WESTERN RESERVE 



0248 



WEST INDIES 



government operates about 3,000 miles of rail- 

 way. This part of Australia was first visited by 

 Europeans in the sixteenth century; the first 

 English settlement was made in 1825. Coloni- 

 zation on a systematic plan began in 1829. 

 ralia entered the Australian Com- 

 monwealth in 1901. See AUSTRALIA. 



Consult Vivienne's Travels in Western Aus- 

 tral rn Australia. 



WESTERN RESERVE, re zerv' . When, in 

 1786, Connecticut gave up to the new United 

 States government the great stretch of western 

 land which, according to the original charter, 

 had been part of the colony, it retained a strip 

 about seventy miles wide, which was named 

 the Western Reserve, extending westward from 

 the boundary of Pennsylvania about 120 miles; 

 it later became the northeastern part of Ohio. 

 The greater part of this territory was sold in 

 1795-1796 for $1,200,000 to the Connecticut 

 Land Company, and the proceeds were in- 

 d as a school fund. The new land was 

 surveyed, and settlement began at once; in 

 time some of the most flourishing counties of 

 Ohio were formed from this territory. In Cleve- 

 land, the largest city in the district, there is a 

 university, the Western Reserve, which pre- 

 serves the old name. 



WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, an 

 institution of higher learning founded in 1826 

 in Hudson, Ohio, under the name of Western 

 Reserve College, and in 1882 removed to 

 Cleveland and given its present name. It was 

 one of the earliest colleges of the state, and 

 since its foundation has developed into one of 

 the great universities of the Middle West. The 

 main campus, a beautiful tract of thirty-six 

 acres, occupies an attractive site in Cleveland's 

 park district. The university is organized into 

 the following departments: Adelbert C611ege; 

 Men's College; the College for Women; De- 

 partment of Graduate Instruction; graduate 

 schools of law and medicine; the Library 

 School; schools of dentistry and of pharmacy; 

 the School of Applied Social Sciences; the 

 School of Education and the summer session. 

 There is a faculty of about 265, and the student 

 enrolment is over 2,200. The library contains 

 122,000 volumes. 



WESTFIELD, MASS., a town in Hampden 

 County, in the southwestern part of the state, 

 noted for its extensive manufacture of whips, 

 in which it ranks first among the cities of the 

 United States. It is situated on the Westfield 

 and Little rivers, in the beautiful Berkshire 

 Hills, nine miles west of Springfield, 108 miles 



southwest of Boston and 120 miles northeast of 

 New York. It is served by the Boston & Al- 

 bany and the New York, New Haven & Hart- 

 ford railroads. Interurban lines are in opera- 

 tion to Springfield, Holyoke, Huntington, 

 Russell, Woronoco and the larger cities in 

 Western Massachusetts. 



Westfield was settled in 1669 on the site of 

 the Indian village of Woronoco. It is com- 

 posed of several small villages. The population 

 in 1910 was 16,044; in 1916, 18,391 (Federal 

 estimate). The town has a Federal building, 

 completed in 1913 at a cost of $106,000, a state 

 normal school, a high school, Westfield Athe- 

 naeum, a public library and Noble Hospital. 

 Woronoco Park provides recreation for tin 

 people. Besides sixty whip factories which 

 employ about 1,100 people and have a daily 

 output of more than 72,000 whips, the town 

 has motorcycle, bicycle and cigar factories, 

 paper mills, and plants for making heating ap- 

 paratus. 



WEST HOBOKEN, N. J., adjoining Ho- 

 boken, on the Hudson River, is a manufactur- 

 ing town in Hudson County. It is less than 

 one square mile in area, but had a population 

 of 35,403 in 1910, and of 43,139 in 1916 (Fed- 

 eral estimate). The Monastery Church and 

 Carnegie Library are prominent features. Silk 

 and silk goods are extensively manufactured, 

 and other factory products are embroideries, 

 gloves, artificial flowers, feathers, brush handles 

 and braid. Flowers and plants are cultivated 

 on a large scale. West Hoboken was a part of 

 Bergen until 1863, when it became a separate 

 incorporation. 



WEST INDIES, in'diz, the first land sighted 

 by Columbus, and thought by him to be a part 

 of India, is a group of islands between North 

 and South America, separating the Caribbean 

 Sea and Gulf of Mexico from the Atlantic (see 

 map, page 283). They are the summits of a 

 submerged mountain chain, and many of them 

 have been formed by volcanoes. The West 

 Indies are often called the Antilles by Euro- 

 peans. Although extending over an area nearly 

 2,000 miles from east to west and more than 

 1,000 from north to south, if gathered together 

 they could be put into a space about 300 miles 

 square. The largest island, Cuba, is independ- 

 ent; Haiti and Santo Domingo, two independ- 

 ent governments on one island, are under the 

 financial supervision of the United States. 

 Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix, 

 formerly known as the Danish West Indies, 

 were purchased by the United States in 1917 



