NIOBE 



4240 



NISAN 



Ning-po. This interesting old city, with its 

 encircling walls twenty-five feet in height, and 

 its temples, stone bridges, flower-covered ram- 

 parts and lofty white pagoda, is both an edu- 

 cational and a local trade center. Its library is 

 surpassed in size by only three others in the 

 country; it has several colleges and monas- 

 teries, and is the headquarters of a number of 

 Christian missions. Tea. cotton, silk and car- 

 pets are important articles of export. Ning-po 

 lias little direct foreign trade, as it is primarily 

 a distributing point for the city of Shanghai. 

 Kst limited population, 455.000. 



NIOBE, ni'obe, according to the Grecian 

 myth, the daughter of Tantalus, king of Lydia, 

 and wife of Amphion. She had seven strong 

 and talented sons and seven beautiful daugh- 

 ters, but her pride led her to insult Latona, 

 the mother of Apollo and 

 Diana, by claiming that as 

 the mother of so numerous 

 a family she was more en- 

 titled to worship than the 

 goddess Latona. The 

 latter revenged herself 

 bitterly, for all the sons 

 of Niobe perished by 

 the arrows of Apollo, 

 and Diana slew 

 one of the 

 daughters except 

 Chloris, who was 

 wife of Kin^ Ne- 

 leus of Pylos. So 

 great was the 

 mother's grief that 

 the gods in pity 

 turned her into 

 stone, but even then her weeping could not 

 stop, and tears rained down from her sightless 

 eyes. Amphion, dismayed at the disaster, killed 

 himself. 



NIP'IGON, formerly also spelled NEPIGON, 

 is a lake in the Thunder Bay di.-tnct, in south- 

 western Ontario. Its southern shore is about 

 thirty-five miles north of the nearest point of 

 Lake Superior and about seventy-five miles 

 northeast of Port Arthur, Ont. Nipigon is sixty 

 miles long from north to south and forty-five 

 miles wide, and has an area of 1,730 square 

 miles, or about four-fifths that of Prince Ed- 

 ward Island. Its shore line, 850 miles long, is 

 very irregular, being broken by numerous rocky 

 headlands and deep bays. Innumerable islands 

 lift themselves straight out of the water rocky, 

 massive, grim, undisturbed by storms. Nipigon 



NIOBE 



From the statue in the Uffizi 

 Florence. 



lies 813 feet above Lake Superior, into which 

 it discharges through the Nipigon River. The 

 northern shore of the lake is easily reached 

 from the National Transcontinental Railway. 



Lake Nipigon is included in the Nipigon For- 

 est Reserve. The region is a good hunting 

 country, especially for moose. Fish, too, are 

 plentiful, especially since the Indians have been 

 forbidden to use nets. Whitefish, sturgeon, 

 speckled trout and pike are the principal va- 

 rieties; the whitefish sometimes rise to a very 

 small fly, and the sturgeon may be taken with 

 a rod by allowing the bait to rest on the bot- 

 tom. The waters off the ends of long promon- 

 tories are especially good for trolling. 



NIPISSING, nip' i sing, a lake in eastern On- 

 tario, about midway between the Ottawa River 

 and Georgian Bay. It is about fifty-five miles 

 long, has a maximum width o'f twenty-eight 

 miles, and has an area of 330 square miles. 

 The lake's chief source is the Sturgeon River, 

 which enters it from the north, and its only 

 outlet is the French River, which flows into 

 Georgian Bay. Lake Nipissing is a popular 

 resort for hunters and anglers. It can be 

 reached by the Timiskaming & Northern On- 

 tario Railway, by the main line of the Canadian 

 Pacific and by branches of the Grand Trunk 

 and Canadian Northern. Steamers run regu- 

 larly in summer from North Bay to other 

 points on the lake and on French River. The 

 proposed Georgian Bay Ship Canal will pass 

 through the lake, and its summit level is the 

 divide between the lake and the Ottawa valley. 



Nipissing is an Indian word meaning still- 

 water place, or little-water place. It was also 

 applied to a tribe of Algonquian Indians who 

 formerly lived in the region. When the French 

 first planted their missions in Canada the Nipis- 

 sings were one of the most prominent and most 

 powerful tribes, but about 1650 they were de- 

 feated and driven far west and north by the 

 Iroquois. Some of them afterwards returned 

 to their old haunts, and the Nipissings still 

 have a village at the Lake of Two Mountains, 

 near Montreal. The Indians who now live on 

 reservations on or near the lake are classed aa 

 Ojibwas. 



NIRVANA, nirvah'na. See BUDDHISM. 



NI'SAN, a Jewish calendar month. The 

 name was originally Abib, but after the Baby- 

 lonian captivity it was changed to Nisan. It 

 came at the 'time of the harvest in Palestine 

 and corresponds nearly to our March. Nisan 

 was the first month of the sacred year of the 

 Jews and the seventh of the civil year. 



