144

GLACIERS....GLUTTON....GNAT.

in great plenty in Vermont, and has been a valuable article of exportation; but its sale has been injured by an injudicious method of collecting, curing, and packing it.... Winterbotham, Williams.

GLACIERS, extensive fields of ice among the Alps. of Swisserland. Some stretch several leagues in length that of des Bois, in particular, is more than fifteen miles long, and above three in its greatest breadth. The thickness of the ice varies in different parts. M. de Saussure found its general depth in the glaciers des Bois from eighty to a hundred feet; but questions not the information of those who assert, that, in some places, its thickness exceeds even six hundred feet.These fields of ice are intersected by chasms, which the traveller crosses on foot with much difficulty.... Morse.

GLUTTON, an animal of the weasel kind, which takes its name from its voracious appetite; it is found in the north of Europe and Siberia, and in the northern parts of America, where it is called Carcajou. The body is thick and long; the legs short, with sharp claws; its fur is held in high estimation, for its softness and beautiful gloss. This voracious animal is seen lurking among the branches of trees in the forests of. North America, in order to spring down and seize upon deer that happen to pass along underneath. Whenever an opportunity offers, it darts down upon the moose or deer, sticks its claws between the shoulders, and, notwithstanding the violent efforts of its victim,remains there unalterably fixed, eating its neck, and digging its passage to the great blood vessels that lie in that part....

Goldsmith.

GNAT, an insect fly that feasts on blood, and is the expertest phlebotomist in nature. The Gnat is furnished with a proboscis, which is at once an awl proper for piercing the flesh of animals, and a pump by which it sucks out their blood. This proboscis contains, besides, a long saw, with which it opens the small blood vessels. at the bottom of the wound which it has made. He is likewise provided with a corslet of eyes studded round

his little head, to see all the objects around him in every direction; talons so sharp, that he can walk on polished glass, in a perpendicular line; feet supplied with brushes to clean himself; a plume of feathers on his forehead; and an instrument answering the purpose of a trumpet, to proclaim his triumphs.... St. Pierre.

GOA, a small island and city, the capital of the Portuguese settlements in the East-Indies. It is the only place known in the world, where the popish court of inquisition still maintains the reign of terror, as in former ages. This horrible court has existed here about three centuries; and no person, not even the vice-roy of Goa, is exempt from its jurisdiction. The inquisitors are priests, clothed in black robes when they are going to sit upon the tribunal of the Holy Office; their usual dress being white. The accused are examined by torture, to bring them to make confession; and the shrieks of some or others of these wretched victims, may be heard every morning, sometimes for months together. In the prison of the inquisition are two hundred dungeons, ten feet square; where they remain, sometimes for years, without seeing any person but the jailer who brings them their victuals. But not so with those who have given any mortal offence to these holy fathers: they are condemned to the flames, both men and women. Early in the morning of the day of their execution, the great bell of the cathedral begins to ring, to give warning of the Auto da Fe, or Act of Faith; the name they give to the ceremony of burning heretics. Soon after the bars are removed from the prison-doors of the victims. They are taken out of their dungeons, and clothed with a robe of grey cloth, upon which their own portraits are painted, and placed upon burning torches surrounded with demons. Upon their heads are fixed pasteboard caps, painted like sugar-loaves, and all covered over with devils and flames of fire. Thus attired, they are made to march in procession, barefoot, through the streets of Goa, to a church; where a monk delivers a sermon on the occasion. This service being over, their sentences are read to them. They then receive each a slight blow upon the breast, from an officer of the inquisition, called the Alcaide; as a to

146

GOLD....GOLD COAST.

ken that the church had abandoned them. Upon which an officer of the secular tribunal instantly steps forward, seizes them, and leads them to the stake; where the faggots are already prepared. Of late years the celebration of the Auto da Fe at Goa, is private, within the walls of the inquisition; a circumstance which increases rather than lessens the terrors of that abominable tribunal....Buchanan, Dellon.

GOLD, a precious metal, and the heaviest of all metals, platina excepted: it is of a bright yellow colour when pure, but becomes more or less pale, in proportion as it is alloyed with other metals. Gold is so ductile, that, as Wallerius asserts, a single grain of it may be stretched in such a manner as to cover five hundred ells of wire. Nor is its malleability inferior to its ductility. Mr. Boyle says, that one grain and a half of gold may be beaten into fifty leaves of one inch square, which if intersected by parallel lines drawn at right angles to each other, and distant only the hundredth part of an inch from one another, will produce twenty-five millions of little squares, each very discernible by the naked eye. Gold is indestructible by the common operations of fire: when exposed to the strongest heat it loses no part of its weight; it is incapable of rusting, and combines with various metals. In Europe the proportion between gold and silver, is as fourteen or fifteen to one; whereas in China, and the greater part of the markets of India, it is but as ten, or at most, as twelve to one; therefore it is more advantageous to carry silver thither than gold....Encyclopædia, A. Smith.

GOLD COAST, a maritime country of Guinea, in which are more forts and factories of European nations, than in any other part of the coasts of Africa; the whole gold coast extending about one hundred and eighty miles in length. The negro merchants are usually very rich, and trade with the Europeans in gold. Some writers have said that there are gold mines in the neighborhood of Mina, on the gold coast; others, that the gold is rolled down by the rivers to that neighborhood: both may be true. The wealth of the natives enables them to gratify their taste for finery. The women wear

GOLD DUST....GOLDEN VULTURE, &c. 147

gold, and coral chains about their necks, arms, legs, and waists. They cover themselves with ornaments.... Walker, Rennel.

GOLD DUST, a precious article, found in Africa, particularly in the country of Manding, which borders upon the river Niger. The gold of Manding is never found in a mine, but always in small grains, nearly in a pure state, from the size of a pin's head, to that of a pea, scattered through a large body of sand or clay. As soon as their harvest is over, the Mandingo negroes go in search of gold dust. Some gather up the sands at the bottom of streams; others dig pits in the earth, near some hill which has been previously discovered to contain gold; and when they come to a stratum of fine reddish sand, with small specks therein, they are generally sure to find gold in some proportion or other.The men gather the sand into large calabashes, and the women, by washing it several times, separate the precious metal....Park. ·

GOLDEN VULTURE, a bird that is foremost of the vulture kind, and is in many respects like the golden eagle, but is larger in every proportion. From the end of the beak to that of the tail, it is four feet and an half, and to the claws' end, forty-five inches. The feathers are black on the back, and on the wings and tail of a yellowish brown their sense of smelling is amazingly great. In Egypt, this bird seems to be of singular service. There are great flocks of them in the neighborhood of Grand Cairo, which no person is permitted to destroy. The service they render the inhabitants, is the devouring of the carrion and filth of that great city; which might otherwise corrupt the air. They are commonly seen in company with the wild dogs of the country, tearing a carcase very deliberately together....Goldsmith.

GOOD HOPE, CAPE of, the most southerly point of the continent of Africa, lying in 34° 29′ south latitude: inhabited by the people called Hottentots. This Cape was first sailed round, in the year 1497, by Vasco de Gama, a noble Portuguese, who was sent out by Eman

uel I. king of Portugal, with a fleet of four ships, in order to complete the passage to India by sea. The Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope is one of the most considerable of the colonies which the Europeans have established, either in Africa or the East-Indies, and is peculiarly fortunate in its situation. It is the half-way-house, if one may say so, between Europe and the East-Indies, at which almost every European ship makes some stay both at going and returning. The supplying of those ships with almost every sort of fresh provisions, with fruit, and sometimes with wine, affords alone a very extensive market for the surplus produce of the colonists. [The Cape of Good Hope is now held by the British government.]....Adam Smith.

GOTHS, a people of ancient Germany, north of the Danube, who conquered the western Roman Empire, in the fifth century, and demolished the whole fabric of literature and civil institutions. Those fierce and barbarous tribes were inspired with invincible courage and prompted to deeds of carnage by the genius of their religion. An opinion was fixed and general among them, that death was but the entrance into another life; that all men who lived lazy and inactive lives, and died natural deaths, by sickness or by age, went into vast caves under ground, all dark and miry, full of noisome creatures usual to such places, and there for ever grovelled in endless stench and misery. On the contrary, all who gave themselves to warlike actions and enterprises, to the conquest of their neighbors and the slaughter of their enemies, and died in battle, or of violent deaths upon bold adventures or resolutions, went immediately to the vast hall or palace of Odin, their god of war, who eternally kept open house for all such guests, where they were entertained at infinite tables, in perpetual feasts and mirth, carousing in bowls made of the skulls of their enemies they had slain: according to the number of whom, every one in those mansions of pleasure was the most honoured and the best entertained.... Sir William Temple.

GOURD, a plant or vegetable. In the Sandwich Islands, gourds are applied to various domestic pur