BELLINI 



681 



BELLOWS 



is part of Puget Sound, in the extreme north- 

 western part of the state and is on the Nook- 

 sack River and on the Great Northern and 

 Northern Pacific railways. It is also the ter- 

 minus of the Bellingham & Northern Railway 

 (now a part of the Chicago, Milwaukee & Saint 

 Paul system), a line sixty-two miles long, con- 

 necting with Mount Baker goldfields and the 

 agricultural country of Nooksack Valley. Bell- 

 ingham is the home port of a number of coast- 

 wise and trans-Pacific steamship lines. The 

 area of the city is about twenty square miles. 

 The population, largely American, was 24,299 

 in 1910 and 29,937 in 1914. 



Bellingham has an excellent harbor. The 

 great natural wealth of the surrounding coun- 

 try consists of salmon, lumber, minerals, clay, 

 limestone and sandstone beds. A gravity plant 

 installed by the city at a cost of $1,000,000 

 brings water from Lake Whatcom, a high nat- 

 ural reservoir two and a half miles southeast. 

 Electric power is obtained from the falls of 

 the Nooksack River. In Bellingham are some 

 of the largest salmon canneries in the world. 

 These companies operate their own ships to 

 Alaska and by way of the Panama Canal to 

 New York City. Lumber interests, saw and 

 shingle (especially cedar) mills, logging com- 

 panies, wood-working factories, salmon, fruit 

 and vegetable canning, milk condensing and the 

 manufacture of cans and cement, represent the 

 important commercial interests of Bellingham. 



Among the more prominent buildings are the 

 city hall, a Federal building, erected in 1913 at 

 a cost of $280,000, the Y. M. C. A., two Car- 

 negie libraries and two hospitals. The largest 

 state normal school, an industrial school and 

 several business colleges are located here. 

 There are four city parks, Elizabeth, Larrabee, 

 Cornwall and Whatcom Falls. Snow-capped 

 peaks, Mount Baker, the largest, to the south 

 and east, the cascades and falls of the river, 

 magnificent pine forests and the ocean islands, 

 all contribute to the beautiful scenery of this 

 region. 



Bellingham Bay is thought to have been 

 given its name by Vancouver in 1792, in honor 

 of Sir Henry Bellingham. Along the shore 

 there were once four separate settlements which 

 have united in the present city. In 1903 Bel- 

 lingham, named from the bay, was founded by 

 the consolidation of Whatcom and Fairhaven. 

 A city charter was obtained in 1904. W.F.C. 



BELLINI, belle' ne, GIOVANNI (1430 or 1431- 

 1516), the greatest figure in early Venetian 

 painting, and the most important member of a 



family of Italian painters who flourished dur- 

 ing the early Renaissance. Giovanni received 

 his first lessons in painting from his father, 

 Jacopo Bellini, a distinguished portrait painter. 

 His fame rests chiefly on his religious paint- 

 ings, many important examples of which sur- 

 vive. One of his numerous Madonnas hangs 

 in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, 

 and there are others in private collections; his 

 Christ on the Cross and Transfiguration are in 

 Venice; and the National Gallery of London 

 possesses his Agony in the Garden. 



His early works seem to have been painted 

 under the influence of profound religious feel- 

 ing, and show great severity of treatment, but 

 his later canvases exhibit a blending of noble 

 form and soft, rich color that is characteristic 

 of Venetian painting at its best. He was 

 commissioned to paint several great altarpieces 

 for churches in Venice, and he assisted his 

 brother Gentile in the decoration of the ducal 

 palace at Constantinople. All of his paintings 

 in the latter city were destroyed by fire, and 

 this was the fate also of his work on the decora- 

 tion of the great council hall at Venice. Bellini 

 was also distinguished as a painter of portraits; 

 one of his masterpieces, the portrait of Doge 

 Loredan, is now in the London Gallery. His 

 influence on the art of his time was profound, 

 and among the throngs of pupils who studied 

 with him were Giorgione and Titian. 



BELLE ISLE, bel' He, STRAIT OF, the body of 

 water separating the island of Newfoundland 

 from the mainland to the north and west. 

 This strait, which is about eighty miles long 

 and about twelve miles wide, is the northern 

 entrance from the Atlantic Ocean into the Gulf 

 of Saint Lawrence. The passage through the 

 strait is made not without danger, but as the 

 route is the shortest from Montreal and Que- 

 bec to England, it is usually followed by ocean 

 liners. 



At the eastern end of the strait is Belle Isle, 

 the island, which lies nearly midway between 

 the Newfoundland and Labrador shores. The 

 island has an area of fifteen square miles. At 

 its southern end, which steamships pass, is a 

 great lighthouse whose signal light is visible 

 for nearly thirty miles. 



BELLOWS, a wind-making machine, used 

 to fan flames to intensify their heat, or to 

 operate a reed organ or pipe organ. The bel- 

 lows of a blacksmith shop has two compart- 

 ments formed by three boards and soft but air- 

 tight leather sides. By a simple arrangement 

 of weights and levers which move the upper 



