_The Cordilleran Belt._--The Rocky Mountain region as a whole, best named the Cordillera or Cordilleran belt, includes several parallel ranges of mountains of different structures and ages, the eastern one constituting the Rocky Mountains proper. This band of mountains 400 m. wide covers towards the south almost all of British Columbia and a strip of Alberta east of the watershed, and towards the north forms the whole of the Yukon Territory. While it is throughout essentially a mountainous country, very complicated in its orographic features and interlocking river systems, two principal mountain axes form its ruling features--the Rocky Mountains proper, above referred to, and the Coast Ranges. Between them are many other ranges shorter and less regular in trend, such as the Selkirk Mountains, the Gold Ranges and the Caribou Mountains. There is also in the southern inland region an interior plateau, once probably a peneplain, but now elevated and greatly dissected by river valleys, which extends north-westward for 500 m. with a width of about 100 m. and affords the largest areas of arable and pasture land in British Columbia. Similar wide tracts of less broken country occur, after a mountainous interruption, in northern British Columbia and to some extent in the Yukon Territory, where wide valleys and rolling hills alternate with short mountain ranges of no great altitude. The Pacific border of the coast range of British Columbia is ragged with fjords and channels, where large steamers may go 50 or 100 m. inland between mountainous walls as on the coast of Norway; and there is also a bordering mountain system partly submerged forming Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. The highest mountains of the Cordillera in Canada are near the southern end of the boundary separating Alaska from the Yukon Territory, the meridian of 141°, and they include Mount Logan (19,540 ft.) and Mount St Elias (18,000 ft.), while the highest peak in North America, Mount McKinley (20,000 ft.), is not far to the north-west in Alaska. This knot of very lofty mountains, with Mount Fairweather and some others, all snowy and glacier-clad for almost their whole height, are quite isolated from the highest points of the Rocky Mountains proper, which are 1000 m. to the south-east. Near the height of land between British Columbia and Alberta there are many peaks which rise from 10,000 to 12,000 ft. above sea-level, the highest which has been carefully measured being Mount Robson (13,700 ft.). The next range to the east, the Selkirks, has several summits that reach 10,000 ft. or over, while the Coast Ranges scarcely go beyond 9000 ft. The snow line in the south is from 7500 to 9000 ft. above sea-level, being lower on the Pacific side where the heaviest snowfall comes in winter than on the drier north-eastern side. The snow line gradually sinks as one advances north-west, reaching only 2000 or 3000 ft. on the Alaskan coast. The Rockies and Selkirks support thousands of glaciers, mostly not very large, but having some 50 or 100 sq. m. of snowfield. All the glaciers are now in retreat, with old tree-covered moraines, hundreds or thousands of feet lower down the valley. The timber line is at about 7500 ft. in southern British Columbia and 4000 ft. in the interior of the Yukon Territory. On the westward slopes, especially of the Selkirks and Coast Ranges, vegetation is almost tropical in its density and luxuriance, the giant cedar and the Douglas fir sometimes having diameters of 10 ft. or more and rising to the height of 150 ft. On the eastern flanks of the ranges the forest is much thinner, and on the interior plateau and in many of the valleys largely gives way to open grass land. The several ranges of the Cordillera show very different types of structure and were formed at different ages, the Selkirks with their core of pre-Cambrian granite, gneiss and schists coming first, then the Coast Ranges, which seem to have been elevated in Cretaceous times, formed mainly by a great upwelling of granite and diorite as batholiths along the margin of the continent and sedimentary rocks lying as remnants on their flanks; and finally the Rocky Mountains in the Laramie or early Eocene, after the close of the Cretaceous. This latest and also highest range was formed by tremendous thrusts from the Pacific side, crumpling and folding the ancient sedimentary rocks, which run from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous, and faulting them along overturned folds. The outer ranges in Alberta have usually the form of tilted blocks with a steep cliff towards the north-east and a gentler slope, corresponding to the dip of the beds, towards the south-west. Near the centre of the range there are broader foldings, carved into castle and cathedral shapes. The most easterly range has been shown to have been actually pushed 7 m. out upon the prairies. In the Rocky Mountains proper no eruptive rocks have broken through, so that no ore deposits of importance are known from them, but in the Cretaceous synclines which they enclose valuable coal basins exist. Coal of a bituminous and also semi-anthracite kind is produced, the best mined on the Pacific slope of the continent, the coking coals of the Fernie region supplying the fuel of the great metal mining districts of the Kootenays in British Columbia, and of Montana and other states to the south. The Selkirks and Gold Ranges west of the Rockies, with their great areas of eruptive rocks, both ancient and modern, include most of the important mines of gold, silver, copper and lead which give British Columbia its leadership among the Canadian provinces as a producer of metals. In early days the placer gold mines of the Columbia, Fraser and Caribou attracted miners from everywhere, but these have declined, and lode mines supply most of the gold as well as the other metals. The Coast Ranges and islands also include many mines, especially of copper, but up to the present of less value than those inland. Most of the mining development is in southern British Columbia, where a network of railways and waterways gives easy access; but as means of communication improve to the north a similar development may be looked for there. The Atlin and White Horse regions in northern British Columbia and southern Yukon have attracted much attention, and the Klondike placers still farther north have furnished many millions of dollars' worth of gold. Summing up the economic features of the Cordilleran belt, it includes many of the best coal-mines and the most extensive deposits of gold, copper, lead and zinc of the Dominion, while in silver, nickel and iron Ontario takes the lead. When its vast area stretching from the international boundary to beyond the Arctic circle is opened up, it may be expected to prove the counterpart of the great mining region of the Cordillera in the United States to the south. Entry: CANADA
HERTZ, HEINRICH RUDOLF (1857-1894), German physicist, was born at Hamburg on the 22nd of February 1857. On leaving school he determined to adopt the profession of engineering, and in the pursuance of this decision went to study in Munich in 1877. But soon coming to the conclusion that engineering was not his vocation he abandoned it in favour of physical science, and in October 1878 began to attend the lectures of G. R. Kirchhoff and H. von Helmholtz at Berlin. In preparation for these he spent the winter of 1877-1878 in reading up original treatises like those of Laplace and Lagrange on mathematics and mechanics, and in attending courses on practical physics under P. G. von Jolly and J. F. W. von Bezold; the consequence was that within a few days of his arrival in Berlin in October 1878 he was able to plunge into original research on a problem of electric inertia. For the best solution a prize was offered by the philosophical faculty of the University, and this he succeeded in winning with the paper which was published in 1880 on the "Kinetic Energy of Electricity in Motion." His next investigation, on "Induction in Rotating Spheres," he offered in 1880 as his dissertation for his doctor's degree, which he obtained with the rare distinction of _summa cum laude_. Later in the same year he became assistant to Helmholtz in the physical laboratory of the Berlin Institute. During the three years he held this position he carried out researches on the contact of elastic solids, hardness, evaporation and the electric discharge in gases, the last earning him the special commendation of Helmholtz. In 1883 he went to Kiel, becoming _Privatdozent_, and there he began the studies in Maxwell's electromagnetic theory which a few years later resulted in the discoveries that rendered his name famous. These were actually made between 1885 and 1889, when he was professor of physics in the Carlsruhe Polytechnic. He himself recorded that their origin is to be sought in a prize problem proposed by the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1879, having reference to the experimental establishment of some relation between electromagnetic forces and the dielectric polarization of insulators. Imagining that this would interest Hertz and be successfully attacked by him, Helmholtz specially drew his attention to it, and promised him the assistance of the Institute if he decided to work on the subject; but Hertz did not take it up seriously at that time, because he could not think of any procedure likely to prove effective. It was of course well known, as a necessity of Maxwell's mathematical theory, that the polarization and depolarization of an insulator must give rise to the same electromagnetic effects in the neighbourhood as a voltaic current in a conductor. The experimental proof, however, was still lacking, and though several experimenters had come very near its discovery, Hertz was the first who actually succeeded in supplying it, in 1887. Continuing his inquiries for the next year or two, he was able to discover the progressive propagation of electromagnetic action through space, to measure the length and velocity of electromagnetic waves, and to show that in the transverse nature of their vibration and their susceptibility to reflection, refraction and polarization they are in complete correspondence with the waves of light and heat. The result, was in Helmholtz's words, to establish beyond doubt that ordinary light consists of electrical vibrations in an all-pervading ether which possesses the properties of an insulator and of a magnetic medium. Hertz himself gave an admirable account of the significance of his discoveries in a lecture on the relations between light and electricity, delivered before the German Society for the Advancement of Natural Science and Medicine at Heidelberg in September 1889. Since the time of these early experiments, various other modes of detecting the existence of electric waves have been found out in addition to the spark-gap which he first employed, and the results of his observations, the earliest interest of which was simply that they afforded a confirmation of an abstruse mathematical theory, have been applied to the practical purposes of signalling over considerable distances (see TELEGRAPHY, WIRELESS). In 1889 Hertz was appointed to succeed R. J. E. Clausius as ordinary professor of physics in the university of Bonn. There he continued his researches on the discharge of electricity in rarefied gases, only just missing the discovery of the X-rays described by W. C. Röntgen a few years later, and produced his treatise on the _Principles of Mechanics_. This was his last work, for after a long illness he died at Bonn on the 1st of January 1894. By his premature death science lost one of her most promising disciples. Helmholtz thought him the one of all his pupils who had penetrated farthest into his own circle of scientific thought, and looked to him with the greatest confidence for the further extension and development of his work. Entry: HERTZ
Kepler explained the double movement of the earth by the rotation of the sun. At one time the sun presented its friendly side, which attracted one planet, sometimes its adverse side, which repelled it. He also peopled the planets with souls and genii. He was led to his three great laws by musical analogies, just as William Herschel afterwards passed from music to astronomy. Kepler, who in his youth made almanacs, and once prophesied a hard winter, which came to pass, could not help putting an astrological interpretation on the disappearance of the brilliant star of 1572, which Tycho had observed. Theodore Beza thought that this star, which in December 1573 equalled Jupiter in brilliancy, predicted the second coming of Christ. Astronomers were only then beginning to study variable and periodic stars, and disturbances in that part of the heavens, which had till then, on the authority of Aristotle, been regarded as incorruptible, combined with the troubles of the times, must have given a new stimulus to belief in the signs in heaven. Montaigne (_Essais_, lib. i. chap, x.) relates a singular episode in the history of astrology. Charles V. and Francis I., who both bid for the friendship of the infamous Aretino, surnamed the divine, both likewise engaged astrologers to fight their battles. In Italy those who prophesied the ruin of France were sure to be listened to. These prophecies affected the public funds much as telegrams do nowadays. "At Rome," Montaigne tells us, "a large sum of money was lost on the Change by this prognostication of our ruin." The marquis of Saluces, notwithstanding his gratitude to Francis I. for the many favours he had received, including his marquisate, of which the brother was despoiled for his benefit, was led in 1536 to betray his country, being scared by the glorious prophecies of the ultimate success of Charles V. which were then rife. The influence of the Medici made astrologers popular in France. Richelieu, on whose council was Jacques Gaffarel (1601-1681), the last of the Kabbalists, did not despise astrology as an engine of government. At the birth of Louis XIV. a certain Morin de Villefranche was placed behind a curtain to cast the nativity of the future autocrat. A generation back the astrologer would not have been hidden behind a curtain, but have taken precedence of the doctor. La Bruyère dares not pronounce against such beliefs, "for there are perplexing facts affirmed by grave men who were eye-witnesses." In England William Lilly and Robert Fludd were both dressed in a little brief authority. The latter gives us elaborate rules for the detection of a thief, and tells us that he has had personal experience of their efficacy. "If the lord of the sixth house is found in the second house, or in company with the lord of the second house, the thief is one of the family. If Mercury is in the sign of the Scorpion he will be bald, &c." Francis Bacon abuses the astrologers of his day no less than the alchemists, but he does so because he has visions of a reformed astrology and a reformed alchemy. Sir Thomas Browne, too, while he denies the capacity of the astrologers of his day, does not venture to dispute the reality of the science. The idea of the souls of men passing at death to the stars, the blessedness of their particular sphere being assigned them according to their deserts (the metempsychosis of J. Reynaud), may be regarded as a survival of religious astrology, which, even as late as Descartes's day, assigned to the angels the task of moving the planets and the stars. Joseph de Maistre believed in comets as messengers of divine justice, and in animated planets, and declared that divination by astrology is not an absolutely chimerical science. Lastly, we may mention a few distinguished men who ran counter to their age in denying stellar influences. Aristarchus of Samos, Martianus Capella (the precursor of Copernicus), Cicero, Favorinus, Sextus Empiricus, Juvenal, and in a later age Savonarola and Pico della Mirandola, and La Fontaine, a contemporary of the neutral La Bruyère, were all pronounced opponents of astrology. Entry: A
Such are the decadent aspects of the once rich literature of the Middle High German period in the 14th and 15th centuries. Turning now to the more positive side of the literary movement, we have to note a revival of a popular lyric poetry--the Volkslied--which made the futility and artificiality of the Meistergesang more apparent. Never before or since has Germany been able to point to such a rich harvest of popular poetry as is to be seen in the Volkslieder of these two centuries. Every form of popular poetry is to be found here--songs of love and war, hymns and drinking-songs, songs of spring and winter, historical ballads, as well as lyrics in which the old motives of the Minnesang reappear stripped of all artificiality. More obvious ties with the literature of the preceding age are to be seen in the development of the _Schwank_ or comic anecdote. Collections of such stories, which range from the practical jokes of _Till Eulenspiegel_ (1515), and the coarse witticisms of the _Pfaffe vom Kalenberg_ (end of 14th century) and _Peter Leu_ (1550), to the religious and didactic anecdotes of J. Pauli's _Schimpf und Ernst_ (1522) or the more literary _Rollwagenbüchlein_ (1555) of Jörg Wickram and the _Wendunmut_ (1563 ff.) of H.W. Kirchhoff--these dominate in large measure the literature of the 15th and 16th centuries; they are the literary descendants of the medieval _Pfaffe Amis_, _Markolf_ and _Reinhart Fuchs_. An important development of this type of popular literature is to be seen in the _Narrenschiff_ of Sebastian Brant (1457-1521), where the humorous anecdote became a vehicle of the bitterest satire; Brant's own contempt for the vulgarity of the ignorant, and the deep, unsatisfied craving of all strata of society for a wider intellectual horizon and a more humane and dignified life, to which Brant gave voice, make the _Narrenschiff_, which appeared in 1494, a landmark on the way that led to the Reformation. Another form--the Beast fable and Beast epic--which is but sparingly represented in earlier times, appealed with peculiar force to the new generation. At the very close of the Middle High German period, Ulrich Boner had revived the Aesopic fable in his _Edelstein_ (1349), translations of Aesop in the following century added to the popularity of the fable (q.v.), and in the century of the Reformation it became, in the hands of Burkard Waldis (_Esopus_, 1548) and Erasmus Alberus (_Buch von der Tugend und Weisheit_, 1550), a favourite instrument of satire and polemic. A still more attractive form of the Beast fable was the epic of _Reinke de Vos_, which had been cultivated by Flemish poets in the 13th and 14th centuries and has come down to us in a Low Saxon translation, published at Lübeck in 1498. This, too, like Brant's poem, is a powerful satire on human folly, and is also, like the _Narrenschiff_, a harbinger of the coming Reformation. Entry: III
ESKIMO, ESKIMOS or ESQUIMAUX (a corruption of the Abnaki Indian _Eskimantsic_ or the Ojibway _Ashkimeq_, both terms meaning "those who eat raw flesh": they call themselves "Innuit," "the people"), a North American Indian people, inhabiting the arctic coast of America from Greenland to Alaska, and a small portion of the Asiatic shore of Bering Strait. On the American shores they are found, in broken tribes, from East Greenland to the western shores of Alaska--never far inland, or south of the region where the winter ice allows seals to congregate. Even on hunting expeditions they never travel more than 30 m. from the coast. Save a slight admixture of European settlers, they are the only inhabitants of both sides of Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. They extend as far south as about 50° N. lat. on the eastern side of America, and in the west to 60° on the eastern shore of Bering Strait, while 55° to 60° are their southern limits on the shore of Hudson Bay. Throughout all this range there are no other tribes save where the Kennayan and Ugalenze Indians (of western America) come down to the shore to fish. The Aleutians are closely allied to the Eskimo in habits and language. H.J. Rink divides the Eskimo into the following groups, the most eastern of which would have to travel nearly 5000 m. to reach the most western: (1) The East Greenland Eskimo, few in number, every year advancing farther south, and coming into contact with the next section. (2) The West Greenlanders, civilized, living under the Danish crown, and extending from Cape Farewell to 74° N. lat. (3) The Northern-most Greenlanders--the Arctic Highlanders of Sir John Ross--confined to Smith, Whale, Murchison and Wolstenholme Sounds, north of the Melville Bay glaciers. These--the most isolated and uncivilized of all the Eskimo--had no boats or bows and arrows until about 1868. (4) The Labrador Eskimo, mostly civilized. (5) The Eskimo of the middle regions, occupying the coasts from Hudson Bay to Barter Island, beyond Mackenzie river, inhabiting a stretch of country 2000 m. in length and 800 in breadth. (6) The Western Eskimo, from Barter Island to the western limits in America. (7) The Asiatic Eskimo. Entry: ESKIMO
ARMADA, THE. The Spanish or Invincible Armada was the great fleet (in Spanish, _armada_) sent against England by Philip II. in 1588. The marquis of Santa Cruz, to whom the command had first been given, died on the 9th of February 1588 (according to the Gregorian calendar then used by Spain; on the 31st of January by the Julian calendar used in England; the other dates given in this article will be in Old Style, or Julian calendar). Santa Cruz was succeeded by Don Alonso Perez de Guzman, duke of Medina Sidonia, a noble of large estate, but of no experience or capacity, who took the command unwillingly, and only on the reiterated order of the king. The fleet was collected at Lisbon, after many delays, and sailed on the 20th of May 1588. Its nominal strength was 132 vessels, of 59,190 tons, carrying 21,621 soldiers and 8066 sailors. But from a third to a half of the vessels were transports, galleys or very small boats, and some of them never reached the Channel. The effective force was far below the paper strength. On the 10th of June, when the Armada had rounded Cape Finisterre, it was scattered by squalls. Some of the vessels went on to the appointed rendezvous at the Scilly Isles, but the majority anchored on the north coast of Spain. Medina Sidonia, who found many defects in his fleet, did not finally sail till the 12th of July. On the English side all the royal navy, and such armed merchant ships as could be obtained from the ports, had been collected under the command of the lord high admiral Howard of Effingham, who had with him Hawkins, Drake and Frobisher as subordinate admirals. The number of vessels is put at 197, but the majority were very small. It is impossible to state with confidence what were the relative numbers of guns carried by the two fleets. The Spaniards had more pieces, but their gunnery was inferior. The English fleet carried 16,000 or 17,000 men, of whom the large majority were sailors. About 100 of their ships were at Plymouth with the lord high admiral. The others were in the Downs with Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter, to co-operate with a Dutch squadron under Justinus of Nassau in blockading the Flemish ports, then occupied by the Spanish army of the duke of Parma. The object was to prevent the proposed junction of the forces of Medina Sidonia and Parma. On the 20th of July the Armada was seen off the Lizard. It sailed past Plymouth, and was followed by the English fleet. The Spaniards, who were heavy sailers, and were hampered by the transports, were much harassed by the more active English, and were defeated in all their attempts to board, which it was their wish to do in order to make use of their superior numbers of men. The flagship of the squadron of Andalucia, "Nuestra Señora del Rosario," commanded by Don Pedro de Valdes, was crippled, fell behind and had to surrender. On the 25th of July, when the fleets were near the Isle of Wight, a shift of the wind offered the Spaniards a chance of bringing on a close action, but it soon changed again. The English fleet, of which part had been in some danger, escaped uninjured, and the Spaniards stood on. They anchored on the 26th of July at Calais. The duke of Medina Sidonia now sent an officer to Parma, calling on him to come to sea and join in a landing on the shore of England. But Parma could not leave port in face of Justinus of Nassau's squadron. While these messages were going and coming, Lord Howard had been joined by Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter from the Downs. A council of war was held, to decide on the measures to be taken to assail the Spaniards at Calais. The course taken was to send fireships among them. On the night of the 28th of July the fireships were sent in, and produced an utter panic in the Armada. Most of the Spanish vessels slipped their cables and ran to sea. Others weighed anchor, and escaped in a more orderly style. One great vessel ran ashore and was taken possession of by the English, who were however compelled to give her up by the French governor of Calais. On the 29th of July the scattered Spaniards, who were quite unable to restore order, were attacked by the English off Gravelines. The engagement was hot, and, though the English did not succeed in taking any of the Spaniards, they destroyed some of them, and their superiority in sailing force and gunnery was now so obvious that the duke of Medina Sidonia lost heart. His large vessels were indeed so helpless that only a timely shift of the wind saved many of them from drifting on to the banks of Flanders. Officers and men alike were completely discouraged. It was now recognized that an invasion of England could not be carried out in face of the more active English fleet and the proved impossibility of bringing about the proposed union with Parma's army. Suggestions were made that the Armada should sail to Hamburg, refit there, and renew the attack. But by this time the Spanish force was incapable of energetic action. Medina Sidonia and his council could think of nothing but of a return to Spain. As the wind was westerly, and the English fleet barred the way, it was impossible to sail down the Channel. The only alternative was to take the route between the north of Scotland and Norway. So the Armada sailed to the north. Lord Howard followed, after detaching Lord Henry Seymour to remain in the Downs. He watched the Spaniards to the Firth of Forth. The English had at that time little knowledge of the seas beyond the Firth, and they were beginning to run short of food and ammunition. On the 2nd of August, therefore, they gave up the pursuit. Medina Sidonia continued to the north, till his pilots told him that it was safe to turn to the west. Up to this time the loss of the Spaniards in ships had not been considerable. If the weather had been that of a normal summer, they would probably have reached home with no greater loss of men than was usually inflicted on all fleets of the age by scurvy and fever. But the summer of 1588 was marked by a succession of gales of unprecedented violence. The damaged and weakened Spanish ships, which were from the first greatly undermanned in sailors, were unable to contend with the storms. It is not possible to give the details of the disasters which overtook them. Nineteen of them are known to have been wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. The crews who fell into the hands of the English officers in Ireland were put to the sword. Many more of them disappeared at sea. Of the total number of the vessels originally collected for the invasion of England one-half, if not more, perished, and the crews of those which escaped were terribly diminished by scurvy and starvation. Entry: ARMADA