17 



ABO. 



ABOUSAMBUL. 



IS 



nogorskaja, gome of their people fell in unexpectedly with these ruins. 

 They consisted of four buildings of diiferent sizes. The largest was 

 an oblong square, the longer side being 500 fathoms, and the shorter 

 about half as much. This is considered to have been the convent, in 

 which the priests of the Buddhist religion were lodged. A smaller 

 building had evidently been a temple, as was proved by a great 

 number of idols, pictures on the walls, and manuscripts, which were 

 found there. The fragments of the idols showed clearly that they had 

 reference to the religion of Buddha. Among them were also found 

 some wooden boards, with raised figures on them resembling some 

 letters in the manuscripts ; whence it was concluded that they had 

 been used for printing. Some of the manuscripts found in the temple 

 were written with golden letters on black paper, and were of great 

 beauty ; others were written on common paper, or on the interior 

 bark of the beech tree. Some of these manuscripts were sent to Peter 

 the Great, who sent them to Paris, whence he obtained a translation, 

 or rather a paraphrase, which turned out to be a fabrication. It was 

 afterwards ascertained that the manuscripts were written in the 

 Tangut language, and referred to the tenets of the Buddhist religion. 

 The third building was rather small, and appeared to have been the 

 printing establishment The fourth was of a diminutive size, and 

 evi<iently had been used aa a kitchen. All the buildings were con- 

 structed of excellent bricks. On two sides they were protected by 

 almost perpendicular rocks, and on the other two sides by a wall 

 about 10 feet high and 8 feet thick. It was ascertained that this 

 place had been built about the middle of the 17th century, by 

 Ablai, one of the khans of the Songares, a great branch of the Mongols. 

 He soon afterwards (1670) was engaged in a war with the Galdan, the 

 khan of the Proper Olbth, Songaria, and was at last obliged to aban- 

 don his country precipitately. The state of the buildings, which still 

 contained much furniture, evidently showed that they had been 

 suddenly deserted. Ablai and those who remained faithful to him 

 went westward to the banks of the Ural and Wolga rivers, where he 

 fr,|nuntly surprised and plundered the Calmucks, until he was taken 

 primmer, an 1 brought to Astrakhan, where he lived to an old age. 

 Modern travellers who have visited these ruins have found them in a 

 state of rapid decay. 



(Miiller, >';/////"/ fliiaiitchfr Gtschichten ; Fischer, Siberuchc Off- 

 cliichte; VonLedebour, Reiten nock dan Altai (Jebirye; Ritter, Erdkimde 

 ran Alien, vol. L) 



ABO, a sea-port town in the Russian Government of Finland, is 

 situated 3 miles above the mouth of the Aurajoki, in the Gulf of 

 Bothnia, in 60 27' N. lat., 22 19' E. long., 280 miles \V.X.\V. from 

 St. Petersburg, and has 14,000 inhabitants. The town gives title to 

 an archbishop, and has a large cathedral erected in 1300, a town-hall, 

 court-house, and custom-house. In the great fire of 1827, the univer- 

 sity of Abo, with its fine library and valuable collections, was destroyed, 

 .mi 1 the institution has been, since the disaster, removed to Helsingfors, 

 which has superseded Abo as the capital of Finland since 1819. The 

 university was founded by Christina of Sweden in 1640, upon an 

 academy instituted by Gustav Adolf in 1628. The manufactures of Abo 

 are tobacco, sugar, and sail-cloth ; and it trades in provisions, deals, 

 pitch, and tar. There are also ship-building yards and saw-mills. A 

 fort protects the entrance to the river, which does not admit vessels 

 of large size to go up as far as the town. By the peace of Abo, con- 

 cluded between Sweden and Russia in 1743, 1. Adolphus Frederic 

 of Holstein Gottorp was chosen by the Swedish diet as the successor 

 of the then reigning king, Frederic, who was childless ; 2. Sweden 

 ceded Ingria, Livonia, and Esthonia, which had been previously given 

 up by the treaty of Nystadt, and was also compelled to yield the 

 eastern portion of Finland, making the river Kymmene the boundary 

 of the two nations ; 3. Russia restored the rest of the Grand Duchy 

 of Finland, which she had gained in the war, including Abo, Biorne- 

 borg, and East Bothnia. The whole of Finland was ceded to Russia 

 by a peace concluded between the two powers, on the 17th of Septem- 

 ber, 1809. 



The District of Abo in a, division of Finland extending westwards 

 from the meridian of 24 4' E. long., between 60 and 62" 20' N. lat., 

 anil including the isle of Aland and the vast collection of small islands 

 which, lying between Aland and the coast of Finland, constitute the 

 Archipelago of Abo. Most of these islets are arid rocks; afewofthem, 

 however, are inhabited. The surface of the mainland district is gen- 

 erally flat, except towards the south, where there are ranges of high 

 hills. The numerous lakes and rivers abound with fish. The soil is 

 fertile than in other parts of Finland. Corn, cabbage, potatoes, 

 flax, and hemp, are the chief crops. Horned cattle are reared. But 

 the chief wealth of the country consists in its forests, which cover a 

 large portion of the surface in the east and north of the district, fur- 

 ilil exports of the country, timber, deals, pitch, tar, 

 I >Unh. In the hilly region limestone and slate are found ; 

 these, find br.g.iron, which occurs in small quantities, are the chief 

 known minerals of the country. The inhabitants, who number about 

 210,000, are mostly of Swedish origin. 



ABORIGINES, a term by which we denote the primitive inhabitants 

 of a country. Thus, to take one of the most striking instances, when 

 the continent and islands of America were discovered, they were found 

 to be inhabited by various races of pi-nplr, ,,f whose immigration into 

 those regions we havo no historical accounts. All the tribes, then, of 



OEOO. DIV. VOL. L 



North America may, for the present, be considered as aborigines. 

 \Ve can, indeed, since the discovery of America, trace the movements 

 of various tribes from one part of the continent to another ; and, in 

 this point of view, when we compare the tribes one with another, we 

 cannot call a tribe which has changed its place of abode aboriginal, 

 with reference to the new country which it has occupied. The North 

 American tribes that have moved from the east side of the. Mississippi 

 to the west of that river are not aborigines in their new territories. 

 But the whole mass of American Indians, must, for the present, be 

 considered as aboriginal with respect to the rest of the world. The 

 English, French, Germans, &c., who have settled in America, are, of 

 course, not aborigines with respect to that continent, but settlers, or 

 colonists. 



If there is no reason to suppose that we can discover traces of any 

 people who inhabited England prior to, and different from, those 

 whom Julius Cffisar found here, then the Britons of Caesar's time were 

 the aborigines of this island. 



The term aborigines first occurs in the Greek and Roman writers 

 who treated of the earlier periods of Roman history ; and, though > 

 interpreted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus to mean ancestors, it is more 

 probable that it corresponds to the Greek word a/utochthants. This 

 latter designation, indeed, expresses the most remote possible origin 

 of a nation, for it signifies ' people coeval with the land which they 

 inhabit." The word aborigines, though perhaps not derived, as some 

 suppose, from the Latin words ab and origo, still has the appearance 

 of being a general term analogous to autochthones, and not the name 

 of any people really known to history. The aborigines of the ancient 

 legends, interwoven with the history of Rome, were the inhabitants of 

 part of the country south of the Tiber, called by the Romans Latium, 

 and now the Maremma of the Campagna di Roma ; but we are, in 

 truth, unable to say to what people this term may be properly applied. 



(Niebuhr's Roman History.) 



ABOUKIR. The castle of Aboukir, 31 19' N. lat., 30 6' E. long., 

 and about 13 miles N.E. of the town of Alexandria in Egypt, is on 

 the extreme north-eastern point of the low barrier of limestone rocks 

 that form the breastwork of the coast of Alexandria. It marks, in 

 fact, the extreme eastern limit, along the northern coast, of the rocks 

 of the African continent, being immediately followed by the old Canopic 

 mouth of the Nile, and the alluvium of the Delta, It is not unlikely 

 that Aboukir Castle is near the site of an ancient city, but whether this 

 city was Canopus or not, we think it is impossible to decide, as the 

 coast has undergone very great changes. Canopus, however, could 

 not be more than a few miles distant from Aboukir, probably on the 

 east side. 



The small island which lies near Aboukir Point contains traces of 

 old buildings, and also evident marks of having once been larger than 

 it is at present. Near this island the English admiral, Nelson, obtained 

 his great victory over the French fleet under Brueys, in Aboukir Bay, 

 August 1, 1798. Aboukir Bay may be considered as bounded by 

 Aboukir Point on the 8.W. and by the neck of land at the outlet of 

 the Rogetta arm on the N.E. 



ABOUSAMBUL, IPSAMBUL, or EBSAMBUL, a place remarkable 

 for containing two of the most perfect specimens of Egyptian rock-cut 

 temples. These excavations are in Nubia, on the west side of the Nile, 

 22 22' N. lat., about 26 geographical miles N. of the cataracts of 

 Wady Haifa. Near Abousambul the river flows from S.W. to N.E. 

 through sandstone hills ; on the west bank a valley opens and 

 displays two faces or walls of rock, each of which has been fashioned 

 into the front of a temple. The excavations are made in the solid 

 mass of the mountain. 



The smaller temple was first described by Burckhardt, who gave it 

 the name of the Temple of Isis. It stands 20 feet above the present 

 level of the river, is free from all incumbrance of dust or rubbish, and 

 in a state almost as perfect as when it was just completed. 



The facade of this excavation is the exact prototype of those masses 

 of Egyptian architecture called propyla : the face slopes outwards 

 towards the base, thus preserving one chief characteristic of the pyra- 

 midal style of building. On each side of the door- way are three standing 

 colossal figures, about 30 feet high, cut out of the rock, and deep sunk 

 in niches ; to the back part of which they are attached by a portion of 

 the rock that has been allowed to remain. The figures have, as usual 

 with Egyptian statues in a standing position, one foot advanced ; they 

 look towards the river. On each side of the larger figures stand 

 smaller ones, from four to six feet high. The central colossal figure 

 on each side is female, and probably the representative of Isis. The 

 two male figures on the right side of the door-way are probably Osiris ; 

 that nearest to the door on the left hand is the same ; while the other 

 male figure on this side has a different head-dress and expression of 

 countenance, but is also an Osiris. He has horns on his head, support- 

 ing a disk. The whole facade is ornamented with hieroglyphics; 

 among which we perceive several elliptical rings, which, it is now 

 ascertained, contain the names and titles of kings. The rings on this 

 temple present, with several variations, the name of Ramses, one of 

 the several ancient monarchs of Egypt, who bore that name. If we 

 consider the name to be that of Ramses the Great, the date of this 

 excavation will be about B.C. 1500, provided we admit the inscription 

 to be contemporary with the excavation an hypothesis, however, that 

 wants confirmation. It ia not at all unlikely that the original excavation 



C 



