CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL 



1302 



CHESS 



soon showed a genius for composition. Before 

 he was sixteen he had produced his creditable 

 Mass and Credo in D, and a Te Deum for 

 male voices, which is still often sung. His 

 fame first became general in 1805, when he 

 went to Vienna to compose an opera for the 

 New Imperial Opera House. That production, 

 Faniska, won him many friends, notably Hadyn 

 and Beethoven, who pronounced him the 

 greatest composer of sacred music of the age. 

 After 1809 he wrote sacred music almost ex- 

 clusively. He made several. visits to London, 

 being appointed at one time composer to the 

 king, and later superintendent of the king's 

 chapel. In 1821 he became director of the 

 Paris Conservatory, and during his adminis- 

 tration of more than twenty years he brought 

 it to a high standard of excellence. His 

 masterpiece is the opera, Les deux Journees 

 ("The Water Carrier"). 



CHESAPEAKE, ches'apeek, AND OHIO 

 CANAL, a waterway along the north side of 

 the Potomac River from Georgetown, D. C., 

 now a part of the city of Washington, to 

 Cumberland, Md. This canal has an interest- 

 ing history, for as far back as 1774 it was an 

 idea of Washington's to make the Potomac 

 navigable from tidewater to the Alleghanies. 

 The scheme was interrupted by the Revolu- 

 tionary War, but in 1784 a company was 

 formed to revive it; Washington was the 

 organization's head until he became President 

 of the United States. The project was aban- 

 doned in 1820, but was later taken up and 

 completed in 1850 at a cost of over $11,000,000. 

 The canal is 184 miles long, sixty feet wide and 

 six feet deep, with seventy-four locks having 

 a total lift of 609 feet. Comparatively little 

 traffic passes through it. See CANAL. 



CHESAPEAKE, ches'apeek, BAY, a large 

 inlet on the Atlantic coast extending north- 

 ward through the states of Virginia and Mary- 

 land, dividing the latter into two parts, called 

 respectively, near the Bay, the Eastern and the 

 Western Shore. The channel at the entrance 

 is twelve miles wide, with Cape Henry and 

 Cape Charles on either side. The bay is 200 

 miles long, from four to forty miles wide, and 

 has a depth of from thirty to sixty feet in the 

 channel. The coast is very irregular, having 

 many bays and inlets and large estuaries at 

 the mouths of the numerous rivers which 

 empty into it. The most important of the 

 latter are the James, the York, the Rappa- 

 hannoek, the Rapidan and the Potomac, on 

 the west; the Susquehanna, on the north; and 



the Elk, the Chester and the Choptank, on 

 the east. 



The shores are low and marshy and abound 

 in wild waterfowl, while the shallow, brackish 

 waters contain vast 

 natural beds of the 

 famous Chesapeake 

 oysters. Oyster beds 

 are also planted scien- 

 tifically, and the. 

 oyster trade of the 

 Maryland and Vir- 

 ginia beds is the 

 largest in the world. 

 (The details of the 

 oyster industry are 

 given -in these vol- 

 umes under the title 

 OYSTER.) As the bay LOCATION MAP 

 is navigable for deep-sea vessels nearly its 

 entire length, it has a large foreign as well 

 as coastwise trade. The most important port 

 is Baltimore, which is situated on the west 

 shore in Maryland, on the Patapsco River; 

 in the value of its commerce Baltimore is 

 the sixth port in the United States and it is 

 the seventh city in population (1916). Nor- 

 folk and Portsmouth, in the eastern part of 

 Virginia, at the southern end of the bay, are 

 other important ports. Norfolk, with Ports- 

 mouth, is the largest naval station in the 

 United States and one of the largest coaling 

 stations in the world. The United States 

 Naval Academy is at Annapolis, on the west 

 shore of the bay, in Maryland, not far from 

 Washington, D. C. The Indians called the 

 bay the Great Salt Water. 



CHESS, the name of a very interesting and 

 fascinating game. It is in no sense a game of 

 chance, but is the most intellectual of all 

 games of skill, for it not only trains the power 

 of observation but is a mental contest which 

 brings forth such qualities as foresight, re- 

 source, imagination and ingenuity on the part 

 of the players. Chess has often been compared 

 to a game of strategy as played by two oppos- 

 ing generals on the battle field, and it resem- 

 bles war in the sense that it consists of attack 

 and defense and has a definite object in view, 

 towards which all the moves of the game lead. 



The name in all the European languages is 

 derived from the Persian word shah, which 

 means king, and indicates the aim of the 

 game, which is the surrender of the king. 



The Board and the Pieces. The game of 

 chess is played by two persons on a board 



