64 CANDIA....CANNIBAL....CANTHARIS. for their fertility, that they were supposed to be the seat of the blessed....Belknap. CANDIA, the ancient Crete, famed of old for its hundred cities; it is now in the possession of the Turks. It is an Island in the Mediterranean sea, two hundred miles in length, and fifty in breadth : it is a mere desert in comparison with its ancient populousness, opulence, and splendor, when it was the seat of legislation to all Greece. The Turks besieged the seaport town of Candia, the capital of this island, (belonging at that time to the Venetians) in the beginning of the year 1645; they stormed it fifty-six times, and continued the siege till the latter end of September, 1669; when the brave Venetian garrison made an honorable capitulation. During this siege, the longest that history records, the Venetians lost eighty thousand, and the Turks a hundred and eighty thousand men. CANNIBAL, one that eats human flesh. The rage of hunger has sometimes impelled persons to eat the flesh of even their friends and relations. In the siege of Jerusalem, a woman of distinction boiled and ate her own son; and, in modern times, there have been instances of ship-wrecked crews eating one another in the extremity of their hunger. It had been doubted, however, whether there were any nations of cannibals existing upon the earth; but the voyages of captain Cooke have put this matter beyond all doubt. He found it to be a common custom in several islands of the Pacific Ocean, to feast on the bodies of their enemies; and in some islands too where extreme hunger was not known, the ground being so fertile that its spontaneous productions afforded the inhabitants an abundant supply. It appears from Doctor Trumbull's history of Connecticut, that the native savages of America used, sometimes, to eat the flesh of their enemies. Uncas, the Sachem of the Pequot Indians, having slain Miantonimo, the Sachem of the Naragansets, he cut out a large piece of his shoulder, and ate it; saying, "it was the sweetest meat he ever ate, it made his heart strong." CANTHARIS, an insect of the beetle kind; whence CANTON....CAPE COD. 65 come the Spanish flies, used in blisters. They have feelers like bristles, flexible cases to the wings, a breast smooth, and the sides of the belly wrinkled. The larg est are about an inch long, and as much in circumference, but others are not above three quarters of an inch. Some are of a pure azure colour, others of pure gold,.. and others again, have a mixture of pure gold and azure colours; but they are all very brilliant, and extremely beautiful. They are chiefly natives of Spain, Italy and Portugal; but they are to be met with also about Paris in the summer time, upon the leaves of the ash, the poplar, and the rose trees, and also among wheat, and in the meadows.... Goldsmith. CANTON, the greatest port of China; situated on the river Ta, fifty miles from its mouth. The city is twenty miles in circumference, and contains about two million inhabitants: in the port are often seen five thousand trading vessels at a time. In different parts of the city and suburbs are temples, in which are placed the images worshipped by the Chinese; before which are laid, at particular seasons, a vast variety of sweetmeats, oranges, a great plenty of food ready cooked, and also incense, which is kept perpetually burning. In the suburbs, England, Holland, France, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain, have their factories, distinguished by the flags of their nations. In Canton there are no carriages: all burdens are carried by porters across their shoulders on bamboos; as are also the principal people in sedan chairs. On the river live many thousand souls who never are permitted to come on shore; whose only habitation is their boat; in which they eat, drink, sleep, and carry on many occupations.... Morse, Winterbotham. CAPE COD, the south eastward point of Massachusetts Bay, which lies between this and Cape Ann. Cape Cod (which took its name from the multitude of codfish that were found near it when it was first discovered) extends about sixty-five miles in length, and, for almost half that distance, is not more than three miles in breadth. The harbor near the point was the first port entered by the English when they came to settle New 66 CARAVAN....CARDS-PLAYING. England, in 1620. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold first discovered this Cape, in the year 1602; where going ashore, a young Indian, with plates of copper hanging to his ears, and a bow and arrows in his hand, came to him, and in a friendly manner offered his service. Soon after, more of the natives made them a visit. One of them had a plate of copper over his breast, a foot in length and half a foot in breadth; the others had pendants of the same metal at their ears: they all had pipes and tobacco, of which they were fond....Belknap. CARAVAN, a company of merchants or traders, travelling together through deserts, or other dangerous places in the East, for their mutual defence and safety. Their beasts of burden are camels, and they are commonly escorted by a chief or aga, with a body of Janizaries [soldiers.] A caravan which M. Volney accompanied, in 1783, consisted, he said, of about 3000 camels, and five or six thousand men. In some parts of Asia and Africa, commerce has, from time immemorial, been carried on by caravans; which sometimes have been robbed and destroyed by Arabian freebooters, and sometime overwhelmed by storms of sand. The company consisting of Ishmaelites, with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt, was properly a caravan. In the year 1757, there was a celebrated pillage of the caravan of Mecca, by the Arabs. Sixty thousand pilgrims were plundered and dispersed over the desert, a great number destroyed by sword and famine, immense riches lost, and many persons reduced to slavery. CARDS-PLAYING, first invented, it is said, in France, in the year 1390, as an amusement for Charles VI. When cards are employed not as a mere amusement, but as the means of acquiring estate, it is called gambling; a practice that places its votaries on the high road to ruin. An intelligent spectator published, some few years ago, in a German gazette, as the result of his examination, that, at Hamburgh, within the period of two years, of six hundred individuals who were in the practice of frequenting gambling houses, nearly one half not only lost considerable sums, but were finally CARLINE THISTLE....CARNABIS....CARTHAGE. 67. stripped of all means of subsistence, and ended their days by self-murder; and that, of the rest, not less than an hundred finished their career by becoming swindlers, or robbers on the highway. CARLINE THISTLE. The seeds of this and of many other plants of the same class are furnished with a plume, by which admirable mechanism they perform long ærial journies, crossing lakes and deserts, and are thus disseminated far from the original plant, and have much the appearance of a shuttlecock as they fly. The wings are of different constructions, some being like a divergent tuft of hair, others are branched like feathers, some are elevated from the crown of the seed by a slender foot-stalk, which gives them a very elegant appearance, others sit immediately on the crown of the seed.... Darwin. CARNABIS, or Chinese Hemp. This is a new spe cies of hemp, of which an account is given by R. Fitzgerald, esquire, in a letter to sir Joseph Banks, and which is believed to be much superior to the hemp of other countries. A few seeds of this plant were sown in England on the fourth of June, and grew to fourteen feet seven inches in height by the middle of October; they were nearly seven inches in circumference, and bore many lateral branches, and produced very white and tough fibres. At some parts of the time these plants grew nearly seven inches in a week....Darwin. CARTHAGE, a famous city of antiquity, founded by the Phenicians, from eight to nine hundred years before the Christian era; and which, for a very long time, disputed with Rome the sovereignty of the world. It was situated at the bay of Tunis, directly opposite to Rome, near the mouth of the Tiber. Carthage is said to have been twenty-three miles in circumference: here was a temple of Apollo, in which was a statue of the god all of massy gold. The Carthagenians applied themselves, with great diligence and skill to maritime affairs, and were formidable by sea, at the time of Cyrus. They conquered a great part of Spain, and the mines of that country were a principal source of their wealth. The 68 CARTHAGENA. whole island of Sardinia and part of Sicily were subject to them; and they extended their power over all or most of the islands of the Mediterranean. After several long and bloody wars with the Romans, the city of of Carthage was taken and destroyed by them, about one hundred and forty-six years before the nativity of our Saviour. The Romans, by a dishonorable stratagem, first induced the citizens of Carthage to deliver up their arms and military engines, and then informed them that their city must be demolished. On hearing this cruel decree, the Carthagenians shut their gates. Indignation and rage rendered them desperate, and their ingenuity supplied them with expedients. They applied themselves to the manufacture of arms, with which they supplied their needs with amazing promptPatriotism fired the female breast; and ladies of the first rank voluntarily cut off their hair to make cords for working the military machines. Thus Carthage, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which it labored, sustained a long siege of the Roman army, and fell at last through the treachery of Asdrubal, the Carthagenian general. The city was entirely demolished by the merciless conquerors; its plunder, according to Pliny, amounting to four million four hundred and seventy thousand pounds weight of silver. ness. CARTHAGENA, the principal seaport town of Terra Firma, in South America: it is large and rich, but extremely unhealthy. An unsuccessful attempt was made upon this Spanish town, in the year 1741, by a British fleet, commanded by admiral Vernon; among which, as they were lying in the harbor, a pestilential fever spread death and destruction. Thomson says, You, gallant Vernon, saw "The miserable scene; you, pitying, saw |