NIJNI NOVGOROD 



4237 



NILE 



doctrines among the poor and ignorant; their 

 coworkers were from the ranks of the profes- 

 sional classes. 



About the year 1874 the government of Rus- 



began a determined effort to crush the 



movement. Literally thousands of people were 



Prison life was made so unbearable 



that -hose in prison committed suicide 



before their cases came to trial. Sometimes 



nces of ten. twelve or fifteen years' im- 



nmcnt at hard labor were imposed as the 



penalty for making one or two speeches in pri- 



workmen. or even for lending a 



bojok teaching their doctrines. Thousands of 



people were arrested and exiled with no trial 



\\h;i :i their friends being ignorant of 



the fate that had befallen them. 



Of late years the world has heard less of 



nihilism, a n <ult due to the action of Nicholas 



II in authorizing the election of a Duma, thus 



inaugurating constitutional government; the 



hrow of absolutism in Russia in 1917 went 



Awards destroying nihilism. 



Consult Milyuukiiv's UtiN.iifi and Its Crisis; Kro- 

 potkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist. 



NIJNI NOVGOROD, nyeez' nenawv'goroht. 

 See NI/HM NOVGOROD. 



NIKE APTEROS, ni'ke ap'terahs, TEMPLE 

 OF, the smallest building on the Acropolis, the 

 old fortified hill of Athens (see ACROPOLIS). It 



n-i.i: or NIKI: APTEROS 



What remain* to-day of :nple of 



'.Vltmlr.sM \ i.S Of 



>n aim" n t<> !-. Kiv.-n 



of temple wan built In the Ionic 

 story was told by means of sculptures. 



has but a single room, in which stood a statue 



of Athene, or Minerva, and here she was wor- 



; nitron goddess of 



Athens, and was always represented win 

 wings. Nike, which means victory, was n 



sented as having wings, so this little temple, 

 dedicated to the Athene of victory, is called 

 the temple of the victory-without-wings, or 

 Xikc Apteros. It stood almost as it had been 

 built in the time of Pericles until about 1687, 

 when it was torn down by the Turks and the 

 stones were used in the building of fortifica- 

 tions. But in 1835 it was restored, and except 

 for the missing roof, parts of the frieze, 'tin- 

 cornice and gables, it stands as it was when first 

 erected, close by the entrance of the Acropolis. 

 See MINERVA. 



NILE, Egypt's famous river, whose annual 

 floods make a fertile land in a rainless region. 

 Writing twenty-three centuries ago, Herodotus 

 called Egypt "the gift of the river" and de- 

 clared that the Egyptians 



Obtain the fruits of the field with less trouble 

 than any other people in the world, since they 

 have no need to break up the ground with the 

 plough, nor to use the hoe, nor to do any of the 

 work which the rest of mankind find necessary if 

 they are to get a crop ; but the husbandman waits 

 till the river has of its own accord spread i- 

 over the fields and withdrawn again to its bed, 

 and then sows his plot of ground, after which he 

 has only to await the hai -\ 



Just how rich this harvest is may be gathered 

 from the fact that Egypt produces nearly a 

 bale of cotton on each of the two million acres 

 devoted to that crop, while in ihe United States 

 about two and a half acres are needed for each 

 bale. 



For many centuries people knew nothing of 

 the source of the NiU> except that it was far to 

 the south. The ancient Egyptians and Nero's 

 Romans were stopped in their passage up the 

 river by masses of floating vegetation called 

 sudd, and though Ptolemy's theory of the 

 origin of the stream was astonishingly accurate 

 only the explorations which occurred between 

 1862 and i - ; iled the actual truth. If one 



can imagine a II\M n-um in Kcuador. and 

 flowing as far north as Savannah, (ia.. In 

 get some idea of the Nile's course. It is th< 

 only river in the world which rises at the equa- 

 tor and flows into a temperate one. Starting 

 at the lake called Victoria Nyana t it winds 

 northward nearly 4,000 miles, and so is second 

 in length only to the Mississippi-Missouri 

 among all the rivers of the world. 



joined by numerous streams from the 

 northeast of the Congo, after which it ia called 

 White Nile, until at Khartum it is joined 

 the Blue Nile from Abywin .ugh 



tin- drsi'M its basin becomes namr 

 near Cairo it is leas than 100 ymixfc \vi 



