NANAIMO 



NANTES 



383 



has suffered so much by war that it offers little of 

 interest the cathedral, completed in 1772, with 

 the grave of Dun John of Austria ; the Jesuit 

 church of St Loup ( 1653), a large military school, 

 an antiquarian museum, monuments of Leopold I. 

 ami tli>: geologist Omalius d'Hallov (1783-1875), 

 &c. Namur is noted for its cutlery, and also 

 manufactures firearms, leather, paper, and tobacco. 

 Pop. (1874) 20,030; (1891) 30,074. Namur was 

 captured by Louis XIV. in 1092, but recaptured in 

 1095, after a ten weeks' siege, by William III. and 

 'mv uncle Toby.' 



The province of Namnr, on the French frontier, 

 lying between Hainault and Luxembourg, has an 

 area of 1414 sq. in. Fertile and rich in minerals, 

 it is watered by the Meuse, Samhre, and Lesse, 

 and traversed bv woo<led spurs of tlie Ardennes 

 (2000 feet). Pop. ( 1871) 313,055 ; (1891)330,543. 



\niiaimo. a town on the east coast of 

 Vancouver Island, 74 miles by rail NNW. of 

 Victoria. There are large coal-mines in the 

 district, and the town is the chief seat of this 

 trade. Pop. (1891 ) 4595. 



\niia Sail i I), the name under which Dundhu 

 Parith, adopted son of the ex-peshwa of the 

 Mahrattas, became known as the leader of the 

 Indian Mutiny in 1857. liorn about 1821, the son 

 of a Brahmin in the Deccnn, and educated as a 

 Hindu nobleman, he was bitterly disappointed that 

 when the peshwa died in 1851 the latter's pension 

 was not continued to himself ; and, industrious in 

 fanning discontent with the English rule, on the 

 outbreak of the Mutiny he was proclaimed peshwa, 

 and was responsible for the massacres at Cawnpore 

 (q.v., and see INDIA). After the suppression of 

 the rebellion lie escaped into Nepal. 



Xancy, a beautiful French town, capital of the 

 department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, on the Meurthe, 

 2-.M miles by rail E. of I'aris and 94 W. of iitras- 

 burg. It comprises, besides several suburbs, the 

 old and new towns, and contains many fine squares 

 and imposing edifices. Here are statues of Stanislas 

 l.t /r/ynski ( Hi77-1706), twice king of Poland, Gen- 

 ural Drouot, Thiers, and others, and among its noted 

 institutions are the hfltel-de-ville, bishop's palace, 

 theatre, cathedral (1742), numerous churches, the 

 16th-century ducal palace, a university, &c. Nancy, 

 which has grown much in importance since the 

 German annexation of Alsace- Lorraine, bos manu- 

 factures of cotton and woollen goods, artificial 

 flowers, iron, tobacco, &c. ; but its staple industry 

 in embroidery on cambric and muslin. Pop. ( 1872) 

 .-,-.'.. -,r,.-, ; (1886) 79,020; (1891) 87,092. Nancy, 

 dating from the 12th century, was the capital of 

 the diiohy of Lorraine (q.v.). Here occurred the 

 death of Charles the Hold (1477), and the birth of 

 Callot and Claude l.omiiiu-. See ,>rk* by Cayon 

 (IMii), Lepage (I860), and foul-be (1886). 



Nanda Devi. See HIMALAYA. 



Nandll ( American Ostrich ). See RHEA. 



Xailkt'CIl Cloth is a very durable fabric made 

 of a kind of cotton grown in China which is 

 naturally of a bull-yellow colour, and this is also 

 the colour of the cloth. The plant which yields it 

 is a mere variety of Goatypium hcrbnveum. In the 

 first half of the 19th century Nankeen cloth was 

 much used for ladies' ami children's attire, and also 

 for men's trousers, but now the name, when applied 

 to certain kinds of cotton goods, is not confined to 

 fabrics resembling genuine Nankeen cloth. 



Nanking, capital of the province of Kiangsu, 

 formerly the capital of China, on the Yangtse 

 River, 130 miles from its mouth. Its name sig- 

 nifies the Southern Capital. Since the removal of 

 the seat of government to Peking (Northern Capi- 

 tal) in the ln-ginning of the 15th century, the 

 official name has been Kiangning, though the old 



name is preferred popularly. From 1853 to 1864 

 it was the capital of the Taiping rebels, \\lio 

 destroyed nearly all the magnificent public build- 

 ings for which the city was once famous. Previous 

 to that time the walls enclosed an area nearly 20 

 miles in circumference, and reached in many places 

 an elevation of 70 feet. The most memorable of 

 the ruined buildings were the Porcelain Tower, 

 described under CHINA (Vol. III. p. 186; see also 

 PAGODA, p. 694), the summer palace, and the 

 tombs of the kings, with remarkable sepulchral 

 statues. Since its recapture by the Chinese im- 

 perialists, Nanking has resumed its position as the 

 Beat of the viceregal government, and an arsenal 

 has l>een established. In 1842 it was captured by 

 the British. Although specified in tlie treaty of 

 Tientsin (1858) as a river-port to be opened to 

 foreign trade, little has come of this concession. 

 Pop. 150,000. 



Nansen, FRIDTIOF, Ph.D., a distinguished Nor- 

 wegian scientist and explorer, was born at Great 

 Froen, Norway (near Christiania), October 10, 1861. 

 At the age of nineteen he entered Christiania Uni- 

 versity, giving his attention there chiefly to bio- 

 logical investigations, in the pursuit of which, in 

 1882, lie made a voyage in a sealer to the North 

 Atlantic sealing-grotinds, and in 1888 crossed the 

 continent of Greenland, returning in 1889. Fol- 

 lowing 1884, he matured n plan for a polar jonrnev, 

 a vessel (the From) was built, designed especially 

 for encountering the drift-ice, and on June 24, 1893, 

 with !i crew of eleven men, he set sail from Chris- 

 tiania for the polar regions, the design being to 

 reach tlie North Pole by letting the ship pet frozen 

 into the ice north of Siberia and drift with a current 

 setting towards Greenland. They reached the New 

 Sil>erian Islands in September, and in 1895 were 

 in lat. 84 4'. There, accompanied by Johnnsen, 

 Nansen left the From in charge of his other com- 

 panions and pushed across the ice to Franz-Josef 

 Land, where he wintered. Here, on June 17, 1SCG, 

 he met the Jackson-Hnrmsworth Expedition, with 

 which he returned to Vardo, having in his cruise 

 penetrated to lat. 88, circumnavigated the Nova 

 Zembla, Franz-Josef, and Spitzbergen archipela- 

 goes, and reached a point about 225 miles froni the 

 Pole. One week later the From reached Vardo. 

 See Nansen's Farthest North (1897), and his Life 

 by Brogger and Kolfsen (1897). 



KfantCS, the seventh largest city of France, 

 capital of the department of Loire-Iiiferieure, lies 

 on the right baiik of the tidal Loire ( here 2000 

 yards wide, and joined by the navigable Erdre 

 and Sevre-Nantaise), 35 miles from the sea, and 

 248 bv rail SW. of Paris. The natural beauties of 

 the site have lieen much improved by art, and, the 

 old town having been demolished between 1865 

 and 1870, Nantes is one of the handsomest cities in 

 all France, with its noble river, quays, bridges, 

 shady Ixjulevards, squares, and statues. The un- 

 finished cathedral (1434-1852) contains Colomb's 

 splendid monument (1507) to the last Duke and 

 Duchess of Brittany, and another ( 1879) to General 

 Lamoriciere. The ducal castle, founded in 938, 

 and rebuilt in 1466, was the occasional residence 

 of Charles VIII. and most of his su-cessors, the 

 prison of Cardinal de Ketz and Fouquet, and the 

 place where on 15th April 1598 Henry IV. signed 

 the famous Edict of Nantes, which gave freedom 

 of religion to the Huguenots (q.v.), and whose 

 revocation by Louis XIV. on 18th Octolier 1685 

 drove 400,000 French into exile. Other noteworthy 

 buildings are the splendid church of St Nicholas 

 (1854), the palais de justice (1853), the theatre 

 (1787), and the new post-office (1884), besides a 

 museum, a picture-gallery, and a library of 50,000 

 volumes. Between 1831 and 1887 180,000 was 



