182 



CHIMERA CHINA. 



its reflection.. This mountain was ascended, In 1802, 

 by Humboldt and Bonplaiid, who reached to within 

 2140 feet of the summit, being, by barometrical mea- 

 surement, 19,300 feet above the level of the sea a 

 greater elevation than ever was before attained by 

 man. Their further ascent was prevented by a chasm 

 500 feet wide. The air was intensely cold and 

 p : ercing, and, owing to its extreme rarity, blood oozed 

 torn their lips, eyes, and gums, and respiration was 

 difficult. One of the party fainted, and all of them 

 felt extreme weakness. Condamuie ascended, in 

 1745, to the height of 15,815 feet. 



CHIMERA ; a fabulous monster, breathing flames, 

 with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the 

 tail of a dragon, wliich laid waste the fields of Lycia, 

 and was at last destroyed by Bellerophon. (See 

 Hipponous.) Her form is described by the poets as an 

 unnatural mixture of the most incongruous parts. 

 Therefore the name of chimera is used for a nonde- 

 script, an unnatural production of fancy. According 

 to some, Chimera was a volcano in Lycia, around the 

 top of which dwelt lions, around the middle goats, 

 and at tha foot poisonous serpents. Bellerophon is 

 said toliave been the first who rendered this moun- 

 tain habitable. 



CHIMES, in horology, is a species of music, me- 

 chanically product by the strokes of hammers 

 against a series of bells, tuned agreeably to a 

 given scale in music. The hammers are lifted by 

 levers, acted upon by metallic pins, or wooden pegs, 

 stuck into a large barrel, which is made to re- 

 volve by clock-work, and is so connected with the 

 striking part of the clock-mechanism, that it is set in 

 motion by it at certain intervals of time, usually 

 every hour, or every quarter of an hour. The mu- 

 sic thus produced may consist of a direct succession 

 of the notes constituting an octave, frequently re- 

 peated, or otherwise may be a psalm-tune, or short 

 popular air in the key to which the bells are tuned. 

 This species of mechanical music most probably had 

 its origin, like clock-work itself, in some of the mo- 

 nastic institutions of Germany, in the middle ages. 

 The first apparatus for producing it, is said to have 

 been made at Alost, in the Netherlands, in 1487. 

 The chime mechanism may be adapted to act with 

 the large bells of a church steeple, by means of 

 wheel-work strong enough to raise heavy hammers ; 

 or a set of bells, of different diameters, may be ar- 

 ranged concentrically within one another on one 

 common axis, sufficiently small to be introduced into 

 the frame of a clock, or even of a watch. The 

 chime mechanism is sometimes so constructed, that 

 it may be played like a piano, but with the fist in- 

 stead of the fingers. This is covered with leather, 

 that the blow on the key may be applied more for- 

 cibly. Difficult as the performance is, some players 

 can execute compositions consisting of three parts, 

 and even produce trills and arpeggios. Burney re- 

 lates that the chime-player Scheppen, at Louvain, 

 laid a wager with an able performer or the violin, 

 that he would execute a difficult solo for the violin 

 with the bells, and won his wager. Pottheff, organ- 

 i st and chime-player at Amsterdam, became blind in 

 his seventh year, and received the above named ap- 

 pointment hi his thirty-first year; and, although 

 every key in his apparatus required a force equal to 

 a two-pound weight, yet he played his bells with the 

 facility of a performer on the piano-forte. Burney 

 heard him perform some fugues in 1772. 



CHIMNEY. How far the Greek and Roman 

 architects were acquainted with the construction of 

 chimneys, is a matter of dispute. No traces of such 

 works have been discovered in the houses of Pom- 

 peii, and Vitrnvius gives no rules for erecting them. 

 The first certain notice of chimneys, as we now build 



them, is believed to be that contained in an inscrip- 

 tion at Venice, over the principal gate of the Scuola 

 Grande di Sta. Maria delta Caritd, wliich states tliat, 

 in 1347, a great many chimneys were thrown lo\vn 

 by an earthquake. Chimneys require much atten- 

 tion, to make, them secure and prevent their smoking, 

 so great an annoyance to domestic comfort. It si-mis, 

 at present, to be acknowledged, that it is much bet- 

 ter to exclude the cold, damp air from the flues, by 

 narrowing the aperture at the top, than to give a 

 larger vent to the smoke, at the risk of admitting a 

 quantity of air to rush down the flue. For this rea- 

 son, chimney-pots are of great use. In Prussia, 

 where the architectural police (Baupolizei) is strict, 

 great attention is paid to the erection of chimneys, 

 and to the regular sweeping of them, the chimney- 

 sweepers being bound to sweep the chimneys of a 

 certain number of streets within a regular time. 

 The longer a chimney is, the more perfect is its 

 draught, because the tendency of the smoke to draw 

 upwards is in proportion to the different weight of 

 the column of air included'in a chimney and an equal 

 column of external air. Short chimneys are liable 

 to smoke, and fire-places in upper stories are, there- 

 fore, more apt to smoke than those in the lower 

 ones. Two flues in the same chimney should not 

 communicate with each other short of the top. Some 

 chimneys, in large establishments in London, are 

 very remarkable for their size. 



CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS are, in all countries, in a 

 state deserving great pity. Their condition in Lon- 

 don has led to the establishment of a Society for su- 

 perseding the necessity of climbing-boys, by encouraging 

 a new method of sweeping chimneys, and for improv- 

 ing the condition of children and others employed by 

 chimney-sweepers. The subject has, likewise, occu- 

 pied the attention of parliament, and due investiga- 

 tion lias shown that there are few chimneys which 

 cannot be swept as well by a machine as by boys. 

 Most of the particulars relative to the evils of this 

 trade (one of which is the incurably cancerous dis- 

 eases to which the boys are very generally subject), 

 and the facility with which a substitute may be pro- 

 vided for it, may be found in the Chimney-sweeper's 

 Friend, or Climbing-Boy's Album, by James Mont- 

 gomery. In France, the little chimney-sweepers are 

 generally Savoyards. 



CHIMU ; the name of some highly singular and 

 extremely interesting ruins near the town of Man- 

 siche, in Peru, which are supposed to be the vast 

 remains of an ancient city. Humboldt visited them 

 during his travels hi Peru, and went into the interior 

 of the famous Guaca de Toledo (burying-place, or 

 tumulus, of Toledo), the tomb of a Peruvian prince, 

 in which Garci Gutierez de Toledo discovered, on 

 digging a gallery, in 1576, massive gold amounting 

 in value to more than a quarter of a million sterling, 

 as is proved by the books of accounts, preserved at 

 the mayor's office hi Truxillo. 



CHINA. The Chinese empire, including the 

 tributary states, and those under its protection, con- 

 sists of about 5,250,000 square miles, with 242,000 ,000 

 inhabitants. China Proper, " the centre of the world," 

 contains 1,298,000 square miles (lat. 18 37' 

 41 35' N.), with 146,280,000 inhabitants, of whom 

 2,000,000 live on the water. Among the inhabitants 

 are 31,000 sailors, 822,000 foot-soldiers, 410,OOC 

 horse, 7552 military and 9611 civil officers. 



Subject to China are Mantchou (726,800 square 

 miles), Mongolia (1,935,910 square miles), and Tour- 

 fan (578,275 square miles). Under her protection 

 are Thibet, Bootan, Corea, Loo-Choo, containing 

 together 726,202 square miles. The Portuguese 

 navigators who followed Vasco da Gama were the 

 first from whom the Europeans obtained tolerably 



