, House Document 92, vols. vi.-x.), 4 vols.; D. S. Jordan et al., The Fur Seals and Fur Seal Islanids (or Peport of ln.: also many special reports on the seals published by the voln.: also many special reports on the seals published by the United States Treasury: for Report of British seal experts, Creat Britain, Foreign Office Correspondence, United States, No. 3 (1897), No. 1 (1898).

History and Government.--H. H. Bancroft, Alaska, 1730-1885 (San Francisco, 1886); W. H. Dall, ``Alaska as it was and is, 1863-1893,'' in Bulletin of the Philadelphia Society of Washington, xiii.; Governor of Alaska, Annual Report to the Secretary of the Interior; Fur Seal Arbitration, Proceedings (Washington, 1895, 46 vols.l: also Great Britain, Foreign Office Correspondence, United States, Nos. 6, 7, 8 (1893), No. 1 (1895); Alaskan Boundary Tribunal, Cases, Counter-cases, Arguments, Atlases of United States and Great Britain (Washington, 1903 seq.); and a rich periodical literature.

Population, Natives.--United States National Museum, Ann. Report (1896); W. Hough, ``Lamp of the Eskimo'' (long, and of general interest): F. Knapp and R. L. Childe, The Thlinkets of South-Eastern Alaska (Chicago, 1896).

1 At Kodiak, the monthly means range from 28 deg. to 33 deg. with a total range from -10 deg. to 82 deg. F., as against -5 deg. to 87 deg. F. at Sitka; the average temperature is 40.6 deg. F., rainfall 59 in.

2 At St Michael the mean annual temperature is about 26 deg. , the monthly means run from about -2 deg. to 54 deg. , and the extreme recorded temperatures from about -55 deg. to 77 deg. F.; at Port Clarence the annual mean is 22 deg. lmonthly means -7 deg. to 51 deg. F.; extreme range of temperature, -38 deg. to 77 deg. F.; at Point Barrow the annual mean is 7.70 F'., monthly means -18.6 deg. to 38.1 deg. F., extreme range of temperature -55 deg. to 65 deg. F.

3 The mean annual temperature on the Yukon at the international line is about 21 deg. F., the monthly means run from -17 deg. to 60 deg. F., the range of extreme temperatures from -80 deg. to 90 deg. F.

4 At Fort Yukon five years' records showed mean seasonal temperatures of 14 deg. , 60 deg. , 17 deg. , and -23.8 deg. F. for spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively: at Holy Cross Mission 20 deg. , 59 deg. , 36 deg. and 0.95 deg. , at Nulato 29 deg. , 60 deg. , 36 deg. and -14 deg. . `

5 The Harriman expedition collected in two months 1000 species of insects, of which 344 species (and 6 genera) were new to science.

6 The trees here grow as large as 10 in. in diameter and 40 or 50 ft. high; the branches do nor spread, even where there is room, so ihat the tallest tree has a top only four or five feet broad; the roots, which cannot penetrate the shaded and frozen soil, spread over the ice or shallowly into the tundra carpeting, and often only by their matted neiwork prevent the fall of the trees.

7 280 species of mosses proper, of which 46 were new to science, and 16 varieties of peat moss (Sphognum) were listed by the Harriman expedition; and 74 species or varieties of ferns.

8 The value of the total aroduct of Alaska's fish canneries was in 1905 $7,735,782, or 29.3% of the total for the United States; in 1900 it was 17.4% of the country's total.

9 Seattle, Sitka and Valdez are connected by cable; telegraoh lines run from the Panhandle inland to the Yukon and down its valley to Fort St Michael.

ALASSIO, a town of Liguria, Italy, on the N.W. coast of the Gulf of Genoa, in the province of Genoa, 57 m. S.W. of the town of the same name by rail. Pop. (1901) 5630. It is mainly noticeable as a health resort in winter and a bathing-place in summer, and has many hotels. The anchorage is safe, and the bay full of fish; the harbour has a certain amount of trade. The old town contains one or two interesting churches, and commands a fine view.

ALASTOR, in Greek mythology, the spirit of revenge, which prompts the members of a family to commit fresh crimes to obtain satisfaction. These crimes necessitate further acts of vengeance, and the curse is thus transmitted from generation to generation. The word is also used for a man's evil genius, which drives him to sin without any provocation; a man so driven is sometimes called Alastor. The epithet is applied to Zeus and the Erinyes as the deities of revenge and punishment.

ALA-TAU (``Variegated Mountains''), the name of six mountain ranges in Asiatic Russia. Three of these are in the government of Semiryechensk in Central Asia, all belonging to the Tianshan system:---(1) the Terskei Ala-tau, south of and parallel to the lake of Issyk-kul; (2) the Kunghei Ala-tau, and (3) the Trans-Ili Ala-tau, both N. of and parallel to the same lake; and (4) the Dzungarian Ala-tau, lying N. of the Ili depression. The first three link together the Tian-shan and the Alexander Range. Their mean elevation is 6000--7000 ft.; their culminating point, Talgar, on a transverse ridge between (2) and (3), reaches 15,000 ft.; the limits of perpetual snow run at 11,000-11,700 ft. The Dzungarian Ala-tau reach a maximum altitude of 11,000 ft. and have a mean altitude of 6250 ft. From the middle of the Alexander Range another range (5) called Ala-tau, or Talastau, strikes west by south. The name Ala-tau also enters into the designation of (6), a range between the upper Yenisei and the upper Ob, in the government of Tomsk, namely, the Kuznetsk Ala-tau, forming an outlier of the Altai Mountains, and reaching 6000-7000 ft. in altitude.

ALAUNA, ALAUNUS, the Celtic names of two rivers, &c., in Roman Britain. Hence the modern Allan Water, river Alyn, &c.

ALAVA, DON MIGUEL RICARDO DE (1770-1841), Spanish general and statesman, was born at Vittoria in 1770. He served first in the navy, and had risen to be captain of a frigate when he exchanged intorthe army, receiving corresponding rank. He was present as a marine at the battle of Trafalgar on board the flagship of his uncle Admiral Alava. In politics he followed a very devious course. At the assembly of Bayonne in 1808 he was one of the most prominent of those who accepted the new constitution from Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain. After the national rising against French aggression, and the defeat of General Dupont at Bailen in 1808, Alava joined the national independent party, who were fighting in alliance with the English. The Spanish Cortes appointed him commissary at the English headquarters, and the duke of Wellington, who regarded him with great favour, made him one of his aides-decamp. Before the close of the campaign he had risen to the rank of brigadier-general. On the restoration of Ferdinand, Alava was cast into prison, but the influence of his uncle Ethenard, the inquisitor, and of Wellington secured his speedy release. He soon contrived to gain the favour of the king, who appointed him in 1815 ambassador to the Hague. It was therefore his remarkable forrune to be present at the battle of Waterloo with Wellington's staff. He is supposed to have been the only man who was present at both Waterloo and Trafalgar. Four years later he was recalled owing, it is said, to the marked kindness he had shown to his banished fellow-countrymen. On the breaking out of the revolution of 1820 he was chosen by the province of Alava to represent it in the Cortes, where he became conspicuous in the party of the Exallados, and in 1822 was made president. In the latter year he fought with the militia under Francisco Ballesteros and Pablo Murillo to maintain the authority of the Cortes against the rebels. When the French invested Cadiz, Alava was commissioned by the Cortes to treat with the duc d'Angouleme, and the negotiations resulted in the restoration of Ferdinand, who pledged himself to a liberal policy. No sooner had he regained power, however, than he ceased to hold himself bound by his promises, and Alava found it necessary to retire first to Gibraltar and then to England. On the death of Ferdinand he returned to Spain, and espousing the cause of Maria Christina against Don Carlos was appointed ambassador to London in 1834 and to Paris in 1835. After the insurrection of La Granja he refused to sign the constitution of 1812, declaring himself tired of taking new oaths, and was consequently obliged to retire to France, where he died at Bareges in 1843.

Frequent and honourable mention of Alava is made in Napier's History of the Peninsular War, and his name is often met borh in lives of the duke of Wellington and in his correspondence.

ALAVA, one of the Basque Provinces of northern Spain; bounded on the N. by Biscay and Guipuzcoa, E. by Navarre, S. by Logrono, and W. by Burgos. Pop. (1900) 96,385; area 1175 sq. m. The countship of Trevino (190 sq. m.) in the centre of Alava belongs to the province of Burgos. The surface of Alava is very mountainous, especially on the north, where a part of the Pyrenees forms its natural boundary. It is separated from Logrono by the river Ebro, and its other rivers are the Zadorra and the Ayuda. The climate is mild in summer, fitful in autumn and spring, and very cold in winter, as even the plains are high and shut in on three sides by mountains snow-clad during several months. The soil in the valleys is fertile, yielding wheat, barley, maize, flax, hemp and fruits. Oil and a poor kind of wine called chacoli are also produced. Many of the mountains are clothed with forests of oak, chestnuts, beeches and other trees, and contain iron, copper, lead and marble. Salt is also found in large quantities; but mining and quarrying are not practised on a large scale; only lead, lignite and asphalt being worked. There are mineral waters in many places. Other local industries of some importance include smelting, and manufactures of beds, furniture, railway carriages, matches, paper, sweets and woollen and cotton goods. Bread-stuffs. colonial products and machinery are largely imported. Few provinces in Spain are inhabited by so laborious, active and well-to-do a population. The primary schools are numerously attended, and there are very good normal schools for teachers of both sexes, and a model agricultural farm: The public roads and other works of the province are excellent, and, like those of the rest of the Basque provinces, entirely kept up by local initiative and taxes. Railways from Madrid to the French frontier, and from Saragossa to Bilbao, cross the province. The capital is Vitoria (pop. 1900, 30,701), which is the only town with more than 3500 inhabitants.

For a fuller account of the history, people and customs of Alava, see BASQUES and BASQUE PROVINCE, with the works there cited. A very elaborate bibliograohy is given in the Catalogo de las obras referentes a las provincias de Alava y Navarra, by A. A. Salazar (Madrid, 1887.) The following books by i. I. Landazuri y Romarate contain much material for a provincial history:--Historia ecclesiastica, &c. (Pamplona, 1797); Historia civil, &c. (Vitodes, 1798); Compendios historicos de la ciudad y villas de . . . Alava, &c. (Pamplona, 1798); Suplemento a' los cuatro libros de la historia de . . . Alava (Vitoria, 1799); and Los varones illustres Alavenses Vitoria, 1798). See also M. Risco in vol. 33 of Hispania Sagiada, by H. Florez, &c. (Madrid, 1754-1879).

ALB (Lat. alba, from albus, white), a liturgical vestment of the Catholic Church. It is a sack-like tunic of white linen, with narrow sleeves and a hole for the head to pass through, and when gathered up round the waist by the girdle (cingulum) just clears the ground. Albs were originally quite plain, but about the 10th century the custom arose of ornamenting the borders and the cuffs of the sleeves with strips of embroidery, and this became common in the 12th century. These at first encircled the whole border; but soon it became customary to substitute for them square patches of embroidery or precious fabrics. These ``parures'' ``apparels'' or ``orphreys'' (Lat. parun'ae, grammala, aurifeisia, &c.), were usually four in number, one being sewn on the back and another on the front of the vestment just above the lower hem, and one on each cuff. When, as occasionally happened, a fifth was added, this was placed on the breast just below the neck opening. These ``apparelled albs'' (albae paratae) continued in general use in the Western Church till the 16th century, when a tendency to dispense with the parures began, Rome itself setting the example.

The growth of the lace industry in the 17th century hastened the process by leading to the substitution of broad bands of lace as decoration; occasionally, as in a magnificent specimen preserved at South Kensington, nearly half the vestment is thus composed of lace. At the present time, so far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, apparelled albs are only in regular use at Milan (Ambrosian Rite), and, partially, in certain churches in Spain. The decree of the Congregation of Rites (May 18, 1819) says nothing about apparels, but only lays down that the alb must be of white linen or hemp cloth. There is no definite rule as to the material or character of the ornamentation, and attempts have been made, especially in England, to revive the use of the apparelled alb.

In the Roman Church the alb is now reckoned as one of the vestments proper to the sacrifice of the Mass. It is worn by bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons under the other eucharistic vestments, either at Mass or at functions connected with it. It is sometimes also worn by clerics in minor orders, whose proper vestment is, however, the surplice--itself a modification of the alb (see SURPLICE.) The alb is supposed to be symbolical of purity, and the priest, when putting it on, prays: ``Make me white and purify my heart, O Lord,'' &c. In the middle ages the parures, which originally had no mystic intention whatever, were taken to symbolize the wounds of Christ; whence probably is derived the custom surviving at the cathedral of Toledo, of the singers of the Passion on Good Friday being vested in apparelled albs.

In England at the Reformation the alb went out of use with the other ``Mass vestments,'' and remained out of use in the Church of England until the ritual revival of the 19th century. It is now worn in a considerable number of churches not only by the clergy but by acolytes and servers at the Communion. Where the ritual, as in most cases, is a revival of pre-Reformation uses and not modelled on that of modern Rome, these albs are frequently apparelled. For the question of its legality see VESTMENTS.

Both the alb and its name are derived ultimately from the tunica alba, the white tunic, which formed part of the ordinary dress of Roman citizens under the Empire. As such it was worn both in and out of church, the few notices remaining which suggest a special tunic for ministers at the Eucharist merely implying that it was not fitting to use for so sacred a function a garment soiled by everyday wear. The date of its definite adoption as a liturgical vestment is uncertain; at Rome--- where until the 13th century it was known as the linea or camisia (cf. the modern Italian camice for alb)---it seems to have been thus used as early as the 5th century. But as late as the 9th and 10th centuries the alba is still an everyday as well as a liturgical garment, and we find bishops and synods forbidding priests to sing mass in the alba worn by them in ordinary life (see Braun, p. 62). Throughout the middle ages, moreover, the word alba was somewhat loosely used. In the medieval inventories are sometimes found albae, described as red, blue or black; which has led to the belief that albs were sometimes not only made of stuffs other than linen, but were coloured. It is clear, however, from the descriptions of these vestments that in some cases they were actually tunicles, the confusion of terms arising from the similarity of shape (see DALMATIC); in other cases the colour applied to the parures, not to the albs as a whole. Silk albs appear in the inventories, but only very exceptionally.

The equivalent of the alb in the ancient Churches of the East is the sticharion (sticharion) of the Orthodox Church (Armenian shapik, Syrian Kutina, Coptic stoicharion or tuniah.) It is worn girdled by bishops and priests in all rites, by subdeacons in the Greek and Coptic rites. By deacons and lectors it is worn ungirdled in all the rites. The colour of the vestment is usually white for bishops and priests (this is the rule in the Coptic Church); for the other orders there is no rule, and all colours, except black, may be used. Its material may be linen, wool, cotton or silk; but silk only is the rule for deacons. In the Armenian and Coptic rites the vestment is often elaborately embroidered; in the other rites the only ornament is a cross high in the middle of the back, save in the case of bishops of the Orthodox Church, whose sticharia are ornamented with two vertical red stripes (potamoi, ``rivers''). In the East as in the West the vestment is specially associated with the ritual of the Eucharist.

The whole subject is exhaustively treated by Father Joseph Braun in Die liturgische Gewandung (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907). See also Bibliography to the article VESTMENTS.

ALBA, a town and episcopal see of Piedmont, Italy, on the river Tanaro, in the province of Cuneo. From the town of the same name it is 33 m. N.E. direct; it is 42 m. S.S.E. of Turin by rail. Pop. (1901) 13,900. It contains a fine cathedral, with a Gothic facade, reconstructed in 1486, and is an important commercial centre. It occupies the site of the ancient Alba Pompeia, probably founded by Pompeius Strabo (consul 89 B.C.) when he constructed the road from Aquae Statiellae (Acqui) to Augusta Taurinorum (Turin). Probably this was the road taken by Decimus Brutus when he succeeded, after the raising of the siege of AIutina in 43 B.C., in occupying Pollentia just before Mark Antony's cavalry came in sight. Alba was the birthplace of the emperor Pertinax. It became an episcopal see dependent on Milan in the 4th century. A small museum of local antiquities was established in 1897.

See F. Eusebio in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche (Rome, 1904), vol. v. p. 485.

ALBACETE, an inland province of south-eastern Spain, formed in 1833 out of the northern half of Murcia, and bounded on the N. by Cuenca, E. by Valencia and Alicante, S. by Murcia, and W. by Granada and Jaen. Pop. (1900) 237,877; area 5737 sq.