Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Kite-Flying" to "Kyshtym" / Volume 15, Slice 8 Papyras Classics

← Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Kite-Flying" to "Kyshtym" / Volume 15, Slice 8

Chapter 3

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Kite-Flying" to "Kyshtym" (part 3)

When we reach the Medina period it becomes, as has been indicated, much easier to understand the revelations in their historical relations, since our knowledge of the history of Mahomet in Medina is tolerably complete. In many cases the historical occasion is perfectly clear, in others we can at least recognize the general situation from which they arose, and thus approximately fix their time. There still remains, however, a remnant, of which we can only say that it belongs to Medina.

The style of this period bears a fairly close resemblance to that of the latest Meccan period. It is for the most part pure prose, enriched by occasional rhetorical embellishments. Yet even here there are many bright and impressive passages, especially in those sections which may be regarded as proclamations to the army of the faithful. For the Moslems Mahomet has many different messages. At one time it is a summons to do battle for the faith; at another, a series of reflections on recently experienced success or misfortune, or a rebuke for their weak faith; or an exhortation to virtue, and so on. He often addresses himself to the “doubters,” some of whom vacillate between faith and unbelief, others make a pretence of faith, while others scarcely take the trouble even to do that. They are no consolidated party, but to Mahomet they are all equally vexatious, because, as soon as danger has to be encountered, or a contribution is levied, they all alike fall away. There are frequent outbursts, ever increasing in bitterness, against the Jews, who were very numerous in Medina and its neighbourhood when Mahomet arrived. He has much less to say against the Christians, with whom he never came closely in contact; and as for the idolaters, there was little occasion in Medina to have many words with them. A part of the Medina pieces consists of formal laws belonging to the ceremonial, civil and criminal codes; or directions about certain temporary complications. The most objectionable parts of the whole Koran are those which treat of Mahomet’s relations with women. The laws and regulations were generally very concise revelations, but most of them have been amalgamated with other pieces of similar or dissimilar import, and are now found in very long sūras.

Such is an imperfect sketch of the composition and the internal history of the Koran, but it is probably sufficient to show that the book is a very heterogeneous collection. If only those passages had been preserved which had a permanent value for the theology, the ethics, or the jurisprudence of the Moslems, a few fragments would have been amply sufficient. Fortunately for knowledge, respect for the sacredness of the letter has led to the collection of all the revelations that could possibly be collected—the “abrogating” along with the “abrogated,” passages referring to passing circumstances as well as those of lasting importance. Every one who takes up the book in the proper religious frame of mind, like most of the Moslems, reads pieces directed against long-obsolete absurd customs of Mecca just as devoutly as the weightiest moral precepts—perhaps even more devoutly, because he does not understand them so well.

At the head of twenty-nine of the sūras stand certain initial letters, from which no clear sense can be obtained. Thus, before ii. iii. xxxi. xxxii. we find (Alif Lām Mīm), before xl.-xlvi. (Ḥā Mīm). Nöldeke at one time suggested that these initials did not belong to Mahomet’s text, but might be the monograms of possessors of codices, which, through negligence on the part of the editors, were incorporated in the final form of the Koran; he now deems it more probable that they are to be traced to the Prophet himself, as Sprenger, Loth and others suppose. One cannot indeed admit the truth of Loth’s statement that in the proper opening words of these sūras we may generally find an allusion to the accompanying initials; but it can scarcely be accidental that the first verse of the great majority of them (in iii. it is the second verse) contains the word “book,” “revelation,” or some equivalent. They usually begin with: “This is the book,” or “Revelation (’down sending’) of the book,” or something similar. Of sūras which commence in this way only a few (xviii. xxiv. xxv. xxxix.) want the initials, while only xxix. and xxx. have the initials and begin differently. These few exceptions may easily have proceeded from ancient corruptions; at all events they cannot neutralize the evidence of the greater number. Mahomet seems to have meant these letters for a mystic reference to the archetypal text in heaven. To a man who regarded the art of writing, of which at the best he had but a slight knowledge, as something supernatural, and who lived amongst illiterate people, an A B C may well have seemed more significant than to us who have been initiated into the mysteries of this art from our childhood. The Prophet himself can hardly have attached any particular meaning to these symbols: they served their purpose if they conveyed an impression of solemnity and enigmatical obscurity. In fact, the Koran admits that it contains many things which neither can be, nor were intended to be, understood (iii. 5). To regard these letters as ciphers is a precarious hypothesis, for the simple reason that cryptography is not to be looked for in the very infancy of Arabic writing. If they are actually ciphers, the multiplicity of possible explanations at once precludes the hope of a plausible interpretation. None of the efforts in this direction, whether by Moslem scholars or by Europeans, has led to convincing results. This remark applies even to the ingenious conjecture of Sprenger, that the letters (Kāf Hē Yē Ain Sād) before xix. (which treats of John and Jesus, and, according to tradition, was sent to the Christian king of Abyssinia) stand for Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum. Sprenger arrives at this explanation by a very artificial method; and besides, Mahomet was not so simple as the Moslem traditionalists, who imagined that the Abyssinians could read a piece of the Arabic Koran. It need hardly be said that the Moslems have from of old applied themselves with great assiduity to the decipherment of these initials, and have sometimes found the deepest mysteries in them. Generally, however, they are content with the prudent conclusion that God alone knows the meaning of these letters.

It is probable (see above) that Mahomet had already caused revelations to be written down at Mecca, and that this began from the moment when he felt certain that he was the transmitter of the actual text of a heavenly book to mankind. It is even true that he may at some time or another have formed the intention of collecting these revelations. The idea of a heavenly model would in itself have suggested such a course and, only in an inferior degree to this, the necessity of setting a new and uncorrupted document of the divine will over against the sacred scriptures of the Jews and Christians, the people of the Book, as the Koran calls them. In any case, when Mahomet died, the separate pieces of the Koran, notwithstanding their theoretical sacredness, existed only in scattered copies; they were consequently in great danger of being partially or entirely destroyed. Many Moslems knew large portions by heart, but certainly no one knew the whole; and a merely oral propagation would have left the door open to all kinds of deliberate and inadvertent alterations. But now, after the death of the Prophet, most of the Arabs revolted against his successor, and had to be reduced to submission by force. Especially sanguinary was the struggle against the prophet Maslama (Mubarrad, Kāmil 443, 5), commonly known by the derisive diminutive Mosailima. At that time (A.D. 633) many of the most devoted Moslems fell, the very men who knew most Koran pieces by heart. Omar then began to fear that the Koran might be entirely forgotten, and he induced the Caliph Abū Bekr to undertake the collection of all its parts. The Caliph laid the duty on Zaid ibn Thābit, a native of Medina, then about twenty-two years of age, who had often acted as amanuensis to the Prophet, in whose service he is even said to have learned the Jewish letters. The account of this collection of the Koran has reached us in several substantially identical forms, and goes back to Zaid himself. According to it, he collected the revelations from copies written on flat stones, pieces of leather, ribs of palm-leaves (not palm-leaves themselves), and such-like material, but chiefly “from the breasts of men,” i.e. from their memory. From these he wrote a fair copy, which he gave to Abū Bekr, from whom it came to his successor Omar, who again bequeathed it to his daughter Ḥafṣa, one of the widows of the Prophet. This redaction, commonly called al-ṣoḥof (“the leaves”), had from the first no canonical authority; and its internal arrangement can only be conjectured.

The Moslems were as far as ever from possessing a uniform text of the Koran. The bravest of their warriors sometimes knew deplorably little about it; distinction on that field they cheerfully accorded to pious men like Ibn Mas‘ūd. It was inevitable, however, that discrepancies should emerge between the texts of professed scholars, and as these men in their several localities were authorities on the reading of the Koran, quarrels began to break out between the levies from different districts about the true form of the sacred book. During a campaign in A.H. 30 (A.D. 650-651), Ḥodhaifa, the victor in the great and decisive battle of Nehāveand (see Caliphate; and Persia: History) perceived that such disputes might become dangerous, and therefore urged on the caliph Othmān the necessity for a universally binding text. The matter was entrusted to Zaid, who had made the former collection, with three leading Koreishites. These brought together as many copies as they could lay their hands on, and prepared an edition which was to be canonical for all Moslems. To prevent any further disputes, they burned all the other codices except that of Ḥafṣa, which, however, was soon afterwards destroyed by Merwān the governor of Medina. The destruction of the earlier codices was an irreparable loss to criticism; but, for the essentially political object of putting an end to controversies by admitting only one form of the common book of religion and of law, this measure was necessary.

The result of these labours is in our hands; as to how they were conducted we have no trustworthy information, tradition being here too much under the influence of dogmatic presuppositions. The critical methods of a modern scientific commission will not be expected of an age when the highest literary education for an Arab consisted in ability to read and write. It now appears highly probable that this second redaction took this simple form: Zaid read off from the codex which he had previously written, and his associates, simultaneously or successively, wrote one copy each to his dictation. These three manuscripts will therefore be those which the caliph, according to trustworthy tradition, sent in the first instance as standard copies to Damascus, Basra and Kufa to the warriors of the provinces of which these were the capitals, while he retained one at Medina. Be that as it may, it is impossible now to distinguish in the present form of the book what belongs to the first redaction from what is due to the second.

In the arrangement of the separate sections, a classification according to contents was impracticable because of the variety of subjects often dealt with in one sūra. A chronological arrangement was out of the question, because the chronology of the older pieces must have been imperfectly known, and because in some cases passages of different dates had been joined together. Indeed, systematic principles of this kind were altogether disregarded at that period. The pieces were accordingly arranged in indiscriminate order, the only rule observed being to place the long sūras first and the shorter towards the end, and even that was far from strictly adhered to. The two magic formulae, sūras cxiii., cxiv. owe their position at the end of the collection to their peculiar contents, which differ from all the other sūras; they are protecting spells for the faithful. Similarly it is by reason of its contents that sūra i. stands at the beginning: not only because it is in praise of Allah, as Psalm i. is in praise of the righteous man, but because it gives classical expression to important articles of the faith. These are the only special traces of design. The combination of pieces of different origin may proceed partly from the possessors of the codices from which Zaid compiled his first complete copy, partly from Zaid himself. The individual sūras are separated simply by the superscription: “In the name of God, the compassionate Compassioner,” which is wanting only in the ninth. The additional headings found in our texts (the name of the sūras, the number of verses, &c.) were not in the original codices, and form no integral part of the Koran.

It is said that Othmān directed Zaid and his associates, in cases of disagreement, to follow the Ḳoreish dialect; but, though well attested, this account can scarcely be correct. The extremely primitive writing of those days was quite incapable of rendering such minute differences as can have existed between the pronunciation of Mecca and that of Medina.

Othmān’s Koran was not complete. Some passages are evidently fragmentary; and a few detached pieces are still extant which were originally parts of the Koran, although they have been omitted by Zaid. Amongst these are some which there is no reason to suppose Mahomet desired to suppress. Zaid may easily have overlooked a few stray fragments, but that he purposely omitted anything which he believed to belong to the Koran is very unlikely. It has been conjectured that in deference to his superiors he kept out of the book the names of Mahomet’s enemies, if they or their families came afterwards to be respected. But it must be remembered that it was never Mahomet’s practice to refer explicitly to contemporary persons and affairs in the Koran. Only a single friend, his adopted son Zaid (xxxiii. 37), and a single enemy, his uncle Abū Lahab (cxi.)—and these for very special reasons—are mentioned by name; and the name of the latter has been left in the Koran with a fearful curse annexed to it, although his son had embraced Islam before the death of Mahomet, and his descendants belonged to the noblest families. So, on the other hand, there is no single verse or clause which can be plausibly made out to be an interpolation by Zaid at the instance of Abū Bekr, Omar, or Othmān. Slight clerical errors there may have been, but the Koran of Othmān contains none but genuine elements—though sometimes in very strange order. All efforts of European scholars to prove the existence of later interpolations in the Koran have failed.

Of the four exemplars of Othmān’s Koran, one was kept in Medina, and one was sent to each of the three metropolitan cities, Kufa, Baṣra, and Damascus. It can still be pretty clearly shown in detail that these four codices deviated from one another in points of orthography, in the insertion or omission of a wa (“and”) and such-like minutiae; but these variations nowhere affect the sense. All later manuscripts are derived from these four originals.

At the same time, the other forms of the Koran did not at once become extinct. In particular we have some information about the codex of Ubay ibn Ka’b. If the list which gives the order of its sūras is correct, it must have contained substantially the same materials as our text; in that case Ubay ibn Ka’b must have used the original collection of Zaid. The same is true of the codex of Ibn Mas’ūd, of which we have also a catalogue. It appears that the principle of putting the longer sūras before the shorter was more consistently carried out by him than by Zaid. He omits i. and the magical formulae of cxiii., cxiv. Ubay, on the other hand, had embodied two additional short prayers, which we may regard as Mahomet’s. One can easily understand that differences of opinion may have existed as to whether and how far formularies of this kind belonged to the Koran. Some of the divergent readings of both these texts have been preserved as well as a considerable number of other ancient variants. Most of them are decidedly inferior to the received readings, but some are quite as good, and a few deserve preference.

The only man who appears to have seriously opposed the general introduction of Othmān’s text is Ibn Mas‘ūd. He was one of the oldest disciples of the Prophet, and had often rendered him personal service; but he was a man of contracted views, although he is one of the pillars of Moslem theology. His opposition had no effect. Now when we consider that at that time there were many Moslems who had heard the Koran from the mouth of the Prophet, that other measures of the imbecile Othmān met with the most vehement resistance on the part of the bigoted champions of the faith, that these were still further incited against him by some of his ambitious old comrades until at last they murdered him, and finally that in the civil wars after his death the several parties were glad of any pretext for branding their opponents as infidels;—when we consider all this, we must regard it as a strong testimony in favour of Othmān’s Koran that no party found fault with his conduct in this matter, or repudiated the text formed by Zaid, who was one of the most devoted adherents of Othmān and his family, and that even among the Shiites criticism of the caliph’s action is only met with as a rare exception.

But this redaction is not the close of the textual history of the Koran. The ancient Arabic alphabet was very imperfect; it not only wanted marks for the short and in part even for the long vowels, but it often expressed several consonants by the same sign, e.g. one and the same character could mean B, T, Th at the beginning and N and J (I) in the middle of words. Hence there were many words which could be read in very different ways. This variety of possible readings was at first very great, and many readers seem to have actually made it their object to discover pronunciations which were new, provided they were at all appropriate to the ambiguous text. There was also a dialectic licence in grammatical forms, which had not as yet been greatly restricted. An effort was made by many to establish a more refined pronunciation for the Koran than was usual in common life or in secular literature. The various schools of “readers” differed very widely from one another; although for the most part there was no important divergence as to the sense of words. A few of them gradually rose to special authority, and the rest disappeared. Seven readers are generally reckoned chief authorities, but for practical purposes this number was continually reduced in process of time; so that at present only two “reading-styles” are in actual use,—the common style of Ḥafṣ, and that of Nāfi’; which prevails in Africa to the west of Egypt. There is, however, a very comprehensive massoretic literature in which a number of other styles are indicated. The invention of vowel-signs of diacritic points to distinguish similarly formed consonants, and of other orthographic signs, soon put a stop to arbitrary conjectures on the part of the readers. Many zealots objected to the introduction of these innovations in the sacred text, but theological consistency had to yield to practical necessity. In accurate codices, indeed, all such additions, as well as the titles of the sūra, &c., are written in coloured ink, while the black characters profess to represent exactly the original of Othmān. But there is probably no copy quite faithful in this respect. Moreover, the right recitation of the Koran is an art which even people of Arab tongue can only learn with great difficulty. In addition to the nuances of pronunciation already alluded to, there is a semi-musical modulation. In these matters also the various schools differ.

In European libraries, besides innumerable modern manuscripts of the Koran, there are also codices, or fragments, of high antiquity, some of them probably dating from the 1st century of the Flight. For the restoration of the text, however, the works of ancient scholars on its readings and modes of writing are more important than the manuscripts; which, however elegantly they may be written and ornamented, proceed from irresponsible copyists. The original, written by Othmān himself, has indeed been exhibited in various parts of the Mahommedan world. The library of the India Office contains one such manuscript, bearing the subscription: “Written by ‘Othmān the son of ‘Affān.” These, of course, are barefaced forgeries, although of very ancient date; so are those which profess to be from the hand of ‘Alī, one of which is preserved in the same library. In recent times the Koran has been often printed and lithographed, both in the East and the West. In Mahommedan countries lithography alone is employed.

Shortly after Mahomet’s death certain individuals applied themselves to the exposition of the Koran. Much of it was obscure from the beginning, other sections were unintelligible apart from a knowledge of the circumstances of their origin. Unfortunately, those who took possession of this field were not very honourable. Ibn ‘Abbās, a cousin of Mahomet, and the chief source of the traditional exegesis of the Koran, has, on theological and other grounds, given currency to a number of falsehoods; and at least some of his pupils have emulated his example. These earliest expositions dealt more with the sense and connexion of whole verses than with the separate words. Afterwards, as the knowledge of the old language declined, and the study of philology arose, more attention began to be paid to the explanation of vocables. A good many fragments of this older theological and philological exegesis have survived from the first two centuries of the Flight, although we have no complete commentary of this period. The great commentary of Ṭabarī, A.D. 839-923, of which for the last few years we have possessed an Oriental edition in 30 parts (Cairo A.H. 1321 = A.D. 1903), is very full when it comes to speak of canonical law, as well as in its accounts of the occasions of the several revelations; for, as in his great historical work, he faithfully records a large number of traditions with the channels by which they have come down to us (genealogical trees, isnād). In other respects the hopes based upon this commentary have not been fulfilled.

Another very famous commentary is that of Zamakhsharī (A.D. 1075-1144), edited by Nassau-Lees, Calcutta, 1859; but this scholar, with his great insight and still greater subtlety, is too apt to read his own scholastic ideas into the Koran. The favourite commentary of Baiḍāwī (d. A.D. 1286), edited by Fleischer (Leipzig, 1846-1848), is little more than an abridgment of Zamakhsharī’s. Thousands of commentaries on the Koran, some of them of prodigious size, have been written by Moslems; and even the number of those still extant in manuscript is by no means small. Although these works all contain much that is useless or false, yet they are invaluable aids to our understanding of the sacred book. An unbiased European can, no doubt, see many things at a glance more clearly than a good Moslem who is under the influence of religious prejudice; but we should still be helpless without the exegetical literature of the Mahommedans. Even the Arabian Moslems would only understand the Koran very dimly and imperfectly if they did not give special attention to the study of its interpretation. The advantage of being in a language commonly understood, which the holy book claims for itself, has vanished in the course of thirteen centuries. According to the dominant view, however, the ritual use of the Koran is not in the least concerned with the sacred words being understood, but solely with their being quite properly recited. Nevertheless, a great deal remains to be accomplished by European scholarship for the correct interpretation of the Koran. We want, for example, an exhaustive classification and discussion of all the Jewish elements in the Koran; a praiseworthy beginning was made in Geiger’s youthful essay Was hat Mohamed aus dem Judenthum aufgenommen? (Bonn, 1833; the “second revised edition,” Leipzig, 1902, is only a reprint). We want especially a thorough commentary, executed with the methods and resources of modern science. No European language, it would seem, can even boast of a translation which completely satisfies modern requirements. The best are in English; where we have the extremely paraphrastic, but for its time admirable translation of George Sale (repeatedly printed), that of Rodwell (1861), which seeks to give the pieces in chronological order, and that of Palmer (1880), who wisely follows the traditional arrangements. The introduction which accompanies Palmer’s translation is not in all respects abreast of the most recent scholarship. Considerable extracts from the Koran are well translated in E. W. Lane’s Selections from the Kur-ān. Not much can be said in praise of the complete translations into the German language, neither of that of Ullmann, which has appeared in several editions, nor of that of Henning (Leipzig) and Grigull (Halle), all of them shallow amateurs who have no notion of the difficulties to be met with in the task, and are almost entirely dependent on Sale. Friedrich Rückert’s excellent version (published by August Müller, Frankfort-on-Maine, 1888) gives only selections. M. Klamroth’s translation of the fifty oldest sūras, Die fünfzig ältesten Suren (Hamburg, 1890) attempts successfully to reproduce the rhymed form of the originals. The publication of the translation of the Koran by the great Leipzig Arabic scholar, H. L. Fleischer (d. 1888) has so far unfortunately been delayed. (For modern editions, commentaries, &c., see Mahommedan Religion: Bibliography).

Besides commentaries on the whole Koran, or on special parts and topics, the Moslems possess a whole literature bearing on their sacred book. There are works on the spelling and right pronunciation of the Koran, works on the beauty of its language, on the number of its verses, words and letters, &c.; nay, there are even works which would nowadays be called “historical and critical introductions.” Moreover, the origin of Arabic philology is intimately connected with the recitation and exegesis of the Koran. To exhibit the importance of the sacred book for the whole mental life of the Moslems would be simply to write the history of that life itself; for there is no department in which its all-pervading, but unfortunately not always salutary, influence has not been felt.

The unbounded reverence of the Moslems for the Koran reaches its climax in the dogma that this book, as the divine word, i.e. thought, is immanent in God, and consequently eternal and uncreated. This dogma, which was doubtless due to the influence of the Christian doctrine of the eternal Word of God, has been accepted by almost all Mahommedans since the beginning of the 3rd century. Some theologians did indeed protest against it with great energy; it was in fact too preposterous to declare that a book composed of unstable words and letters, and full of variants, was absolutely divine. But what were the distinctions and sophisms of the theologians for, if they could not remove such contradictions, and convict their opponents of heresy?

Bibliography.—The following works may be especially consulted: Weil, Einleitung in den Korān (2nd ed., 1878); Th. Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorān’s (Göttingen, 1860; 2nd ed. by Friedrich Schwally, 1908); the Lives of Mahomet by William Muir and Aloys Sprenger (vols. i.-iii., Berlin, 1861-1865; 2nd ed., 1869); C. Snouck Hurgronje, Het mekkaansche Feest (Leiden, 1880), De Islam (de Gids, 1886, ii. 257-273, 454-498, iii. 90-134); “Une nouvelle biographie de Mohammed,” Revue de l’histoire des religions, tome 29, p. 48 f., 149 sqq.; Leone Caetani, Annali dell’ Islam, i. (Milan, 1905), ii.(Milan, 1907); Frants Buhl, Muhammeds Liv (Copenhagen, 1903).

(Th. N.; Fr. Sy.)


Reproductions of such Ptolemaic and Lysimachan coins are to be found in J. J. Bernouilli, Die erhaltenen Darstellungen Alexanders d. Gr. (Munich, 1905), Tab. VIII.; also in Theodor Schreiber, “Studien über das Bildniss Alexanders des Gr.” in the Abh. Sachs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Bd. xxi. (1903), Tab. XIII.

For the schemes of Nöldeke and Grimm see Mahommedan Religion.

See Bibliography at end.

Since in Arabic also the root signifies “to have pity,” the Arabs must have at once perceived the force of the new name. While the foreign word Raḥmān is, in accordance with its origin, everywhere in the Koran to be understood as “Merciful,” there is some doubt as to Raḥīm. The close connexion of the two expressions, it is true, makes it probable that Mahomet only added the adjective Raḥīm to the substantive Raḥmān in order to strengthen the conception. But the genuine Arab meaning of Raḥīm is “gracious,” and thus, the old Mahommedan Arab papyri render this word by φιλάνθρωπος.

KORAT, the capital of the provincial division (Monton) of Nakawn Racha Sema, or “the frontier country,” in Siam; in 102° 5´ E., 14° 59´ N. Pop. about 7000, mixed Cambodian and Siamese. It is the headquarters of a high commissioner and of an army division. It is the terminus of a railway from Bangkok, 170 m. distant, and the distributing centre for the whole of the plateau district which forms the eastern part of Siam. There are copper mines of reputed wealth in the neighbourhood. It is the centre of a silk-growing district and is the headquarters of the government sericultural department, instituted in 1904 with the assistance of Japanese experts for the purpose of improving the quality of Siamese silk. The government is that of an ordinary provincial division of Siam. A French vice-consul resides here. Since the founding of Ayuthia in the 14th century, Korat has been tributary to, or part of, Siam, with occasional lapses into independence or temporary subjection to Cambodia. Before that period it was probably part of Cambodia, as appears from the nature of the ruins still to be seen in its neighbourhood. In 1896 the last vestige of its tributary condition vanished with the introduction of the present system of Siamese rural administration.

KORDOFAN, a country of north-east Africa, forming a mudiria (province) of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It lies mainly between 12° and 16° W. and 29° and 32½° E., and has an area of about 130,000 sq. m., being bounded W. by Darfur, N. by the Bayuda steppes, E. by the White Nile mudiria and S. by the country of the Shilluks and other negro tribes, forming part of the Upper Nile mudiria.

The greater part of Kordofan consists of undulating plains, riverless, barren, monotonous, with an average altitude of 1500 ft. Thickets and small acacias dot the steppes, which, green during the kharif or rainy season, at other times present a dull brown burnt-up aspect. In the west, isolated peaks, such as Jebel Abu Senum and Jebel Kordofan, rise from 150 to 600 ft. above the plain. North-west are the mountain groups of Kaja and Katul (2000 to 3000 ft.), in the east are the Jebel Daier and Jebel Tagale (Togale), ragged granitic ranges with precipitous sides. In the south are flat, fertile and thickly wooded plains, which give place to jungle at the foot of the hills of Dar Nuba, the district forming the south-east part of Kordofan. Dar Nuba is well-watered, the scenery is diversified and pretty, affording a welcome contrast to that of the rest of the country. Some of the Nuba hills exceed 3000 ft. in height. The south-western part of the country, a vast and almost level plain, is known as Dar Homr. A granitic sand with abundance of mica and feldspar forms the upper stratum throughout the greater part of Kordofan; but an admixture of clay, which is observable in the north, becomes strongly marked in the south, where there are also stretches of black vegetable mould. Beneath there appears to be an unbroken surface of mica schist. Though there are no perennial rivers, there are watercourses (khors or wadis) in the rainy season; the chief being the Khor Abu Habl, which traverses the south-central region. In Dar Homr the Wadi el Ghalla and the Khor Shalango drain towards the Homr affluent of the Bahr el Ghazal. During the rainy season there is a considerable body of water in these channels, but owing partly to rapid evaporation and partly to the porous character of the soil the surface of the country dries rapidly. The water which has found its way through the granitic sand flows over the surface of the mica schist and settles in the hollows, and by sinking wells to the solid rock a supply of water can generally be obtained. It is estimated that (apart from those in a few areas where the sand stratum is thin and water is reached at the depth of a few feet) there are about 900 of these wells. They are narrow shafts going down usually 30 to 50 ft., but some are over 200 ft. deep. The water is raised by rope and bucket at the cost of enormous labour, and in few cases is any available for irrigation. The very cattle are trained to go a long time without drinking. Entire villages migrate after the harvest to the neighbourhood of some plentiful well. In a few localities the surface depressions hold water for the greater part of the year but there is only one permanent lake—Keilat, which is some four miles by two. As there is no highland area draining into Kordofan, the underground reservoirs are dependent on the local rainfall, and a large number of the wells are dry during many months. The rainy season lasts from mid-June to the end of September, rain usually falling every three or four days in brief but violent showers. In general the climate is healthy except in the rainy season, when large tracts are converted into swamps and fever is very prevalent. In the shita or cold weather (October to February inclusive) there is a cold wind from the north. The seif or hot weather lasts from March to mid-June; the temperature rarely exceeds 105° F.

The chief constituent of the low scrub which covers the northern part of the country is the grey gum acacia (hashob). In the south the red gum acacias (talh) are abundant. In Dar Hamid, in the N.W. of Kordofan, date, dom and other palms grow. The basbab or calabash tree, known in the eastern Sudan as the tebeldi and locally Homr, is fairly common and being naturally hollow the trees collect water, which the natives regularly tap. Another common source of water supply is a small kind of water melon which grows wild and is also cultivated. In the dense jungles of the south are immense creepers, some of them rubber-vines. The cotton plant is also found. The fauna includes the elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo, giraffe, lion, leopard, cheetah, roan-antelope, hartebeeste, kudu and many other kinds of antelope, wart-hog, hares, quail, partridge, jungle-fowl, bustard and guinea-fowl. Nearly all the kinds of game mentioned are found chiefly in the western and southern districts. The ril or addra gazelle found in N. and N.W. Kordofan are not known elsewhere in the eastern Sudan. Reptiles, sand-flies and mosquitoes are common. Ostriches are found in the northern steppes. The chief wealth of the people consists in the gum obtained from the grey acacias, in oxen, camels and ostrich feathers. The finest cattle are of the humped variety, the bulls of the Baggara being trained to the saddle and to carry burdens. There are large herds of camel, the camel-owning Arabs usually owning also large numbers of sheep and goats. Dukhn, a species of millet which can grow in the arid northern districts is there the chief grain crop, its place in the south being taken by durra. Dukhn is, however, the only crop cultivated in Dar Homr. From this grain a beer called merissa is brewed. Barley and cotton are cultivated in some districts. A little gold dust is obtained, but the old gold and other mines in the Tagale country have been, apparently, worked out. Iron is found in many districts and is smelted in a few places. In the absence of fuel the industry is necessarily a small one. There are large beds of hematite some 60 m. N.W. and the same distance N.E. of El Obeid.

Inhabitants.—The population of Kordofan was officially estimated in 1903 to be 550,000. The inhabitants are roughly divisible into two types—Arabs in the plains and Nubas in the hills. Many of the villagers of the plains are however of very mixed blood—Arab, Egyptian, Turkish, Levantine and Negro. It is said that some village communities are descended from the original negro inhabitants. They all speak Arabic. The most important village tribe is the Gowama, who own most of the gum-producing country. Other large tribes are the Dar Hamid and the Bederia—the last-named living round El Obeid. The nomad Arabs are of two classes, camel owners (Siat El Ilbil) and cattle owners (Baggara), the first-named dwelling in the dry northern regions, the Baggara in southern Kordofan. Of the camel-owning tribes the chief are the Hamar and the Kabbabish. Many of the Hamar have settled down in villages. The Baggara are great hunters, and formerly were noted slave raiders. They possess many horses, but when journeying place their baggage on their oxen. They use a stabbing spear, small throwing spears, and a broad-bladed short sword. Some of the richer men possess suits of chain armour. The principal Baggara tribes are the Hawazma, Meseria, Kenana, Habbania, and Homr. The Homr are said to have entered Kordofan from Wadai about the end of the 18th century and to have come from North Africa. They speak a purer Arabic than the riverain tribes. The Nubas are split into many tribes, each under a mek or king, who is not uncommonly of Arab descent. The Nubas have their own language, though the inhabitants of each hill have usually a different dialect. They are a primitive race, very black, of small build but distinctive negro features. They have feuds with one another and with the Baggara. During the mahdia they maintained their independence. The Nubas appear to have been the aboriginal inhabitants of the country and are believed to be the original stock of the Nubians of the Nile Valley (see Nubia). In the northern hills are communities of black people with woolly hair but of non-negro features. They speak Arabic and are called Nuba Arabs. Some of the southern hills are occupied by Arab-speaking negroes, escaped slaves and their descendants, who called themselves after the tribe they formerly served and who have little intercourse with the Nubas.

The capital, El Obeid (q.v.), is centrally situated. On it converge various trade routes, notably from Darfur and from Dueim, a town on the White Nile 125 m. above Khartum, which served as port for the province. Thence was despatched the gum for the Omdurman market. But the railway from Khartum to El Obeid, via Sennar, built in 1909-1911, crosses the Nile some 60 m. farther south above Abba Island. Nahud (pop. about 10,000), 165 m. W.S.W. of El Obeid, is a commercial centre which has sprung into importance since the fall of the dervishes. All the trade with Darfur passes through the town, the chief commerce being in cattle, feathers, ivory and cotton goods. Trade is largely in the hands of Greeks, Syrians, Danagla and Jaalin. Taiara, on the route between El Obeid and the Nile, was destroyed by the dervishes but has been rebuilt and is a thriving mart for the gum trade. El Odoaiya or Eddaiya is the headquarters of the Homr country. It and Baraka in the Muglad district are on the trade road between Nahud and Shakka in Darfur.

Bara is a small town some 50 m. N.N.E. of Obeid. Talodi and Tendek are government stations in the Nuba country. The Nubas have no large towns. They live in villages on the hillsides or summits. The usual habitation built both by Arabs and Nubas is the tukl, a conical-shaped hut made of stone, mud, wattle and daub or straw. The Nuba tukls are the better built. In the chief towns houses are built of mud bricks with flat roofs.

History.—Of the early history of Kordofan there is little record. It never formed an independent state. About the beginning of the 16th century Funj from Sennar settled in the country; towards the end of that century Kordofan was conquered by Suleiman Solon, sultan of Darfur. About 1775 it was conquered by the Funj, and there followed a considerable immigration of Arab tribes into the country. The Sennari however suffered a decisive defeat in 1784 and thereafter under Darfur viceroys the country enjoyed prosperity. In 1821 Kordofan was conquered by Mahommed Bey the defterdar, son-in-law of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt. It remained under Egyptian rule till 1882 when Mahommed Ahmed, the mahdi, raised the country to revolt. It was in Kordofan that Hicks Pasha and his army, sent to crush the revolt, were annihilated (Nov. 1883). The Baggara of Kordofan from that time onward were the chief supporters of the mahdi, and his successor, the khalifa Abdullah, was a Baggara. In Kordofan in 1899 the khalifa met his death, the country having already passed into the hands of the new Sudan government. The chief difficulty experienced by the administration was to habituate the Arabs and Nubas, both naturally warlike, to a state of peace. In consequence of the anti-slave raiding measures adopted, the Arabs of Talodi in May 1906 treacherously massacred the mamur of that place and 40 men of the Sudanese regiment. The promptness with which this disturbance was suppressed averted what otherwise might have been a serious rising. (See Sudan: Anglo-Egyptian, § “History.”)

See The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905); H. A. MacMichael, Notes on the History of Kordofan before the Egyptian Conquest (Cairo, 1907); John Petherick, Egypt, the Sudan, and Central Africa (London, 1861); Ignaz Pallme, Beschreibung von Kordofan (Stuttgart, 1843; trans. Travels in Kordofan, London, 1844); Major H. G. Prout, General Report on Province of Kordofan (Cairo, 1877); Ernst Marno, Reise in der egypt. Equat. Provinz (Vienna, 1879); papers (with maps) by Capt. W. Lloyd in the Geog. Journ. (June 1907 and March 1910); and the bibliography given under Sudan: Anglo-Egyptian.

KOREA, or Corea (Ch’ao Hsien, Dai han). Its mainland portion consists of a peninsula stretching southwards from Manchuria, with an estimated length of about 600 m., an extreme breadth of 135 m., and a coast-line of 1740 m. It extends from 34° 18´ to 43° N., and from 124° 36´ to 130° 47´ E. Its northern boundary is marked by the Tumen and Yalu rivers; the eastern boundary by the Sea of Japan; the southern boundary by Korea Strait; and the western boundary by the Yalu and the Yellow Sea. For 11 m. along the Tumen river the north frontier is conterminous with Russia (Siberia); otherwise Korea has China (Manchuria) on its land frontier. Nearly the whole surface of the country is mountainous. (For map, see Japan.)

The south and west coasts are fringed by about 200 islands (exclusive of islets), two-thirds of which are inhabited; 100 of them are from 100 to 2000 ft. in height, and many consist of bold bare masses of volcanic rock. The most important are Quelpart and the Nan Hau group. The latter, 36 m. from the eastern end of Quelpart, possesses the deep, well-sheltered and roomy harbour of Port Hamilton, which lies between the north points of the large and well-cultivated islands of Sun-ho-dan and So-dan, which have a population of 2000. Aitan, between their south-east points, completes this noble harbour. The east coast of Korea is steep and rock-bound, with deep water and a tidal rise and fall of 1 to 2 ft. The west coast is often low and shelving, and abounds in mud-banks, and the tidal rise and fall is from 20 to 36 ft. Korean harbours, except two or three which are closed by drift ice for some weeks in winter, are ice-free. Among them are Port Shestakov, Port Lazarev, and Wön-san (Gensan), in Broughton Bay; Fusan, Ma-san-po, at the mouth of the Nak-tong, on the south coast; Mok-po, Chin-nampo, near the mouth of the Tai-dong; and Chemulpo, near the mouth of the Han, the port of the capital and the sea terminus of the first Korean railway on the west coast.

Korea is distinctly mountainous, and has no plains deserving the name. In the north there are mountain groups with definite centres, the most notable being Paik-tu San or Pei-shan (8700 ft.) which contains the sources of the Yalu and Tumen. From these groups a lofty range runs southwards, dividing the empire into two unequal parts. On its east, between it and the coast, which it follows at a moderate distance, is a fertile strip difficult of access, and on the west it throws off so many lateral ranges and spurs as to break up the country into a chaos of corrugated and precipitous hills and steep-sided valleys, each with a rapid perennial stream. Farther south this axial range, which includes the Diamond Mountain group, falls away towards the sea in treeless spurs and small and often infertile levels. The northern groups and the Diamond Mountain are heavily timbered, but the hills are covered mainly with coarse, sour grass and oak and chestnut scrub. The rivers are shallow and rocky, and are usually only navigable for a few miles from the sea. Among the exceptions are the Yalu (Amnok), Tumen, Tai-dong, Naktong, Mok-po, and Han. The last, rising in Kang-wön-do, 30 m. from the east coast, cuts Korea nearly in half, reaching the sea on the west coast near Chemulpo; and, in spite of many serious rapids, is a valuable highway for commerce for over 150 miles.

Geology.—The geology of Korea is very imperfectly known. Crystalline schists occupy a large part of the country, forming all the higher mountain ranges. They are always strongly folded and it is in them that the mineral wealth of Korea is situated. Towards the Manchurian frontier they are covered unconformably by some 1600 ft. of sandstones, clay-slates and limestones, which contain Cambrian fossils and are the equivalents of a part of the Sinian system of China. Carboniferous beds, consisting chiefly of slates, sandstones and conglomerates, are found in the south-eastern provinces. They contain a few seams of coal, but the most important coal-bearing deposits of the country belong to the Tertiary period. Recent eruptive and volcanic rocks are met with in the interior of Korea and also in the island of Quelpart. The principal mountain in the latter, Hal-la-san (or Mount Auckland), according to Chinese stories, was in eruption in the year 1007. With this possible exception there are no active volcanoes in Korea, and the region has also been remarkably free from earthquakes throughout historic times.

Climate.—The climate is superb for nine months of the year, and the three months of rain, heat and damp are not injurious to health. Koreans suffer from malaria, but Europeans and their children are fairly free from climatic maladies, and enjoy robust health. The summer mean temperature of Seoul is about 75° F., that of winter about 33°; the average rainfall, 36.3 in. in the year, and of the rainy season 21.86 in. The rains come in July and August on the west and north-east coasts, and from April to July on the south coast, the approximate mean annual rainfall of these localities being 30, 35 and 42 in. respectively. These averages are based on the observations of seven years only.

Flora.—The plants and animals await study and classification. Among the indigenous trees are the Abies excelsa, Abies microsperma, Pinus sinensis, Pinus pinea, three species of oak, five of maple, lime, birch, juniper, mountain ash, walnut, Spanish chestnut, hazel, willow, hornbeam, hawthorn, plum, pear, peach, Rhus vernicifera, (?) Rhus semipinnata, Acanthopanax ricinifolia, Zelkawa, Thuja orientalis, Elaeagnus, Sophora Japonica, &c. Azaleas and rhododendrons are widely distributed, as well as other flowering shrubs and creepers, Ampelopsis Veitchii being universal. Liliaceous plants and cruciferae are numerous. The native fruits, except walnuts and chestnuts, are worthless. The persimmon attains perfection, and experiment has proved the suitability of the climate to many foreign fruits. The indigenous economic plants are few, and are of no commercial value, excepting wild ginseng, bamboo, which is applied to countless uses, and “tak-pul” (Hibiscus Manihot), used in the manufacture of paper.

Fauna.—The tiger takes the first place among wild animals. He is of great size, his skin is magnificent, and he is so widely distributed as to be a peril to man and beast. Tiger-hunting is a profession with special privileges. Leopards are numerous, and have even been shot within the walls of Seoul. There are deer (at least five species), boars, bears, antelopes, beavers, otters, badgers, tiger-cats, marten, an inferior sable, striped squirrels, &c. Among birds there are black eagles, peregrines (largely used in hawking), and, specially protected by law, turkey bustards, three varieties of pheasants, swans, geese, common and spectacled teal, mallards, mandarin ducks white and pink ibis, cranes, storks, egrets, herons, curlews, pigeons, doves, nightjars, common and blue magpies, rooks, crows, orioles, halcyon and blue kingfishers, jays, nut-hatches, redstarts, snipe, grey shrikes, hawks, kites, &c. But, pending further observations, it is not possible to say which of the smaller birds actually breed in Korea and which only make it a halting-place in their annual migrations.

Area and Population.—The estimated area is 82,000 sq. m.—somewhat under that of Great Britain. The first complete census was taken in 1897, and returned the population in round numbers at 17,000,000, females being in the majority. It was subsequently, however, estimated at a maximum of 12,000,000. There is a foreign population of about 65,000, of whom 60,000 are Japanese. It is estimated that little more than half the arable land is under cultivation, and that the soil could support an additional 7,000,000. The native population is absolutely homogeneous. Northern Korea, with its severe climate, is thinly peopled, while the rich and warm provinces of the south and west are populous. A large majority of the people are engaged in agriculture. There is little emigration, except into Russian and Chinese territory, but some Koreans have emigrated to Hawaii and Mexico.

The capital is the inland city of Seoul, with a population of nearly 200,000. Among other towns, Songdo (Kaisöng), the capital from about 910 to 1392, is a walled city of the first rank, 25 m. N.W. of Seoul, with a population of 60,000. It possesses the stately remains of the palace of the Korean kings of the Wang dynasty, is a great centre of the grain trade and the sole centre of the ginseng manufacture, makes wooden shoes, coarse pottery and fine matting, and manufactures with sesamum oil the stout oiled paper for which Korea is famous. Phyöng-yang, a city on the Tai-dong, had a population of 60,000 before the war of 1894, in which it was nearly destroyed; but it fast regained its population. It lies on rocky heights above a region of stoneless alluvium on the east, and with the largest and richest plain in Korea on the west. It has five coal-mines within ten miles, and the district is rich in iron, silk, cotton, and grain. It has easy communication with the sea (its port being Chin-nampo), and is important historically and commercially. Auriferous quartz is worked by a foreign company in its neighbourhood. Near the city is the illustrated standard of land measurement cut by Ki-tze in 1124 B.C.

With the exceptions of Kang-hwa, Chöng-ju, Tung-nai, Fusan, and Wön-san, it is very doubtful if any other Korean towns reach a population of 15,000. The provincial capitals and many other cities are walled. Most of the larger towns are in the warm and fertile southern provinces. One is very much like another, and nearly all their streets are replicas of the better alleys of Seoul. The actual antiquities of Korea are dolmens, sepulchral pottery, and Korean and Japanese fortifications.

Race.—The origin of the Korean people is unknown. They are of the Mongol family; their language belongs to the so-called Turanian group, is polysyllabic, possesses an alphabet of 11 vowels and 14 consonants, and a script named En-mun. Literature of the higher class and official and upper class correspondence are exclusively in Chinese characters, but since 1895 official documents have contained an admixture of En-mun. The Koreans are distinct from both Chinese and Japanese in physiognomy, though dark straight hair, dark oblique eyes, and a tinge of bronze in the skin are always present. The cheek-bones are high; the nose inclined to flatness; the mouth thin-lipped and refined among patricians, and wide and full-lipped among plebeians; the ears are small, and the brow fairly well developed. The expression indicates quick intelligence rather than force and mental calibre. The male height averages 5 ft. 4½ in. The hands and feet are small and well-formed. The physique is good, and porters carry on journeys from 100 to 200 ℔. Men marry at from 18 to 20 years, girls at 16, and have large families, in which a strumous taint is nearly universal. Women are secluded and occupy a very inferior position. The Koreans are rigid monogamists, but concubinage has a recognized status.

Production and Industries. i. Minerals.—Extensive coal-fields, producing coal of fair quality, as yet undeveloped, occur in Hwang-hai Do and elsewhere. Iron is abundant, especially in Phyöng-an Do, and rich copper ore, silver and galena are found. Crystal is a noted product of Korea, and talc of good quality is also present. In 1885 the rudest process of “placer” washing produced an export of gold dust amounting to £120,000; quartz-mining methods were subsequently introduced, and the annual declared value of gold produced rose to about £450,000; but much is believed to have been sent out of the country clandestinely. The reefs were left untouched till 1897, when an American company, which had obtained a concession in Phyöng-an Do in 1895, introduced the latest mining appliances, and raised the declared export of 1898 to £240,047, believed to represent a yield for that year of £600,000. Russian, German, English, French and Japanese applicants subsequently obtained concessions. The concessionnaires regard Korean labour as docile and intelligent. The privilege of owning mines in Korea was extended to aliens under the Mining Regulations of 1906.

ii. Agriculture.—Korean soil consists largely of light sandy loam, disintegrated lava, and rich, stoneless alluvium, from 3 to 10 ft. deep. The rainfall is abundant during the necessitous months of the year, facilities for the irrigation of the rice crop are ample, and drought and floods are seldom known. Land is held from the proprietors on the terms of receiving seed from them and returning half the produce, the landlord paying the taxes. Any Korean can become a landowner by reclaiming and cultivating unoccupied crown land for three years free of taxation, after which he pays taxes annually. Good land produces two crops a year. The implements used are two makes of iron-shod wooden ploughs; a large shovel, worked by three or five men, one working the handle, the others jerking the blade by ropes attached to it; a short sharp-pointed hoe, a bamboo rake, and a wooden barrow, all of rude construction. Rice is threshed by beating the ears on a log; other grains, with flails on mud threshing-floors. Winnowing is performed by throwing up the grain on windy days. Rice is hulled and grain coarsely ground in stone querns or by water pestles. There are provincial horse-breeding stations, where pony stallions, from 10 to 12 hands high, are bred for carrying burdens. Magnificent red bulls are bred by the farmers for ploughing and other farming operations, and for the transport of goods. Sheep and goats are bred on the imperial farms, but only for sacrifice. Small, hairy, black pigs, and fowls, are universal. The cultivation does not compare in neatness and thoroughness with that of China and Japan. There are no trustworthy estimates of the yield of any given measurement of land. The farmers put the average yield of rice at thirty-fold, and of other grain at twenty-fold. Korea produces all cereals and root crops except the tropical, along with cotton, tobacco, a species of the Rhea plant used for making grass-cloth, and the Brousonettia papyrifera. The articles chiefly cultivated are rice, millet, beans, ginseng (at Songdo), cotton, hemp, oil-seeds, bearded wheat, oats, barley, sorghum, and sweet and Irish potatoes. Korean agriculture suffers from infamous roads, the want of the exchange of seed, and the insecurity of the gains of labour. It occupies about three-fourths of the population.

iii. Other Industries.—The industries of Korea, apart from supplying the actual necessaries of a poor population, are few and rarely collective. They consist chiefly in the manufacture of sea-salt, of varied and admirable paper, thin and poor silk, horse-hair crinoline for hats, fine split bamboo blinds, hats and mats, coarse pottery, hemp cloth for mourners, brass bowls and grass-cloth. Wön-san and Fusan are large fishing centres, and salt fish and fish manure are important exports; but the prolific fishing-grounds are worked chiefly by Japanese labour and capital. Paper and ginseng are the only manufactured articles on the list of Korean exports. The arts are nil.

Commerce.—A commercial treaty was concluded with Japan in 1876, and treaties with the European countries and the United States of America were concluded subsequently. An imperial edict of the 20th of May 1904 annulled all Korean treaties with Russia. After the opening of certain Korean ports to foreign trade, the customs were placed under the management of European commissioners nominated by Sir Robert Hart from Peking. The ports and other towns open are Seoul, Chemulpo, Fusan, Wön-san, Chin-nampo, Mok-po, Kun-san, Ma-san-po, Song-chin, Wiju, Yong-ampo, and Phyöng-yang. The value of foreign trade of the open ports has fluctuated considerably, but has shown a tendency to increase on the whole. For example, in 1884 imports were valued at £170,113 and exports at £95,377. By 1890 imports had risen to £790,261, and thereafter fluctuated greatly, standing at only £473,598 in 1893, but at £1,017,238 in 1897, and £1,382,352 in 1901, but under abnormal conditions in 1904 this last amount was nearly doubled. Exports in 1890 were valued at £591,746; they also fluctuated greatly, falling to £316,072 in 1893, but standing at £863,828 in 1901, and having a further increase in some subsequent years. These figures exclude the value of gold dust. The principal imports are cotton goods, railway materials, mining supplies and metals, tobacco, kerosene, timber, and clothing. Japanese cotton yarns are imported to be woven into a strong cloth on Korean hand-looms. Beans and peas, rice, cowhides, and ginseng are the chief exports, apart from gold.

Communications.—Under Japanese auspices a railway from Chemulpo to Seoul was completed in 1900. This became a branch of the longer line from Fusan to Seoul (286 m.), the concession for which was granted in 1898. This line was pushed forward rapidly on the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, and the whole was opened early in 1905. A railway from Seoul to Wiju was planned under French engineers, but the work was started by the Korean government. This line also, however, was taken over by the Japanese military authorities, and the first trains ran through early in 1905, in which year Japan obtained control of the whole of the Korean internal communications. The main roads centring in Seoul are seldom fit even for the passage of ox-carts, and the secondary roads are bad bridle-tracks, frequently degenerating into “rock ladders.” Some improvements, however, have been effected under Japanese direction. The inland transit of goods is almost entirely on the backs of bulls carrying from 450 to 600 ℔, on ponies carrying 200 ℔, and on men carrying from 100 to 150 ℔, bringing the average cost up to a fraction over 8d. per mile per ton. The corvée exists, with its usual hardships. Bridges are made of posts, carrying a framework either covered with timber or with pine branches and earth. They are removed at the beginning of the rainy season, and are not replaced for three months. The larger rivers are unbridged, but there are numerous government ferries. The infamous roads and the risks during the bridgeless season greatly hamper trade. Japanese steamers ply on the Han between Chemulpo and Seoul.

A postal system, established in 1894-1895, has been gradually extended. There are postage stamps of four values. The Japanese, under the agreement of 1905, took over the postal, telegraphic and telephone services. Korea is connected with the Chinese and Japanese telegraph systems by a Japanese line from Chemulpo via Seoul to Fusan, and by a line acquired by the empire between Seoul and Wiju. The state has also lines from Seoul to the open ports, &c. Korea has regular steam communication with ports in Japan, the Gulf of Pechili, Shanghai, &c. Her own mercantile marine is considerable.

Government.—From 1895, when China renounced her claims to suzerainty, to 1910 the king (since 1897 emperor) was in theory an independent sovereign, Japan in 1904 guaranteeing the welfare and dignity of the imperial house. Under a treaty signed at Seoul on the 17th of November 1905, Japan directed the external relations of Korea, and Japanese diplomatic and consular representatives took charge of Korean subjects and interests in foreign countries. Japan undertook the maintenance of existing treaties between Korea and foreign powers; and Korea agreed that her future foreign treaties should be concluded through the medium of Japan. A resident-general represented Japan at Seoul, to direct diplomatic affairs, the first being the Marquis Ito. Under a further convention of July 1907, the resident-general’s powers were enormously increased. In administrative reforms the Korean government followed his guidance; laws could not be enacted nor administrative measures undertaken without his consent; the appointment and dismissal of high officials, and the engagement of foreigners in government employ, were subject to his pleasure. Each department of state has a Japanese vice-minister, and a large proportion of Japanese officials were introduced into these departments as well as Japanese chiefs of the bureaus of police and customs. By a treaty dated August 22nd 1910, which came into effect seven days later the emperor of Korea made “complete and permanent cession to the emperor of Japan of all rights of sovereignty over the whole of Korea.” The entire direction of the administration was then taken over by the Japanese resident-general, who was given the title of governor-general. The jurisdiction of the consular courts was abolished but Japan guaranteed the continuance of the existing Korean tariff for ten years.

Local Administration.—Korea for administrative purposes is divided into provinces and prefectures or magistracies. Japanese reforms in this department have been complete. Each provincial government has a Japanese secretary, police inspector and clerks. The secretary may represent the governor in his absence.

Law.—A criminal code, scarcely equalled for barbarity, though twice mitigated by royal edict since 1785, remained in force in its main provisions till 1895. Subsequently, a mixed commission of revision carried out some good work. Elaborate legal machinery was devised, though its provisions were constantly violated by the imperial will and the gross corruption of officials. Five classes of law courts were established, and provision was made for appeals in both civil and criminal cases. Abuses in legal administration and in tax-collecting were the chief grievances which led to local insurrections. Oppression by the throne and the official and noble classes prevailed extensively; but the weak protected themselves by the use of the Kyei, or principle of association, which developed among Koreans into powerful trading gilds, trades-unions, mutual benefit associations, money-lending gilds, &c. Nearly all traders, porters and artisans were members of gilds, powerfully bound together and strong by combined action and mutual helpfulness in time of need. Under the Japanese régime the judiciary and the executive were rigidly separated. The law courts, including the court of cassation, three courts of appeal, eight local courts, and 115 district courts, were put under Japanese judges, and the codification of the laws was undertaken. The prison system was also reformed.

Finance and Money.—Until 1904 the finances of Korea were completely disorganized; the currency was chaotic, and the budget was an official formality making little or no attempt at accuracy. By agreement of the 22nd of August 1904, Korea accepted a Japanese financial adviser, and valuable reforms were quickly entered upon under the direction of the first Japanese official, Mr T. Megata. He had to contend against corrupt officialdom, indiscriminate expenditure, and absence of organization in the collection of revenue, apart from the confusion with regard to the currency. This last was nominally on a silver standard. The coins chiefly in use were (i) copper cash, which were strung in hundreds on strings of straw, and, as about 9℔ weight was equal to one shilling, were excessively cumbrous, but were nevertheless valued at their face value; (ii) nickel coins, which, being profitable to mint, were issued in enormous quantities, quickly depreciated, and were moreover extensively forged. The Dai Ichi Ginko (First Bank of Japan), which has a branch in Seoul and agencies in other towns, was made the government central treasury, and its notes were recognized as legal tender in Korea. The currency of Korea being thus fixed, the first step was to reorganize the nickel coinage. From the 1st of August 1905 the old nickels paid into the treasury were remitted and the issue carefully regulated; so also with the cash, which was retained as a subsidiary coinage, while a supplementary coinage was issued of silver 10-sen pieces and bronze 1-sen and half-sen pieces. To aid the free circulation of money and facilitate trade, the government grants subsidies for the establishment of co-operative warehouse companies with bonded warehouses. Regulations have also been promulgated with respect to promissory notes, which have long existed in Korea. They took the form of a piece of paper about an inch broad and five to eight inches long, on which was written the sum, the date of payment and the name of the payer and payee, with their seals; the paper was then torn down its length, and one half given to each party. The debtor was obliged to pay the amount of the debt to any person who presented the missing half of the bill. The readiness with which they were accepted led to over-issue, and, consequently, financial crises. The new regulations require the amount of the notes to be expressed in yen, not to be payable in old nickel coins or cash. The notes can only be issued by members of a note association, a body constituted under government regulations, whose members must uphold the credit and validity of their notes. The notes must also be made payable to a definite person and require endorsement, safeguards which were previously lacking. Administrative reform was also taken in hand; the large number of superfluous and badly paid officials was considerably reduced, and the status and salary of all existing government officials considerably improved. An endeavour was made to publish an annual budget, in which the revenue and expenditure should accurately represent the sums actually received and expended. Regulations were framed for the purpose of establishing adequate supervision over the revenue and expenditure for the abolition of irregular taxation and extortions, as well as the practice of farming out the collection of the revenue to individuals, and, generally, to adapt the whole collection and expenditure of the national revenue to modern ideas of public finance. Down to 1910 the sum expended by Japan on Korean reforms was estimated to approach fifteen millions sterling. Among reforms not specifically referred to may be mentioned the improvement of coastwise navigation, the provision of posts, roads, railways, public buildings, hospitals and sanitary works, and the official advancement of industries.

Religion.—Buddhism, which swayed Korea from the 10th to the 14th century, has been discredited for three centuries, and its priests are ignorant, immoral and despised. Confucianism is the official cult, and all officials offer sacrifices and homage at stated seasons in the Confucian temples. Confucian ethics are the basis of morality and social order. Ancestor-worship is universal. The popular cult is, however, the propitiation of demons, a modification of the Shamanism of northern Asia. The belief in demons, mostly malignant, keeps the Koreans in constant terror, and much of their substance is spent on propitiations. Sorceresses and blind sorcerers are the intermediaries. At the close of the 19th century the fees annually paid to these persons were estimated at £150,000; there were in Seoul 1000 sorceresses, and very large sums are paid to the male sorcerers and geomancers.

Putting aside the temporary Christian work of a Jesuit chaplain to the Japanese Christian General Konishe, in 1594 during the Japanese invasion, as well as that on a larger scale by students who received the evangel in the Roman form from Peking in 1792, and had made 4000 converts by the end of 1793, the first serious attempt at the conversion of Korea was made by the French Société des Missions Étrangères in 1835. In spite of frequent persecutions, there were 16,500 converts in 1857 and 20,000 in 1866, in which year the French bishops and priests were martyred by order of the emperor’s father, and several thousand native Christians were beheaded, banished or imprisoned. This mission in 1900 had about 30 missionaries and 40,000 converts. In 1884 and 1885, toleration being established, Protestant missionaries of the American Presbyterian and Methodist Episcopal Churches entered Korea, and were followed by a large number of agents of other denominations. An English bishop, clergy, doctors and nursing sisters arrived in 1890. Hospitals, orphanages, schools and an admirable college in Seoul have been founded, along with tri-lingual (Chinese, Korean and English) printing-presses; religious, historical and scientific works and much of the Bible have been translated into En-mun, and periodicals of an enlightened nature in the Korean script are also circulated. The progress of Protestant missions was very slow for some years, but from 1895 converts multiplied.

Education.—The “Royal Examinations” in Chinese literature held in Seoul up to 1894, which were the entrance to official position, being abolished, the desire for a purely Chinese education diminished. In Seoul there were established an imperial English school with two foreign teachers, a reorganized Confucian college, a normal college under a very efficient foreign principal, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and French schools, chiefly linguistic, several Korean primary schools, mission boarding-schools, and the Pai Chai College connected with the American Methodist Episcopal Church, under imperial patronage, and subsidized by government, in which a liberal education of a high class was given and En-mun receives much attention. The Koreans are expert linguists, and the government made liberal grants to the linguistic schools. In the primary schools boys learn arithmetic, and geography and Korean history are taught, with the outlines of the governmental systems of other civilized countries. The education department has been entirely reorganized under the Japanese régime, Japanese models being followed.

History.—By both Korean and Chinese tradition Ki-tze—a councillor of the last sovereign of the 3rd Chinese dynasty, a sage, and the reputed author of parts of the famous Chinese classic, the Shu-King—is represented as entering Korea in 1122 B.C. with several thousand Chinese emigrants, who made him their king. The peninsula was then peopled by savages living in caves and subterranean holes. By both learned and popular belief in Korea Ki-tze is recognized as the founder of Korean social order, and is greatly reverenced. He called the new kingdom Ch’ao-Hsien, pacified and policed its borders, and introduced laws and Chinese etiquette and polity. Korean ancient history is far from satisfying the rigid demands of modern criticism, but it appears that Ki-tze’s dynasty ruled the peninsula until the 4th century B.C., from which period until the 10th century A.D. civil wars and foreign aggressions are prominent. Nevertheless, Hiaksai, which with Korai and Shinra then constituted Korea, was a centre of literary culture in the 4th century, through which the Chinese classics and the art of writing reached the other two kingdoms. Buddhism, a forceful civilizing element, reached Hiaksai in A.D. 384, and from it the sutras and images of northern Buddhism were carried to Japan, as well as Chinese letters and ethics. Internecine wars were terminated about 913 by Wang the Founder, who unified the peninsula under the name Korai, made Song-do its capital, and endowed Buddhism as the state religion. In the 11th century Korea was stripped of her territory west of the Yalu by a warlike horde of Tungus stock, since which time her frontiers have been stationary. The Wang dynasty perished in 1392, an important epoch in the peninsula, when Ni Taijo, or Litan, the founder of the present dynasty, ascended the throne, after his country had suffered severely from Jenghiz and Khublai Khan. He tendered his homage to the first Ming emperor of China, received from him his investiture as sovereign, and accepted from him the Chinese calendar and chronology, in itself a declaration of fealty. He revived the name Ch’ao-Hsien, changed the capital from Song-do to Seoul, organized an administrative system, which with some modifications continued till 1895, and exists partially still, carried out vigorous reforms, disestablished Buddhism, made merit in Chinese literary examinations the basis of appointment to office, made Confucianism the state religion, abolished human sacrifices and the burying of old men alive, and introduced that Confucian system of education, polity, and social order which has dominated Korea for five centuries. Either this king or an immediate successor introduced the present national costume, the dress worn by the Chinese before the Manchu conquest. The early heirs of this vigorous and capable monarch used their power, like him, for the good of the people; but later decay set in, and Japanese buccaneers ravaged the coasts, though for two centuries under Chinese protection Korea was free from actual foreign invasion. In 1592 occurred the epoch-making invasion of Korea by a Japanese army of 300,000 men, by order of the great regent Hideyoshi. China came to the rescue with 60,000 men, and six years of a gigantic and bloody war followed, in which Japan used firearms for the first time against a foreign foe. Seoul and several of the oldest cities were captured, and in some instances destroyed, the country was desolated, and the art treasures and the artists were carried to Japan. The Japanese troops were recalled in 1598 at Hideyoshi’s death. The port and fishing privileges of Fusan remained in Japanese possession, a heavy tribute was exacted, and until 1790 the Korean king stood in humiliating relations towards Japan. Korea never recovered from the effects of this invasion, which bequeathed to all Koreans an intense hatred of the Japanese.

In 1866, 1867, and 1871 French and American punitive expeditions attacked parts of Korea in which French missionaries and American adventurers had been put to death, and inflicted much loss of life, but retired without securing any diplomatic successes, and Korea continued to preserve her complete isolation. The first indirect step towards breaking it down had been taken in 1860, when Russia obtained from China the cession of the Usuri province, thus bringing a European power down to the Tumen. A large emigration of famine-stricken Koreans and persecuted Christians into Russian territory followed. The emigrants were very kindly received, and many of them became thrifty and prosperous farmers. In 1876 Japan, with the consent of China, wrung a treaty from Korea by which Fusan was fully opened to Japanese settlement and trade, and Wön-san (Gensan) and Inchiun (Chemulpo) were opened to her in 1880. In 1882 China promulgated her “Trade and Frontier Regulations,” and America negotiated a commercial treaty, followed by Germany and Great Britain in 1883, Italy and Russia in 1884, France in 1886, and Austria in 1892. A “Trade Convention” was also concluded with Russia. Seoul was opened in 1884 to foreign residence, and the provinces to foreign travel, and the diplomatic agents of the contracting powers obtained a recognized status at the capital. These treaties terminated the absolute isolation which Korea had effectually preserved. During the negotiations, although under Chinese suzerainty, she was treated with as an independent state. Between 1897 and 1899, under diplomatic pressure, a number of ports were opened to foreign trade and residence. From 1882 to 1894 the chief event in the newly opened kingdom was a plot by the Tai-won-Kun, the father of the emperor, to seize on power, which led to an attack on the Japanese legation, the members of which were compelled to fight their way, and that not bloodlessly, to the sea. Japan secured ample compensation; and the Chinese resident, aided by Chinese troops, deported the Tai-won-Kun to Tientsin. In 1884 at an official banquet the leaders of the progressive party assassinated six leading Korean statesmen, and the intrigues in Korea of the banished or escaped conspirators created difficulties which were very slow to subside. In spite of a constant struggle for ascendancy between the queen and the returned Tai-won-Kun, the next decade was one of quiet. China, always esteemed in Korea, consolidated her influence under the new conditions through a powerful resident; prosperity advanced, and certain reforms were projected by foreign “advisers.” In May 1894 a more important insurrectionary rising than usual led the king to ask armed aid from China. She landed 2000 troops on the 10th of June, having previously, in accordance with treaty provisions, notified Japan of her intention. Soon after this Japan had 12,000 troops in Korea, and occupied the capital and the treaty ports. Then Japan made three sensible proposals for Korean reform, to be undertaken jointly by herself and China. China replied that Korea must be left to reform herself, and that the withdrawal of the Japanese troops must precede negotiations. Japan rejected this suggestion, and on the 23rd of July attacked and occupied the royal palace. After some further negotiations and fights by land and sea between Japan and China war was declared formally by Japan, and Korea was for some time the battle-ground of the belligerents. The Japanese victories resulted for Korea in the solemn renunciation of Chinese suzerainty by the Korean king, the substitution of Japanese for Chinese influence, the introduction of many important reforms under Japanese advisers, and of checks on the absolutism of the throne. Everything promised well. The finances flourished under the capable control of Mr (afterwards Sir) M‘Leavy Brown, C.M.G. Large and judicious retrenchments were carried out in most of the government departments. A measure of judicial and prison reform was granted. Taxation was placed on an equable basis. The pressure of the trade gilds was relaxed. Postal and educational systems were introduced. An approach to a constitution was made. The distinction between patrician and plebeian, domestic slavery, and beating and slicing to death were abolished. The age for marriage of both sexes was raised. Chinese literary examinations ceased to be a passport to office. Classes previously degraded were enfranchised, and the alliance between two essentially corrupt systems of government was severed. For about eighteen months all the departments were practically under Japanese control. On the 8th of October 1895 the Tai-won-Kun, with Korean troops, aided by Japanese troops under the orders of Viscount Miura, the Japanese minister, captured the palace, assassinated the queen, and made a prisoner of the king, who, however, four months later, escaped to the Russian legation, where he remained till the spring of 1897. Japanese influence waned. The engagements of the advisers were not renewed. A strong retrograde movement set in. Reforms were dropped. The king, with the checks upon his absolutism removed, reverted to the worst traditions of his dynasty, and the control and arrangements of finance were upset by Russia.

At the close of 1897 the king assumed the title of emperor, and changed the official designation of the empire to Dai Han—Great Han. By 1898 the imperial will, working under partially new conditions, produced continual chaos, and by 1900 succeeded in practically overriding all constitutional restraints. Meanwhile Russian intrigue was constantly active. At last Japan resorted to arms, and her success against Russia in the war of 1904-5 enabled her to resume her influence over Korea. On the 23rd of February 1904 an agreement was determined whereby Japan resumed her position as administrative adviser to Korea, guaranteed the integrity of the country, and bound herself to maintain the imperial house in its position. Her interests were recognized by Russia in the treaty of peace (September 5, 1905), and by Great Britain in the Anglo-Japanese agreement of the 12th of August 1905. The Koreans did not accept the restoration of Japanese influence without demur. In August 1905 disturbances arose owing to an attempt by some merchants to obtain special assistance from the treasury on the pretext of embarrassment caused by Japanese financial reforms; these disturbances spread to some of the provinces, and the Japanese were compelled to make a show of force. Prolonged negotiations were necessary to the completion of the treaty of the 17th of November 1905, whereby Japan obtained the control of Korea’s foreign affairs and relations, and the confirmation of previous agreements, the far-reaching results of which have been indicated. Nor was opposition to Japanese reforms confined to popular demonstration. In 1907 a Korean delegacy, headed by Prince Yong, a member of the imperial family, was sent out to lay before the Hague conference of that year, and before all the principal governments, a protest against the treatment of Korea by Japan. While this was of course fruitless from the Korean point of view, it indicated that the Japanese must take strong measures to suppress the intrigues of the Korean court.

At the instigation of the Korean ministry the emperor abdicated on the 19th of July 1907, handing over the crown to his son. Somewhat serious émeutes followed in Seoul and elsewhere, and the Japanese proposals for a new convention, increasing the powers of the resident general, had to be presented to the cabinet under a strong guard. The convention was signed on the 25th of July. One of the reforms immediately undertaken was the disbanding of the Korean standing army, which led to an insurrection and an intermittent guerrilla warfare which, owing to the nature of the country, was not easy to subdue. Under the direction of Prince Ito (q.v.) the work of reform was vigorously prosecuted. In July 1909, General Teranchi, Japanese minister of war, became resident-general, with the mission to bring about annexation. This was effected peacefully in August 1910, the emperor of Korea by formal treaty surrendering his country and crown. (See Japan.)

Authorities.—The first Asiatic notice of Korea is by Khordadbeh, an Arab geographer of the 9th century A.D., in his Book of Roads and Provinces, quoted by Baron Richthofen in his great work on China, p. 575. The earliest European source of information is a narrative by H. Hamel, a Dutchman, who was shipwrecked on the coast of Quelpart in 1654, and held in captivity in Korea for thirteen years. The amount of papers on Korea scattered through English, German, French and Russian magazines, and the proceedings of geographical societies, is very great, and for the last three centuries Japanese writers have contributed largely to the sum of general knowledge of the peninsula. The list which follows includes some of the more recent works which illustrate the history, manners and customs, and awakening of Korea: British Foreign Office Reports on Korean Trade, Annual Series (London); Bibliographie koréanne (3 vols., Paris, 1897); Mrs. I. L. Bishop, Korea and her Neighbours (2 vols., London, 1897); M. von Brandt, Ostasiatische Fragen (Leipzig, 1897); A. E. J. Cavendish and H. E. Goold Adams, Korea, and the Sacred White Mountain (London, 1894); Stewart Culin, Korean Games (Philadelphia, 1895); Curzon, Problems of the Far East (London, 1896); Dallet, Histoire de l’église de Korée (2 vols., Paris, 1874); J. S. Gale, Korean Sketches (Edinburgh, 1898); W. E. Griffis, The Hermit Nation (8th and revised edition, New York, 1907); H. Hamel, Relation du naufrage d’un vaisseau Halindois, &c., traduite du Flamond par M. Minutoli (Paris, 1670); Okoji Hidemoto, Der Feldzug der Japanir gegen Korea im Jahre 1597; translated from Japanese by Professor von Pfizmaier (2 vols., Vienna, 1875); M. Jametel, “La Korée: ses ressources, son avenir commercial,” L’Économiste française (Paris, July 1881); Percival Lowell, Chosön: The Land of the Morning Calm (London, Boston, 1886); L. J. Miln, Quaint Korea (Harper, New York, 1895); V. de Laguerie, La Korée indépendante, russe ou japonaise? (Paris, 1898); J. Ross, Korea: Its History, Manners and Customs (Paisley, 1880); W. H. Wilkinson, The Korean Government: Constitutional Changes in Korea during the period 23rd July 1894—30th June 1896 (Shanghai, 1896); A. Hamilton, Korea (London, 1903); C. J. D. Taylor, Koreans at Home (London, 1904); E. Boudaret, En Corée (Paris, 1904); Laurent-Crémazy, Le Code pénal de la Corée (Paris, 1904); G. T. Ladd, In Korea with Marquis Itō (London, 1908); Dictionaries and vocabularies by W. F. Myers (English secretary of Legation at Peking), the French missionaries, and others, were superseded in 1898 by a large and learned volume by the Rev J. S. Gale, a Presbyterian missionary, who devoted some years to the work. On geology, see C. Gottsche, “Geologische Skizze von Korea,” Sitz. preuss. Akad. Wiss. (Berlin, Jahrg. 1886, pp. 857-873, Pl. viii.). A summary of this paper, with a reproduction of the map, is given by L. Pervinquière in Rev. sci. Paris, 5th series, vol. i. (1904), pp. 545-552.

(I. L. B.; O. J. R. H.)


Named after William Robert Broughton (1762-1821), an English navigator who explored these seas in 1795-1798.

KOREA, a tributary state of India, transferred from Bengal to the Central Provinces in 1905; area, 1631 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 35,113, or only 22 persons per sq. m.; estimated revenue, £1200. It consists of an elevated table-land, with hills rising to above 3000 ft. Such traffic as there is is carried by means of pack-bullocks.

KORESHAN ECCLESIA, THE, or Church Archtriumphant, a communistic body, founded by Cyrus R. Teed, a medical practitioner, who was born at Utica, New York, in 1839. Teed was regarded by his adherents as “the new Messiah now in the World,” and many other extravagant views both in science and economics are held by them. Two communities were founded: in Chicago (1886) and at Estero, in Lee county, Florida (1894), where in 1903 the Chicago community removed. Their name is derived from Koresh, the Hebrew form of Cyrus, and they have a journal, The Flaming Sword.

KŌRIN, OGATA (c. 1657-1716), Japanese painter and lacquerer, was born at Kōtō, the son of a wealthy merchant who had a taste for the arts and is said to have given his son some elementary instruction therein. Kōrin also studied under Soken Yamamoto, Kanō, Tsunenobu and Gukei Sumiyoshi; and he was greatly influenced by his predecessors Kōyetsu and Sōtatsu. On arriving at maturity, however, he broke away from all tradition, and developed a very original and quite distinctive style of his own, both in painting and in the decoration of lacquer. The characteristic of this is a bold impressionism, which is expressed in few and simple highly idealized forms, with an absolute disregard either of realism or of the usual conventions. In lacquer Kōrin’s use of white metals arid of mother-of-pearl is notable; but herein he followed Kōyetsu. Kōrin died on the 2nd of June 1716, at the age of fifty-nine. His chief pupils were Kagei Tatebashi and Shikō Watanable; but the present knowledge and appreciation of his work are largely due to the efforts of Hōitsu Sakai, who brought about a revival of Kōrin’s style.

See A. Morrison, The Painters of Japan (1902); S. Tajima, Masterpieces selected from the Kōrin School (1903); S. Hōitsu, The 100 Designs by Kōrin (1815) and More Designs by Kōrin (1826).

(E. F. S.)

KORKUS, an aboriginal tribe of India, dwelling on the Satpura hills in the Central Provinces. They are of interest as being the westernmost representatives of the Munda family of speech. They are rapidly becoming hinduized, as may be gathered from the figures of the census of 1901, which show 140,000 Korkus by race, but only 88,000 speakers of the Korku language.

KÖRMÖCZBÁNYA (German, Kremnitz), an old mining town, in the county of Bars, in Hungary, 158 m. N. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900), 4299. It is situated in a deep valley in the Hungarian Ore Mountains region. Among its principal buildings are the castle, several Roman Catholic (from the 13th and 14th centuries) and Lutheran churches, a Franciscan monastery (founded 1634), the town-hall, and the mint where the celebrated Kremnitz gold ducats were formerly struck. The bulk of the inhabitants find employment in connexion with the gold and silver mines. By means of a tunnel 9 m. in length, constructed in 1851-1852, the water is drained off from the mines into the river Gran. According to tradition, Körmöczbánya was founded in the 8th century by Saxons. The place is mentioned in documents in 1317, and became a royal free town in 1328, being therefore one of the oldest free towns in Hungary.

KÖRNER, KARL THEODOR (1791-1813), German poet and patriot, often called the German “Tyrtaeus,” was born at Dresden on the 23rd of September 1791. His father, Christian Gottfried Körner (1756-1831), a distinguished Saxon jurist, was Schiller’s most intimate friend. He was educated at the Kreuzschule in Dresden and entered at the age of seventeen the mining academy at Freiburg in Saxony, where he remained two years. Here he occupied himself less with science than with verse, a collection of which appeared under the title Knospen in 1810. In this year he went to the university of Leipzig, in order to study law; but he became involved in a serious conflict with the police and was obliged to continue his studies in Berlin. In August 1811 Körner went to Vienna, where he devoted himself entirely to literary pursuits; he became engaged to the actress Antonie Adamberger, and, after the success of several plays produced in 1812, he was appointed poet to the Hofburgtheater. When the German nation rose against the French yoke, in 1813, Körner gave up all his prospects at Vienna and joined Lützow’s famous corps of volunteers at Breslau. On his march to Leipzig he passed through Dresden, where he issued his spirited Aufruf an die Sachsen, in which he called upon his countrymen to rise against their oppressors. He became lieutenant towards the end of April, and took part in a skirmish at Kitzen near Leipzig on the 7th of June, when he was severely wounded. After being nursed by friends at Leipzig and Carlsbad, he rejoined his corps and fell in an engagement outside a wood near Gadebusch in Mecklenburg on the 26th of August 1813. He was buried by his comrades under an oak close to the village of Wöbbelin, where there is a monument to him.

The abiding interest in Körner is patriotic and political rather than literary. His fame as a poet rests upon his patriotic lyrics, which were published by his father under the title Leier und Schwert in 1814. These songs, which fired the poet’s comrades to deeds of heroism in 1813, bear eloquent testimony to the intensity of the national feeling against Napoleon, but judged as literature they contain more bombast than poetry. Among the best known are “Lützow’s wilde verwegene Jagd,” “Gebet während der Schlacht” (set to music by Weber) and “Das Schwertlied.” This last was written immediately before his death, and the last stanza added on the fatal morning. As a dramatist Körner was remarkably prolific, but his comedies hardly touch the level of Kotzebue’s and his tragedies, of which the best is Zriny (1814), are rhetorical imitations of Schiller’s.

His works have passed through many editions. Among the more recent are: Sämtliche Werke (Stuttgart, 1890), edited by Adolf Stern; by H. Zimmer (2 vols., Leipzig, 1893) and by E. Goetze (Berlin, 1900). The most valuable contributions to our knowledge of the poet have been furnished by E. Peschel, the founder and director of the Körner Museum in Dresden, in Theodor Körners Tagebuch und Kriegslieder, aus dem Jahre 1813 (Freiburg, 1893) and, in conjunction with E. Wildenow, Theodor Körner und die Seinen (Leipzig, 1898).

KORNEUBURG, a town of Austria, in Lower Austria, 9 m. N.W. of Vienna by rail. Pop. (1900), 8298. It is situated on the left bank of the Danube, opposite Klosterneuburg. It is a steamship station and an important emporium of the salt and corn trade. The industry comprises the manufacture of coarse textiles, pasteboard, &c. Its charter as a town dates from 1298, and it was a much frequented market in the preceding century. At the beginning of the 15th century it was surrounded by walls, and in 1450 a fortress was erected. It was frequently involved in the conflict between the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus and the emperor Frederick William III., and also during the Thirty Years’ War.

KOROCHA, a town of central Russia, in the government of Kursk, 75 m. S.S.E. of the city of Kursk, on the Korocha river. Pop. (1897), 14,405. Its inhabitants live by gardening, exporting large quantities of dried cherries, by making candles and leather, and by trade; the merchants purchase cattle, grain and salt in the south and send them to Moscow. Founded in 1638, Korocha was formerly a small fort intended to check the Tatar invasions.

KORSÖR, a seaport of Denmark, in the amt (county) of the island of Zealand, 69 m. by rail W.S.W. of Copenhagen, on the east shore of the Great Belt. Pop. (1901), 6054. The harbour, which is formed by a bay of the Baltic, has a depth throughout of 20 ft. It is the point of departure and arrival of the steam ferry to Nyborg on Fünen, lying on the Hamburg, Schleswig, Fredericia and Copenhagen route. There is also regular communication by water with Kiel. The chief exports are fish, cereals, bacon; imports, petroleum and coal. A market town since the 14th century, Korsör has ruins of an old fortified castle, on the south side of the channel, dating from the 14th and 17th centuries.

KORTCHA (Slavonic, Goritza or Koritza), a city of Albania, European Turkey, in the vilayet of Iannina, in a wide plain watered by the Devol and Dunavitza rivers, and surrounded by mountains on every side except the north, where Lake Malik constitutes the boundary. Pop. (1905), about 10,000, including Greeks, Albanians and Slavs. Kortcha is the see of an Orthodox Greek metropolitan, whose large cathedral is richly decorated in the interior with paintings and statues. The Kortcha school for girls, conducted by American missionaries, is the only educational establishment in which the Turkish government permits the use of Albanian as the language of instruction. The local trade is chiefly agricultural.

KORYAKS, a Mongoloid people of north-eastern Siberia, inhabiting the coast-lands of the Bering Sea to the south of the Anadyr basin and the country to the immediate north of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the southernmost limit of their range being Tigilsk. They are akin to the Chukchis, whom they closely resemble in physique and in manner of life. Thus they are divided into the settled fishing tribes and the nomad reindeer breeders and hunters. The former are described as being more morally and physically degraded even than the Chukchis, and hopelessly poor. The Koryaks of the interior, on the other hand, still own enormous reindeer herds, to which they are so attached that they refuse to part with an animal to a stranger at any price. They are in disposition brave, intelligent and self-reliant, and recognize no master. They have ever tenaciously resisted Russian aggression, and in their fights with the Cossacks have proved themselves recklessly brave. When outnumbered they would kill their women and children, set fire to their homes, and die fighting. Families usually gather in groups of sixes or sevens, forming miniature states, in which the nominal chief has no predominating authority, but all are equal. The Koryaks are polygamous, earning their wives by working for their fathers-in-law. The women and children are treated well, and Koryak courtesy and hospitality are proverbial. The chief wedding ceremony is a forcible abduction of the bride. They kill the aged and infirm, in the belief that thus to save them from protracted sufferings is the highest proof of affection. The victims choose their mode of death, and young Koryaks practise the art of giving the fatal blow quickly and mercifully. Infanticide was formerly common, and one of twins was always sacrificed. They burn their dead. The prevailing religion is Shamanism; sacrifices are made to evil spirits, the heads of the victims being placed on stones facing east.

See G. Kennan, Tent Life in Siberia (1871); “Über die Koriaken u. ihnen nähe verwandten Tchouktchen,” in Bul. Acad. Sc. St. Petersburg, xii. 99.

KOSCIUSCO, the highest mountain in Australia, in the range of the Australian Alps, towards the south-eastern extremity of New South Wales. Its height is 7328 ft. An adjacent peak to the south, Mueller’s Peak, long considered the highest in the continent, is 7268 ft. high. A meteorological station was established on Kosciusco in 1897.

KOSCIUSZKO, TADEUSZ ANDRZEJ BONAWENTURA (1746-1817), Polish soldier and statesman, the son of Ludwik Kosciuszko, sword-bearer of the palatinate of Brzesc, and Tekla Ratomska, was born in the village of Mereczowszczyno. After being educated at home he entered the corps of cadets at Warsaw, where his unusual ability and energy attracted the notice of Prince Adam Casimir Czartoryski, by whose influence in 1769 he was sent abroad at the expense of the state to complete his military education. In Germany, Italy and France he studied diligently, completing his course at Brest, where he learnt fortification and naval tactics, returning to Poland in 1774 with the rank of captain of artillery. While engaged in teaching the daughters of the Grand Hetman, Sosnowski of Sosnowica, drawing and mathematics, he fell in love with the youngest of them, Ludwika, and not venturing to hope for the consent of her father, the lovers resolved to fly and be married privately. Before they could accomplish their design, however, the wooer was attacked by Sosnowski’s retainers, but defended himself valiantly till, covered with wounds, he was ejected from the house. This was in 1776. Equally unfortunate was Kosciuszko’s wooing of Tekla Zurowska in 1791, the father of the lady in this case also refusing his consent.

In the interval between these amorous episodes Kosciuszko won his spurs in the New World. In 1776 he entered the army of the United States as a volunteer, and brilliantly distinguished himself, especially during the operations about New York and at Yorktown. Washington promoted Kosciuszko to the rank of a colonel of artillery and made him his adjutant. His humanity and charm of manner made him moreover one the most popular of the American officers. In 1783 Kosciuszko was rewarded for his services and his devotion to the cause of American independence with the thanks of Congress, the privilege of American citizenship, a considerable annual pension with landed estates, and the rank of brigadier-general, which he retained in the Polish service.

In the war following upon the proclamation of the constitution of the 3rd of May 1791 and the formation of the reactionary Confederation of Targowica (see Poland: History), Kosciuszko took a leading part. As the commander of a division under Prince Joseph Poniatowski he distinguished himself at the battle of Zielence in 1792, and at Dubienka (July 18) with 4000 men and 10 guns defended the line of the Bug for five days against the Russians with 18,000 men and 60 guns, subsequently retiring upon Warsaw unmolested. When the king acceded to the Targowicians, Kosciuszko with many other Polish generals threw up his commission and retired to Leipzig, which speedily became the centre of the Polish emigration. In January 1793, provided with letters of introduction from the French agent Perandier, Kosciuszko went on a political mission to Paris to induce the revolutionary government to espouse the cause of Poland. In return for assistance he promised to make the future government of Poland as close a copy of the French government as possible; but the Jacobins, already intent on detaching Prussia from the anti-French coalition, had no serious intention of fighting Poland’s battles. The fact that Kosciuszko’s visit synchronized with the execution of Louis XVI. subsequently gave the enemies of Poland a plausible pretext for accusing her of Jacobinism, and thus prejudicing Europe against her. On his return to Leipzig Kosciuszko was invited by the Polish insurgents to take the command of the national armies, with dictatorial power. He hesitated at first, well aware that a rising in the circumstances was premature. “I will have nothing to do with Cossack raiding,” he replied; “if war we have, it must be a regular war.” He also insisted that the war must be conducted on the model of the American War of Independence, and settled down in the neighbourhood of Cracow to await events. When, however, he heard that the insurrection had already broken out, and that the Russian armies were concentrating to crush it, Kosciuszko hesitated no longer, but hastened to Cracow, which he reached on the 23rd of March 1794. On the following day his arms were consecrated according to ancient custom at the church of the Capucins, by way of giving the insurrection a religious sanction incompatible with Jacobinism. The same day, amidst a vast concourse of people in the market-place, Kosciuszko took an oath of fidelity to the Polish nation; swore to wage war against the enemies of his country; but protested at the same time that he would fight only for the independence and territorial integrity of Poland.

The insurrection had from the first a purely popular character. We find none of the great historic names of Poland in the lists of the original confederates. For the most part the confederates of Kosciuszko were small squires, traders, peasants and men of low degree generally. Yet the comparatively few gentlemen who joined the movement sacrificed everything to it. Thus, to take but a single instance, Karol Prozor sold the whole of his ancestral estates and thus contributed 1,000,000 thalers to the cause. From the 24th of March to the 1st of April Kosciuszko remained at Cracow organizing his forces. On the 3rd of April at Raclawice, with 4000 regulars, and 2000 peasants armed only with scythes and pikes, and next to no artillery, he defeated the Russians, who had 5000 veterans and 30 guns. This victory had an immense moral effect, and brought into the Polish camp crowds of waverers to what had at first seemed a desperate cause. For the next two months Kosciuszko remained on the defensive near Sandomir. He durst not risk another engagement with the only army which Poland so far possessed, and he had neither money, officers nor artillery. The country, harried incessantly during the last two years, was in a pitiable condition. There was nothing to feed the troops in the very provinces they occupied, and provisions had to be imported from Galicia. Money could only be obtained by such desperate expedients as the melting of the plate of the churches and monasteries, which was brought in to Kosciuszko’s camp at Pinczow and subsequently coined at Warsaw, minus the royal effigy, with the inscription: “Freedom, Integrity and Independence of the Republic, 1794.” Moreover, Poland was unprepared. Most of the regular troops were incorporated in the Russian army, from which it was very difficult to break away, and until these soldiers came in Kosciuszko had principally to depend on the valour of his scythemen. But in the month of April the whole situation improved. On the 17th of that month the 2000 Polish troops in Warsaw expelled the Russian garrison after days of street fighting, chiefly through the ability of General Mokronowski, and a provisional government was formed. Five days later Jakob Jasinski drove the Russians from Wilna.

By this time Kosciuszko’s forces had risen to 14,000, of whom 10,000 were regulars, and he was thus able to resume the offensive. He had carefully avoided doing anything to provoke Austria or Prussia. The former was described in his manifestoes as a potential friend; the latter he never alluded to as an enemy. “Remember,” he wrote, “that the only war we have upon our hands is war to the death against the Muscovite tyranny.” Nevertheless Austria remained suspicious and obstructive; and the Prussians, while professing neutrality, very speedily effected a junction with the Russian forces. This Kosciuszko, misled by the treacherous assurances of Frederick William’s ministers, never anticipated, when on the 4th of June he marched against General Denisov. He encountered the enemy on the 5th of June at Szczekociny, and then discovered that his 14,000 men had to do not merely with a Russian division but with the combined forces of Russia and Prussia, numbering 25,000 men. Nevertheless, the Poles acquitted themselves manfully, and at dusk retreated in perfect order upon Warsaw unpursued. Yet their losses had been terrible, and of the six Polish generals present three, whose loss proved to be irreparable, were slain, and two of the others were seriously wounded. A week later another Polish division was defeated at Kholm; Cracow was taken by the Prussians on the 22nd of June; and the mob at Warsaw broke upon the gaols and murdered the political prisoners in cold blood. Kosciuszko summarily punished the ringleaders of the massacres and had 10,000 of the rank and file drafted into his camp, which measures had a quieting effect. But now dissensions broke out among the members of the Polish government, and it required all the tact of Kosciuszko to restore order amidst this chaos of suspicions and recriminations. At this very time too he had need of all his ability and resource to meet the external foes of Poland. On the 9th of July Warsaw was invested by Frederick William of Prussia with an army of 25,000 men and 179 guns, and the Russian general Fersen with 16,000 men and 74 guns, while a third force of 11,000 occupied the right bank of the Vistula. Kosciuszko for the defence of the city and its outlying fortifications could dispose of 35,000 men, of whom 10,000 were regulars. But the position, defended by 200 inferior guns, was a strong one, and the valour of the Poles and the engineering skill of Kosciuszko, who was now in his element, frustrated all the efforts of the enemy. Two unsuccessful assaults were made upon the Polish positions on the 26th of August and the 1st of September, and on the 6th the Prussians, alarmed by the progress of the Polish arms in Great Poland, where Jan Henryk Dabrowski captured the Prussian fortress of Bydogoszcz and compelled General Schwerin with his 20,000 men to retire upon Kalisz, raised the siege. Elsewhere, indeed, after a brief triumph the Poles were everywhere worsted, and Suvarov, after driving them before him out of Lithuania was advancing by forced marches upon Warsaw. Even now, however, the situation was not desperate, for the Polish forces were still numerically superior to the Russian. But the Polish generals proved unequal to carrying out the plans of the dictator; they allowed themselves to be beaten in detail, and could not prevent the junction of Suvarov and Fersen. Kosciuszko himself, relying on the support of Poninski’s division 4 m. away, attacked Fersen at Maciejowice on the 10th of October. But Poninski never appeared, and after a bloody encounter the Polish army of 7000 was almost annihilated by the 16,000 Russians; and Kosciuszko, seriously wounded and insensible, was made a prisoner on the field of battle. The long credited story that he cried “Finis Poloniae!” as he fell is a fiction.

Kosciuszko was conveyed to Russia, where he remained till the accession of Paul in 1796. On his return on the 19th of December 1796 he paid a second visit to America, and lived at Philadelphia till May 1798, when he went to Paris, where the First Consul earnestly invited his co-operation against the Allies. But he refused to draw his sword unless Napoleon undertook to give the restoration of Poland a leading place in his plans; and to this, as he no doubt foresaw, Bonaparte would not consent. Again and again he received offers of high commands in the French army, but he kept aloof from public life in his house at Berville, near Paris, where the emperor Alexander visited him in 1814. At the Congress of Vienna his importunities on behalf of Poland finally wearied Alexander, who preferred to follow the counsels of Czartoryski; and Kosciuszko retired to Solothurn, where he lived with his friend Zeltner. Shortly before his death, on the 2nd of April 1817, he emancipated his serfs, insisting only on the maintenance of schools on the liberated estates. His remains were carried to Cracow and buried in the cathedral; while the people, reviving an ancient custom, raised a huge mound to his memory near the city.

Kosciuszko was essentially a democrat, but a democrat of the school of Jefferson and Lafayette. He maintained that the republic could only be regenerated on the basis of absolute liberty and equality before the law; but in this respect he was far in advance of his age, and the aristocratic prejudices of his countrymen compelled him to resort to half measures. He wrote Manœuvres of Horse Artillery (New York, 1808) and a description of the campaign of 1792 (in vol. xvi. of E. Raczynski’s Sketch of the Poles and Poland (Posen, 1843).

See Jozef Zajaczek, History of the Revolution of 1794 (Pol.) (Lemberg, 1881); Leonard Jakob Borejko Chodzko, Biographie du général Kosciuszko (Fontainebleau, 1837); Karol Falkenstein, Thaddäus Kosciuszko (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1834; French ed., Paris, 1839); Antoni Choloniewski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko (Pol.) (Lemberg, 1902); Franciszek Rychlicki, T. Kosciuszko and the Partition of Poland (Pol.) (Cracow, 1875).

(R. N. B.)

KÖSEN, a village and summer resort of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, 33 m. by rail S. by W. of Halle, on the Saale. Pop. (1905), 2990. The town has a mineral spring, which is used for bathing, being efficacious for rheumatism and other complaints. Kösen, which became a town in 1869, has large mill-works; it has a trade in wood and wine. On the adjacent Rudelsburg, where there is a ruined castle, the German students have erected a monument to their comrades who fell in the Franco-German War of 1870-71. Hereon are also memorials to Bismarck and to the emperor William I. The town is famous as the central meeting-place of the German students’ corps, which hold an annual congress here every Whitsuntide.

See Techow, Führer durch Kösen und Umgegend (Kösen, 1889); and Rosenberg, Kösen (Naumburg, 1877).

KOSHER, or Kasher (Hebrew clean, right, or fit), the Jewish term for any food or vessels for food made ritually fit for use, in contradistinction to those pasul, unfit, and terefah, forbidden. Thus the vessels used at the Passover are “kosher,” as are also new metal vessels bought from a Gentile after they have been washed in a ritual bath. But the term is specially used of meat slaughtered in accordance with the law of Moses. The schochat or butcher must be a devout Jew and of high moral character, and be duly licensed by the chief rabbi. The slaughtering—the object of which is to insure the complete bleeding of the body, the Jews being forbidden to eat blood—is done by severing the windpipe with a long and razor-sharp knife by one continuous stroke backwards and forwards. No unnecessary force is permitted, and no stoppage must occur during the operation. The knife is then carefully examined, and if there be the slightest flaw in its blade the meat cannot be eaten, as the cut would not have been clean, the uneven blade causing a thrill to pass through the beast and thus driving the blood again through the arteries. After this every portion of the animal is thoroughly examined, for if there is any organic disease the devout Jew cannot taste the meat. In order to soften meat before it is salted, so as to allow the salt to extract the blood more freely, the meat is soaked in water for about half an hour. It is then covered with salt for about an hour and afterwards washed three times. Kosher meat is labelled with the name of the slaughterer and the date of killing.

KÖSLIN, or Cöslin, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Pomerania, at the foot of the Gollenberg (450 ft.), 5 m. from the Baltic, and 105 m. N.E. of Stettin by rail. Pop. (1905), 21,474. The town has two Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a gymnasium, a cadet academy and a deaf and dumb asylum. In the large market place is the statue of the Prussian king Frederick William I., erected in 1824, and there is a war memorial on the Friedrich Wilhelm Platz. The industries include the manufacture of soap, tobacco, machinery, paper, bricks and tiles, beer and other goods. Köslin was built about 1188 by the Saxons, and raised to the rank of a town in 1266. In 1532 it accepted the doctrines of the Reformation. It was severely tried in the Thirty Years’ War and in the Seven Years’ War, and in 1720 it was burned down. On the Gollenberg stands a monument to the memory of the Pomeranians who fell in the war of 1813-15.

KOSSOVO, or Kosovo, a vilayet of European Turkey, comprising the sanjak of Uskub in Macedonia, and the sanjaks of Prizren and Novibazar (q.v.) in northern Albania. Pop. (1905), about 1,100,000; area, 12,700 sq. m. For an account of the physical features of Kossovo, see Albania and Macedonia. The inhabitants are chiefly Albanians and Slavs, with smaller communities of Greeks, Turks, Vlachs and gipsies. A few good roads traverse the vilayet (see Usküb), and the railway from Salonica northward bifurcates at Usküb, the capital, one branch going to Mitrovitza in Albania, the other to Nish in Servia. Despite the undoubted mineral wealth of the vilayet, the only mines working in 1907 were two chrome mines, at Orasha and Verbeshtitza. In the volume of its agricultural trade, however, Kossovo is unsurpassed by any Turkish province. The exports, worth about £950,000, include livestock, large quantities of grain and fruit, tobacco, vegetables, opium, hemp and skins. Rice is cultivated for local consumption, and sericulture is a growing industry, encouraged by the Administration of the Ottoman Debt. The yearly value of the imports is approximately £1,200,000; these include machinery and other manufactured goods, metals, groceries, chemical products and petroleum, which is used in the flour-mills and factories on account of the prohibitive price of coal. There is practically no trade with Adriatic ports; two-thirds of both exports and imports pass through Salonica, the remainder going by rail into Servia. The chief towns, Usküb (32,000), Prizren (30,000), Koprülü (22,000), Ishtib [Slav. Stip] (21,000), Novibazar (12,000) and Prishtina (11,000) are described in separate articles.

In the middle ages the vilayet formed part of the Servian Empire, its northern districts are still known to the Serbs as Old Servia (Stara Srbiya). The plain of Kossovo (Kossovopolje, “Field of Blackbirds”), a long valley lying west of Prishtina and watered by the Sibnitza, a tributary of the Servian Ibar, is famous in Balkan history and legend as the scene of the battle of Kossovo (1389), in which the power of Servia was destroyed by the Turks. (See Servia: History.)

KOSSUTH, FERENCZ LAJOS AKOS (1841- ), Hungarian statesman, the son of Lajos Kossuth, was born on the 16th of November 1841, and educated at the Paris Polytechnic and the London University, where in 1859 he won a prize for political economy. After working as a civil engineer on the Dean Forest railway he went (1861) to Italy, where he resided for the next thirty-three years, taking a considerable part in the railway construction of the peninsula, and at the same time keeping alive the Hungarian independence question by a whole series of pamphlets and newspaper articles. At Cesena in 1876 he married Emily Hoggins. In 1885 he was decorated for his services by the Italian government. His last great engineering work was the construction of the steel bridges for the Nile. In 1894 he escorted his father’s remains to Hungary, and the following year resolved to settle in his native land and took the oath of allegiance. As early as 1867 he had been twice elected a member of the Hungarian diet, but on both occasions refused to accept the mandate. On the 10th of April 1895 he was returned for Tapolca and in 1896 for Cegléd, and from that time took an active part in Hungarian politics. In the autumn of 1898 he became the leader of the obstructionists or “Independence Party,” against the successive Szell, Khuen-Haderváry, Szápáry and Stephen Tisza administrations (1898-1904), exercising great influence not only in parliament but upon the public at large through his articles in the Egyetértés. The elections of 1905 having sent his party back with a large majority, he was received in audience by the king and helped to construct the Wekerle ministry, of which he was one of the most distinguished members.

See Sturm, The Almanack of the Hungarian Diet (1905-1910), art. “Kossuth” (Hung.) (Budapest, 1905).

KOSSUTH, LAJOS [Louis] (1802-1894), Hungarian patriot, was born at Monok, a small town in the county of Zemplin, on the 19th of September 1802. His father, who was descended from an old untitled noble family and possessed a small estate, was by profession an advocate. Louis, who was the eldest of four children, received from his mother a strict religious training. His education was completed at the Calvinist college of Sárospatak and at the university of Budapest. At the age of nineteen he returned home and began practice with his father. His talents and amiability soon won him great popularity, especially among the peasants. He was also appointed steward to the countess Szápáry, a widow with large estates, and as her representative had a seat in the county assembly. This position he lost owing to a quarrel with his patroness, and he was accused of appropriating money to pay a gambling debt. His fault cannot have been very serious, for he was shortly afterwards (he had in the meantime settled in Pesth) appointed by Count Hunyady to be his deputy at the National Diet in Pressburg (1825-1827, and again in 1832). It was a time when, under able leaders, a great national party was beginning the struggle for reform against the stagnant Austrian government. As deputy he had no vote, and he naturally took little share in the debates, but it was part of his duty to send written reports of the proceedings to his patron, since the government, with a well-grounded fear of all that might stir popular feeling, refused to allow any published reports. Kossuth’s letters were so excellent that they were circulated in MS. among the Liberal magnates, and soon developed into an organized parliamentary gazette (Orszagyulesi tudositasok), of which he was editor. At once his name and influence spread. In order to increase the circulation, he ventured on lithographing the letters. This brought them under the official censure, and was forbidden. He continued the paper in MS., and when the government refused to allow it to be circulated through the post sent it out by hand. In 1836 the Diet was dissolved. Kossuth continued the agitation by reporting in letter form the debates of the county assemblies, to which he thereby gave a political importance which they had not had when each was ignorant of the proceedings of the others. The fact that he embellished with his own great literary ability the speeches of the Liberals and Reformers only added to the influence of his news-letters. The government in vain attempted to suppress the letters, and other means having failed, he was in May 1837, with Weszelenyi and several others, arrested on a charge of high treason. After spending a year in prison at Ofen, he was tried and condemned to four more years’ imprisonment. His confinement was strict and injured his health, but he was allowed the use of books. He greatly increased his political information, and also acquired, from the study of the Bible and Shakespeare, a wonderful knowledge of English. His arrest had caused great indignation. The Diet, which met in 1839, supported the agitation for the release of the prisoners, and refused to pass any government measures; Metternich long remained obdurate, but the danger of war in 1840 obliged him to give way. Immediately after his release Kossuth married Teresa Meszleny, a Catholic, who during his prison days had shown great interest in him. Henceforward she strongly urged him on in his political career; and it was the refusal of the Roman priests to bless their union that first prompted Kossuth to take up the defence of mixed marriages.

He had now become a popular leader. As soon as his health was restored he was appointed (January 1841) editor of the Pesti Hirlap, the newly founded organ of the party. Strangely enough, the government did not refuse its consent. The success of the paper was unprecedented. The circulation soon reached what was then the immense figure of 7000. The attempts of the government to counteract his influence by founding a rival paper, the Vilag, only increased his importance and added to the political excitement. The warning of the great reformer Szechenyi that by his appeal to the passions of the people he was leading the nation to revolution was neglected. Kossuth, indeed, was not content with advocating those reforms—the abolition of entail, the abolition of feudal burdens, taxation of the nobles—which were demanded by all the Liberals. By insisting on the superiority of the Magyars to the Slavonic inhabitants of Hungary, by his violent attacks on Austria (he already discussed the possibility of a breach with Austria), he raised the national pride to a dangerous pitch. At last, in 1844, the government succeeded in breaking his connexion with the paper. The proprietor, in obedience to orders from Vienna (this seems the most probable account), took advantage of a dispute about salary to dismiss him. He then applied for permission to start a paper of his own. In a personal interview Metternich offered to take him into the government service. The offer was refused, and for three years he was without a regular position. He continued the agitation with the object of attaining both the political and commercial independence of Hungary. He adopted the economic principles of List, and founded a society, the “Vedegylet,” the members of which were to consume none but home produce. He advocated the creation of a Hungarian port at Fiume. With the autumn of 1847 the great opportunity of his life came. Supported by the influence of Louis Batthyany, after a keenly fought struggle he was elected member for Budapest in the new Diet. “Now that I am a deputy, I will cease to be an agitator,” he said. He at once became chief leader of the Extreme Liberals. Deak was absent. Batthyany, Szechenyi, Szemere, Eotvos, his rivals, saw how his intense personal ambition and egoism led him always to assume the chief place, and to use his parliamentary position to establish himself as leader of the nation; but before his eloquence and energy all apprehensions were useless. His eloquence was of that nature, in its impassioned appeals to the strongest emotions, that it required for its full effect the highest themes and the most dramatic situations. In a time of rest, though he could never have been obscure, he would never have attained the highest power. It was therefore a necessity of his nature, perhaps unconsciously, always to drive things to a crisis. The crisis came, and he used it to the full.

On the 3rd of March 1848, as soon as the news of the revolution in Paris had arrived, in a speech of surpassing power he demanded parliamentary government for Hungary and constitutional government for the rest of Austria. He appealed to the hope of the Habsburgs, “our beloved Archduke Francis Joseph,” to perpetuate the ancient glory of the dynasty by meeting half-way the aspirations of a free people. He at once became the leader of the European revolution; his speech was read aloud in the streets of Vienna to the mob by which Metternich was overthrown (March 13), and when a deputation from the Diet visited Vienna to receive the assent of the emperor to their petition it was Kossuth who received the chief ovation. Batthyany, who formed the first responsible ministry, could not refuse to admit Kossuth, but he gave him the ministry of finance, probably because that seemed to open to him fewest prospects of engrossing popularity. If that was the object, it was in vain. With wonderful energy he began developing the internal resources of the country: he established a separate Hungarian coinage—as always, using every means to increase the national self-consciousness; and it was characteristic that on the new Hungarian notes which he issued his own name was the most prominent inscription; hence the name of Kossuth Notes, which was long celebrated. A new paper was started, to which was given the name of Kossuth Hirlapia, so that from the first it was Kossuth rather than the Palatine or the president of the ministry whose name was in the minds of the people associated with the new government. Much more was this the case when, in the summer, the dangers from the Croats, Serbs and the reaction at Vienna increased. In a great speech of 11th July he asked that the nation should arm in self-defence, and demanded 200,000 men; amid a scene of wild enthusiasm this was granted by acclamation. When Jellachich was marching on Pesth he went from town to town rousing the people to the defence of the country, and the popular force of the Honved was his creation. When Batthyany resigned he was appointed with Szemere to carry on the government provisionally, and at the end of September he was made President of the Committee of National Defence. From this time he was in fact, if not in name, the dictator. With marvellous energy he kept in his own hands the direction of the whole government. Not a soldier himself, he had to control and direct the movements of armies; can we be surprised if he failed, or if he was unable to keep control over the generals or to establish that military co-operation so essential to success? Especially it was Görgei (q.v.) whose great abilities he was the first to recognize, who refused obedience; the two men were in truth the very opposite to one another: the one all feeling, enthusiasm, sensibility; the other cold, stoical, reckless of life. Twice Kossuth deposed him from the command; twice he had to restore him. It would have been well if Kossuth had had something more of Görgei’s calculated ruthlessness, for, as has been truly said, the revolutionary power he had seized could only be held by revolutionary means; but he was by nature soft-hearted and always merciful; though often audacious, he lacked decision in dealing with men. It has been said that he showed a want of personal courage; this is not improbable, the excess of feeling which made him so great an orator could hardly be combined with the coolness in danger required of a soldier; but no one was able, as he was, to infuse courage into others. During all the terrible winter which followed, his energy and spirit never failed him. It was he who overcame the reluctance of the army to march to the relief of Vienna; after the defeat of Schwechat, at which he was present, he sent Bem to carry on the war in Transylvania. At the end of the year, when the Austrians were approaching Pesth, he asked for the mediation of Mr Stiles, the American envoy. Windischgrätz, however, refused all terms, and the Diet and government fled to Debrecszin, Kossuth taking with him the regalia of St Stephen, the sacred Palladium of the Hungarian nation. Immediately after the accession of the Emperor Francis Joseph all the concessions of March had been revoked and Kossuth with his colleagues outlawed. In April 1849, when the Hungarians had won many successes, after sounding the army, he issued the celebrated declaration of Hungarian independence, in which he declared that “the house of Habsburg-Lorraine, perjured in the sight of God and man, had forfeited the Hungarian throne.” It was a step characteristic of his love for extreme and dramatic action, but it added to the dissensions between him and those who wished only for autonomy under the old dynasty, and his enemies did not scruple to accuse him of aiming at the crown himself. For the time the future form of government was left undecided, but Kossuth was appointed responsible governor. The hopes of ultimate success were frustrated by the intervention of Russia; all appeals to the western powers were vain, and on the 11th of August Kossuth abdicated in favour of Görgei, on the ground that in the last extremity the general alone could save the nation. How Görgei used his authority to surrender is well known; the capitulation was indeed inevitable, but a greater man than Kossuth would not have avoided the last duty of conducting the negotiations so as to get the best terms.

With the capitulation of Villagos Kossuth’s career was at an end. A solitary fugitive, he crossed the Turkish frontier. He was hospitably received by the Turkish authorities, who, supported by Great Britain, refused, notwithstanding the threats of the allied emperors, to surrender him and the other fugitives to the merciless vengeance of the Austrians. In January 1849 he was removed from Widdin, where he had been kept in honourable confinement, to Shumla, and thence to Katahia in Asia Minor. Here he was joined by his children, who had been confined at Pressburg; his wife (a price had been set on her head) had joined him earlier, having escaped in disguise. In September 1851 he was liberated and embarked on an American man-of-war. He first landed at Marseilles, where he received an enthusiastic welcome from the people, but the prince-president refused to allow him to cross France. On the 23rd of October he landed at Southampton and spent three weeks in England, where he was the object of extraordinary enthusiasm, equalled only by that with which Garibaldi was received ten years later. Addresses were presented to him at Southampton, Birmingham and other towns; he was officially entertained by the lord mayor of London; at each place he pleaded the cause of his unhappy country. Speaking in English, he displayed an eloquence and command of the language scarcely excelled by the greatest orators in their own tongue. The agitation had no immediate effect, but the indignation which he aroused against Russian policy had much to do with the strong anti-Russian feeling which made the Crimean War possible.

From England he went to the United States of America: there his reception was equally enthusiastic, if less dignified; an element of charlatanism appeared in his words and acts which soon destroyed his real influence. Other Hungarian exiles protested against the claim he appeared to make that he was the one national hero of the revolution. Count Casimir Batthyany attacked him in The Times, and Szemere, who had been prime minister under him, published a bitter criticism of his acts and character, accusing him of arrogance, cowardice and duplicity. He soon returned to England, where he lived for eight years in close connexion with Mazzini, by whom, with some misgiving, he was persuaded to join the Revolutionary Committee. Quarrels of a kind only too common among exiles followed; the Hungarians were especially offended by his claim still to be called governor. He watched with anxiety every opportunity of once more freeing his country from Austria. An attempt to organize a Hungarian legion during the Crimean War was stopped; but in 1859 he entered into negotiations with Napoleon, left England for Italy, and began the organization of a Hungarian legion, which was to make a descent on the coast of Dalmatia. The Peace of Villafranca made this impossible. From that time he resided in Italy; he refused to follow the other Hungarian patriots, who, under the lead of Deak, accepted the composition of 1867; for him there could be no reconciliation with the house of Habsburg, nor would he accept less than full independence and a republic. He would not avail himself of the amnesty, and, though elected to the Diet of 1867, never took his seat. He never lost the affections of his countrymen, but he refrained from an attempt to give practical effect to his opinions, nor did he allow his name to become a new cause of dissension. A law of 1879, which deprived of citizenship all Hungarians who had voluntarily been absent ten years, was a bitter blow to him.

He died in Turin on the 20th of March 1894; his body was taken to Pesth, where he was buried amid the mourning of the whole nation, Maurus Jokai delivering the funeral oration. A bronze statue, erected by public subscription, in the Kerepes cemetery, commemorates Hungary’s purest patriot and greatest orator.

Many points in Kossuth’s career and character will probably always remain the subject of controversy. His complete works were published in Hungarian at Budapest in 1880-1895. The fullest account of the Revolution is given in Helfert, Geschichte Oesterreichs (Leipzig, 1869, &c.), representing the Austrian view, which may be compared with that of C. Gracza, History of the Hungarian War of Independence, 1848-1849 (in Hungarian) (Budapest, 1894). See also E. O. S., Hungary and its Revolutions, with a Memoir of Louis Kossuth (Bohn, 1854); Horvath, 25 Jahre aus der Geschichte Ungarns, 1823-1848 (Leipzig, 1867); Maurice, Revolutions of 1848-1849; W. H. Stiles, Austria in 1848-1849 (New York, 1852); Szemere, Politische Charakterskizzen: III. Kossuth (Hamburg, 1853); Louis Kossuth, Memoirs of my Exile (London, 1880); Pulszky, Meine Zeit, mein Leben (Pressburg, 1880); A. Somogyi, Ludwig Kossuth (Berlin, 1894).

(J. W. He.)

KOSTER (or Coster), LAURENS (c. 1370-1440), Dutch printer, whose claims to be considered at least one of the inventors of the art (see Typography) have been recognized by many investigators. His real name was Laurens Janssoen-Koster (i.e. sacristan) being merely the title which he bore as an official of the great parish church of Haarlem. We find him mentioned several times between 1417 and 1434 as a member of the great council, as an assessor (scabinus), and as the city treasurer. He probably perished in the plague that visited Haarlem in 1439-1440; his widow is mentioned in the latter year. His descendants, through his daughter Lucia, can be traced down to 1724.

See Peter Scriver, Beschryvinge der Stad Harlem (Haarlem, 1628); Scheltema, Levensschets van Laurens d. Koster (Haarlem, 1834); Van der Linde, De Haarlemsche Costerlegende (Hague, 1870).

KOSTROMA, a government of central Russia, surrounded by those of Vologda, Vyatka, Nizhniy-Novgorod, Vladimir and Yaroslav, lying mostly on the left bank of the upper Volga. It has an area of 32,480 sq. m. Its surface is generally undulating, with hilly tracts on the right bank of the Volga, and extensive flat and marshy districts in the east. Rocks of the Permian system predominate, though a small tract belongs to the Jurassic, and both are overlain by thick deposits of Quaternary clays. The soil in the east is for the most part sand or a sandy clay; a few patches, however, are fertile black earth. Forests, yielding excellent timber for ship-building, and in many cases still untouched, occupy 61% of the area of the government. The export of timber is greatly facilitated by the navigable tributaries of the Volga, e.g. the Kostroma, Unzha, Neya, Vioksa and Vetluga. The climate is severe; frosts of −22° F. are common in January, and the mean temperature of the year is only 3°.1 (summer, 64°.5; winter, −13°.3). The population, which numbered 1,176,000 in 1870 and 1,424,171 in 1897, is almost entirely Russian. The estimated population in 1906 was 1,596,700. Out of 20,000,000 acres, 7,861,500 acres belong to private owners, 6,379,500 to the peasant communities, 3,660,800 to the crown, and 1,243,000 to the imperial family. Agriculture is at a low ebb; only 4,000,000 acres are under crops (rye, oats, wheat and barley), and the yield of corn is insufficient for the wants of the population. Flax and hops are cultivated to an increasing extent. But market-gardening is of some importance. Bee-keeping was formerly an important industry. The chief articles of commerce are timber, fuel, pitch, tar, mushrooms, and wooden wares for building and household purposes, which are largely manufactured by the peasantry and exported to the steppe governments of the lower Volga and the Don. Boat-building is also carried on. Some other small industries, such as the manufacture of silver and copper wares, leather goods, bast mats and sacks, lace and felt boots, are carried on in the villages; but the trade in linen and towelling, formerly the staple, is declining. There are cotton, flax and linen mills, engineering and chemical works, distilleries, tanneries and paper mills. The government of Kostroma is divided into twelve districts, the chief towns of which, with populations in 1897, are Kostroma (q.v.), Bui (2626), Chukhloma (2200), Galich (6182), Kineshma (7564), Kologriv (2566), Makariev (6068), Nerekhta (3002), Soligalich (3420), Varnavin (1140), Vetluga (5200) and Yurievets (4778).

KOSTROMA, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, 230 m. N.N.E. of Moscow and 57 m. E.N.E. from Yaroslav, on the left bank of the Volga, at the mouth of the navigable Kostroma, with suburbs on the opposite side of the Volga. Pop. (1897), 41,268. Its glittering gilded cupolas make it a conspicuous feature in the landscape as it climbs up the terraced river bank. It is one of the oldest towns of Russia, having been founded in 1152. Its fort was often the refuge of the princes of Moscow during war, but the town was plundered more than once by the Tatars. The cathedral, built in 1239 and rebuilt in 1773, is situated in the kreml, or citadel, and is a fine monument of old Russian architecture. In the centre of the town is a monument to the peasant Ivan Susanin and the tsar Michael (1851). The former sacrificed his own life in 1669 by leading the Poles astray in the forests in order to save the life of his own tsar Michael Fedeorovich. On the opposite bank of the Volga, close to the water’s edge, stands the monastery of Ipatiyev, founded in 1330, with a cathedral built in 1586, both associated with the election of Tsar Michael (1669). Kostroma has been renowned since the 16th century for its linen, which was exported to Holland, and the manufacture of linen and linen-yarn is still kept up to some extent. The town has also cotton-mills, tanneries, saw-mills, an iron-foundry and a machine factory. It carries on an active trade—importing grain, and exporting linen, linen yarn, leather, and especially timber and wooden wares.

KÖSZEG (Ger. Güns), a town in the county of Vas, in Hungary, 173 m. W. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900), 7422. It is pleasantly situated in the valley of the Güns, and is dominated towards the west by the peaks of Altenhaus (2000 ft.) and of the Geschriebene Stein (2900 ft.). It possesses a castle of Count Esterhazy, a modern Roman Catholic Church in Gothic style and two convents. It has important cloth factories and a lively trade in fruit and wine. The town has a special historical interest for the heroic and successful defence of the fortress by Nicolas Jurisics against a large army of Sultan Soliman, in July-August 1532, which frustrated the advance of the Turks to Vienna for that year.

To the south-east of Köszeg, at the confluence of the Güns with the Raab, is situated the town of Sárvár (pop. 3158), formerly fortified, where in 1526 the first printing press in Hungary was established.

KOTAH, a native state of India, in the Rajputana agency, with an area of 5684 sq. m. The country slopes gently northwards from the high table-land of Malwa, and is drained by the Chambal with its tributaries, all flowing in a northerly or north-easterly direction. The Mokandarra range, from 1200 to 1600 ft. above sea-level, runs from south-east to north-west. The Mokandarra Pass through these hills, in the neighbourhood of the highest peak (1671 ft.), has been rendered memorable by the passage of Colonel Monson’s army on its disastrous retreat in 1804. There are extensive game preserves, chiefly covered with grass. In addition to the usual Indian grains, wheat, cotton, poppy, and a little tobacco of good quality are cultivated. The manufactures are very limited. Cotton fabrics are woven, but are being rapidly superseded by the cheap products of Bombay and Manchaster. Articles of wooden furniture are also constructed. The chief articles of export are opium and grain; salt, cotton and woollen cloth are imported.

Kotah is an offshoot from Bundi state, having been bestowed upon a younger son of the Bundi raja by the emperor Shah Jahan in return for services rendered him when the latter was in rebellion against his father Jahangir. In 1897 a considerable portion of the area taken to form Jhalawar (q.v.) in 1838 was restored to Kotah. In 1901 the population was 544,879, showing a decrease of 24% due to the results of famine. The estimated revenue is £206,000; tribute, £28,000. The maharao Umad Singh, was born in 1873, and succeeded in 1889. He was educated at the Mayo College, Ajmere, and became a major in the British army. A continuation of the branch line of the Indian Midland railway from Goona to Baran passes through Kotah, and it is also traversed by a new line, opened in 1909. The state suffered from drought in 1896-1897, and again more severely in 1899-1900.

The town of Kotah is on the right bank of the Chambal. Pop. (1901), 33,679. It is surrounded and also divided into three parts by massive walls, and contains an old and a new palace of the maharao and a number of fine temples. Muslins are the chief articles of manufacture, but the town has no great trade, and this and the unhealthiness of the site may account for the decrease in population.

KOTAS (Kotar, Koter, Kohatur, Gauhatar), an aboriginal tribe of the Nilgiri hills, India. They are a well-made people, of good features, tall, and of a dull copper colour, but some of them are among the fairest of the hill tribes. They recognize no caste among themselves, but are divided into keris (streets), and a man must marry outside his keri. Their villages (of which there are seven) are large, averaging from thirty to sixty huts. They are agriculturists and herdsmen, and the only one of the hill tribes who practise industrial arts, being excellent as carpenters, smiths, tanners and basket-makers. They do menial work for the Todas, to whom they pay a tribute. They worship ideal gods, which are not represented by any images. Their language is an old and rude dialect of Kanarese. In 1901 they numbered 1267.

KOTKA, a seaport of Finland, in the province of Viborg, 35 m. by rail from Kuivola junction on the Helsingfors railway, on an island of the same name at the mouth of the Kymmene river. Pop. (1904), 7628. It is the chief port for exports from and imports to east Finland and a centre of the timber trade.

KOTRI, a town of British India, in Karachi district, Sind, situated on the right bank of the Indus. Pop. (1901), 7617. Kotri is the junction of branches of the North-Western railway, serving each bank of the Indus, which is here crossed by a railway bridge. It was formerly the station for Hyderabad, which lies across the Indus, and the headquarters of the Indus steam flotilla, now abolished in consequence of the development of railway facilities. Besides its importance as a railway centre, however, Kotri still has a considerable general transit trade by river.

KOTZEBUE, AUGUST FRIEDRICH FERDINAND VON (1761-1819), German dramatist, was born on the 3rd of May, 1761, at Weimar. After attending the gymnasium of his native town, he went in his sixteenth year to the university of Jena, and afterwards studied about a year in Duisburg. In 1780 he completed his legal course and was admitted an advocate. Through the influence of Graf Görtz, Prussian ambassador at the Russian court, he became secretary of the governor-general of St Petersburg. In 1783 he received the appointment of assessor to the high court of appeal in Reval, where he married the daughter of a Russian lieutenant-general. He was ennobled in 1785, and became president of the magistracy of the province of Esthonia. In Reval he acquired considerable reputation by his novels, Die Leiden der Ortenbergischen Familie (1785) and Geschichte meines Vaters (1788), and still more by the plays Adelheid von Wulfingen (1789), Menschenhass und Reue (1790) and Die Indianer in England (1790). The good impression produced by these works was, however, almost effaced by a cynical dramatic satire, Doktor Bahrdt mit der eisernen Stirn, which appeared in 1790 with the name of Knigge on the title-page. After the death of his first wife Kotzebue retired from the Russian service, and lived for a time in Paris and Mainz; he then settled in 1795 on an estate which he had acquired near Reval and gave himself up to literary work. Within a few years he published six volumes of miscellaneous sketches and stories (Die jüngsten Kinder meiner Laune, 1793-1796) and more than twenty plays, the majority of which were translated into several European languages. In 1798 he accepted the office of dramatist to the court theatre in Vienna, but owing to differences with the actors he was soon obliged to resign. He now returned to his native town, but as he was not on good terms with Goethe, and had openly attacked the Romantic school, his position in Weimar was not a pleasant one. He had thoughts of returning to St Petersburg, and on his journey thither he was, for some unknown reason, arrested at the frontier and transported to Siberia. Fortunately he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of the emperor Paul I.; he was consequently speedily brought back, presented with an estate from the crown lands of Livonia, and made director of the German theatre in St Petersburg. He returned to Germany when the emperor Paul died, and again settled in Weimar; he found it, however, as impossible as ever to gain a footing in literary society, and turned his steps to Berlin, where in association with Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850) he edited Der Freimütige (1803-1807) and began his Almanach dramatischer Spiele (1803-1820). Towards the end of 1806 he was once more in Russia, and in the security of his estate in Esthonia wrote many satirical articles against Napoleon in his journals Die Biene and Die Grille. As councillor of state he was attached in 1816 to the department for foreign affairs in St Petersburg, and in 1817 went to Germany as a kind of spy in the service of Russia, with a salary of 15,000 roubles. In a weekly journal (Literarisches Wochenblatt) which he published in Weimar he scoffed at the pretensions of those Germans who demanded free institutions, and became an object of such general dislike that he was obliged to move to Mannheim. He was especially detested by the young enthusiasts for liberty, and one of them, Karl Ludwig Sand, a theological student, stabbed him, in Mannheim, on the 23rd of March 1819. Sand was executed, and the government made his crime an excuse for placing the universities under strict supervision.

Besides his plays, Kotzebue wrote several historical works, which, however, are too one-sided and prejudiced to have much value. Of more interest are his autobiographical writings, Meine Flucht nach Paris im Winter 1790 (1791), Über meinen Aufenthalt in Wien (1799), Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (1801), Erinnerungen aus Paris (1804), and Erinnerungen von meiner Reise aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel (1805). As a dramatist he was extraordinarily prolific, his plays numbering over 200; his popularity, not merely on the German, but on the European stage, was unprecedented. His success, however, was due less to any conspicuous literary or poetic ability than to an extraordinary facility in the invention of effective situations; he possessed, as few German playwrights before or since, the unerring instinct for the theatre; and his influence on the technique of the modern drama from Scribe to Sardou and from Bauernfeld to Sudermann is unmistakable. Kotzebue is to be seen to best advantage in his comedies, such as Der Wildfang, Die beiden Klingsberg and Die deutschen Kleinstädter, which contain admirable genre pictures of German life. These plays held the stage in Germany long after the once famous Menschenhass und Reue (known in England as The Stranger), Graf Benjowsky, or ambitious exotic tragedies like Die Sonnenjungfrau and Die Spanier in Peru (which Sheridan adapted as Pizarro) were forgotten.

Two collections of Kotzebue’s dramas were published during his lifetime: Schauspiele (5 vols., 1797); Neue Schauspiele (23 vols., 1798-1820). His Sämtliche dramatische Werke appeared in 44 vols., in 1827-1829, and again, under the title Theater, in 40 vols., in 1840-1841. A selection of his plays in 10 vols, appeared at Leipzig in 1867-1868. Cp. H. Döring, A. von Kotzebues Leben (1830); W. von Kotzebue, A. von Kotzebue (1881); Ch. Rabany, Kotzebue, sa vie et son temps (1893); W. Sellier, Kotzebue in England (1901).

KOTZEBUE, OTTO VON (1787-1846), Russian navigator, second son of the foregoing, was born at Reval on the 30th of December 1787. After being educated at the St Petersburg school of cadets, he accompanied Krusenstern on his voyage of 1803-1806. After his promotion to lieutenant Kotzebue was placed in command of an expedition, fitted out at the expense of the imperial chancellor, Count Rumantsoff, in the brig “Rurick.” In this vessel, with only twenty-seven men, Kotzebue set out on the 30th of July 1815 to find a passage across the Arctic Ocean and explore the less-known parts of Oceania. Proceeding by Cape Horn, he discovered the Romanzov, Rurik and Krusenstern Islands, then made for Kamchatka, and in the middle of July proceeded northward, coasting along the north-west coast of America, and discovering and naming Kotzebue Gulf or Sound and Krusenstern Cape. Returning by the coast of Asia, he again sailed to the south, sojourned for three weeks at the Sandwich Islands, and on the 1st of January 1817 discovered New Year Island. After some further cruising in the Pacific he again proceeded north, but a severe attack of illness compelling him to return to Europe, he reached the Neva on the 3rd of August 1818, bringing home a large collection of previously unknown plants and much new ethnological information. In 1823 Kotzebue, now a captain, was entrusted with the command of an expedition in two ships of war, the main object of which was to take reinforcements to Kamchatka. There was, however, a staff of scientists on board, who collected much valuable information and material in geography, ethnography and natural history. The expedition, proceeding by Cape Horn, visited the Radak and Society Islands, and reached Petropavlovsk in July 1824. Many positions along the coast were rectified, the Navigator islands visited, and several discoveries made. The expedition returned by the Marianna, Philippine, New Caledonia and Hawaiian Islands, reaching Kronstadt on the 10th of July 1826. There are English translations of both Kotzebue’s narratives: A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering’s Straits for the Purpose of exploring a North-East Passage, undertaken in the Years 1815-1818 (3 vols. 1821), and A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823-1826 (1830). Three years after his return from his second voyage, Kotzebue died at Reval on the 15th of February 1846.

KOUMISS, milk-wine, or milk brandy, a fermented alcoholic beverage prepared from milk. It is of very ancient origin, and according to Herodotus was known to the Scythians. The name is said to be derived from an ancient Asiatic tribe, the Kumanes or Komans. It is one of the staple articles of diet of the Siberian and Caucasian races, but of late years it has also been manufactured on a considerable scale in western Europe, on account of its valuable medicinal properties. It is generally made from mares’ or camels’ milk by a process of fermentation set up by the addition to the fresh milk of a small quantity of the finished article. This fermentation, which appears to be of a symbiotic nature, being dependent on the action of two distinct types of organisms, the one a fission fungus, the other a true yeast, eventuates in the conversion of a part of the milk sugar into lactic acid and alcohol. Koumiss generally contains 1 to 2% of alcohol, 0.5 to 1.5% of lactic acid, 2 to 4% of milk sugar and 1 to 2% of fat. Kefir is similar to koumiss, but is usually prepared from cows’ milk, and the fermentation is brought about by the so-called Kefir Grains (derived from a plant).

KOUMOUNDOUROS, ALEXANDROS (1814-1883), Greek statesman, whose name is commonly spelt Coumoundouros, was born in 1814. His studies at the university of Athens were repeatedly interrupted for lack of means, and he began to earn his living as a clerk. He took part in the Cretan insurrection of 1841, and in the demonstration of 1843, by which the Greek constitution was obtained from King Otto, he was secretary to General Theodoraki Grivas. He then settled down to the bar at Kalamata in Messenia, where he married a lady belonging to the Mavromichalis family. He was elected to the chamber in 1851, and four years later his eloquence and ability had secured the president’s chair for him. He became minister of finance in 1856, and again in 1857 and 1859. He adhered to the moderate wing of the Liberal party until the revolution of 1862 and the dethronement of King Otto, when he was minister of justice in the provincial government. He was twice minister of the interior under Kanaris, in 1864 and in 1865. In March 1865 he became prime minister, and he formed several subsequent administrations in the intervals of the ascendancy of Tricoupi. During the Cretan insurrection of 1866-68 he made active warlike preparations against Turkey, but was dismissed by King George, who recognized that Greece could not act without the support of the Powers. He was again premier at the time of the outbreak of the insurrection in Thessaly in January 1878, and supported by Delyanni as minister of foreign affairs he sent an army of 10,000 men to help the insurgents against Turkey. The troops were recalled on the understanding that Greece should be represented at the Congress of Berlin. In October 1880 the fall of the Tricoupi ministry restored him to power, when he resumed his warlike policy, but repeated appeals to the courts of Europe yielded little practical result, and Koumoundouros was obliged to reduce his territorial demands and to accept the limited cessions in Thessaly and Epirus, which were carried out in July 1881. His ministry was overturned in 1882 by the votes of the new Thessalian deputies, who were dissatisfied with the administrative arrangements of the new province, and he died at Athens on the 9th of March 1883.

KOUSSO (Kosso or Cusso), a drug which consists of the panicles of the pistillate flowers of Brayera anthelmintica, a handsome rosaceous tree 60 ft. high, growing throughout the table-land of Abyssinia, at an elevation of 3000 to 8000 ft. above the sea-level. The drug as imported is in the form of cylindrical rolls, about 18 in. in length and 2 in. in diameter, and comprises the entire inflorescence or panicle kept in form by a band wound transversely round it. The active principle is koussin or kosin, C31H38O10, which is soluble in alcohol and alkalis, and may be given in doses of thirty grains. Kousso is also used in the form of an unstrained infusion of ¼ to ½ oz. of the coarsely powdered flowers, which are swallowed with the liquid. It is considered to be an effectual vermifuge for Taenia solium. In its anthelmintic action it is nearly allied to male fern, but it is much inferior to that drug and is very rarely used in Great Britain.

KOVALEVSKY, SOPHIE (1850-1891), Russian mathematician, daughter of General Corvin-Krukovsky, was born at Moscow on the 15th of January 1850. As a young girl she was fired by the aspiration after intellectual liberty that animated so many young Russian women at that period, and drove them to study at foreign universities, since their own were closed to them. This led her, in 1868, to contract one of those conventional marriages in vogue at the time, with a young student, Waldemar Kovalevsky, and the two went together to Germany to continue their studies. In 1869 she went to Heidelberg, where she studied under H. von Helmholtz, G. R. Kirchhoff, L. Königsberger and P. du Bois-Reymond, and from 1871-1874 read privately with Karl Weierstrass at Berlin, as the public lectures were not then open to women. In 1874 the university of Göttingen granted her a degree in absentia, excusing her from the oral examination on account of the remarkable excellence of the three dissertations sent in, one of which, on the theory of partial differential equations, is one of her most remarkable works. Another was an elucidation of P. S. Laplace’s mathematical theory of the form of Saturn’s rings. Soon after this she returned to Russia with her husband, who was appointed professor of palaeontology at Moscow, where he died in 1883. At this time Madame Kovalevsky was at Stockholm, where Gustaf Mittag Leffler, also a pupil of Weierstrass, who had been recently appointed to the chair of mathematics at the newly founded university, had procured for her a post as lecturer. She discharged her duties so successfully that in 1884 she was appointed full professor. This post she held till her death on the 10th of February 1891. In 1888 she achieved the greatest of her successes, gaining the Prix Bordin offered by the Paris Academy. The problem set was “to perfect in one important point the theory of the movement of a solid body round an immovable point,” and her solution added a result of the highest interest to those transmitted to us by Leonhard Euler and J. L. Lagrange. So remarkable was this work that the value of the prize was doubled as a recognition of unusual merit. Unfortunately Madame Kovalevsky did not live to reap the full reward of her labours, for she died just as she had attained the height of her fame and had won recognition even in her own country by election to membership of the St Petersburg Academy of Science.

See E. de Kerbedz, “Sophie de Kowalevski,” Benidiconti del circolo mathematico di Palermo (1891); the obituary notice by G. Mittag Leffler in the Acta mathematica, vol. xvi.; and J. C. Poggendorff, Biographisch-literarisches Handwörterbuch.

KOVNO (in Lithuanian Kauna), a government of north-western Russia, bounded N. by the governments of Courland and Vitebsk, S.E. by that of Vilna, and S. and S.W. by Suwalki and the province of East Prussia, a narrow strip touching the Baltic near Memel. It has an area of 15,687 sq. m. The level uniformity of its surface is broken only by two low ridges which nowhere rise above 800 ft. The geological character is varied, the Silurian, Devonian, Jurassic and Tertiary systems being all represented; the Devonian is that which occurs most frequently, and all are covered with Quaternary boulder-clays. The soil is either a sandy clay or a more fertile kind of black earth. The government is drained by the Niemen, Windau, Courland Aa and Dvina, which have navigable tributaries. In the flat depressions covered with boulder-clays there are many lakes and marshes, while forests occupy about 25½% of the surface. The climate is comparatively mild, the mean temperature at the city of Kovno being 44°F. The population was 1,156,040 in 1870, and 1,553,244 in 1897. The estimated population in 1906 was 1,683,600. It is varied, consisting of Lithuanians proper and Zhmuds (together 74%), Jews (14%), Germans (2½%), Poles (9%), with Letts and Russians; 76.6% are Roman Catholics, 13.7% Jews, 4.5% Protestants, and 5% belong to the Greek Church. Of the total 788,102 were women in 1897 and 147,878 were classed as urban. The principal occupation of the inhabitants is agriculture, 63% of the surface being under crops; both grain (wheat, rye, oats and barley) and potatoes are exported. Flax is cultivated and the linseed exported. Dairying flourishes, and horse and cattle breeding are attracting attention. Fishing is important, and the navigation on the rivers is brisk. A variety of petty domestic industries are carried on by the Jews, but only to a slight extent in the villages. As many as 18,000 to 24,000 men are compelled every year to migrate in search of work. The factories consist principally of distilleries, tobacco and steam flour-mills, and hardware manufactories. Trade, especially the transit trade, is brisk, from the situation of the government on the Prussian frontier, the custom-houses of Yerburg and Tauroggen being amongst the most important in Russia. The chief towns of the seven districts into which the government is divided, with their populations in 1897, are Kovno (q.v.), Novo-Alexandrovsk (6370), Ponevyezh (13,044), Rosieny (7455), Shavli (15,914), Telshi (6215) and Vilkemir (13,509).

The territory which now constitutes the government of Kovno was formerly known as Samogitia and formed part of Lithuania. During the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries the Livonian and Teutonic Knights continually invaded and plundered it, especially the western part, which was peopled with Zhmuds. In 1569 it was annexed, along with the rest of the principality of Lithuania, to Poland; and it suffered very much from the wars of Russia with Sweden and Poland, and from the invasion of Charles XII. in 1701. In 1795 the principality of Lithuania was annexed to Russia, and until 1872, when the government of Kovno was constituted, the territory now forming it was a part of the government of Vilna.

KOVNO, a town and fortress of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, stands at the confluence of the Niemen with the Viliya, 550 m. S.W. of St Petersburg by rail, and 55 m. from the Prussian frontier. Pop. (1863), 23,937; (1903), 73,743, nearly one-half being Jews. It consists of a cramped Old Town and a New Town stretching up the side of the Niemen. It is a first-class fortress, being surrounded at a mean distance of 2½ m. by a girdle of forts, eleven in number. The town lies for the most part in the fork and is guarded by three forts in the direction of Vilna, one covers the Vilna bridge, while the southern approaches are protected by seven. Kovno commands and bars the railway Vilna-Eydtkuhnen. Its factories produce nails, wire-work and other metal goods, mead and bone-meal. It is an important entrepôt for timber, cereals, flax, flour, spirits, bone-meal, fish, coal and building-stone passing from and to Prussia. The city possesses some 15th-century churches. It was founded in the 11th century; and from 1384 to 1398 belonged to the Teutonic Knights. Tsar Alexis of Russia plundered and burnt it in 1655. Here the Russians defeated the Poles on the 26th of June 1831.

KOVROV, a town of Russia, in the government of Vladimir, 40 m. N.E. of the city of Vladimir by the railway from Moscow to Nizhniy-Novgorod, and on the Klyazma River. It has railway-carriage works, cotton mills, steam flour mills, tallow works and quarries of limestone, and carries on an active trade in the export of wooden wares and in the import of grain, salt and fish, brought from the Volga governments. Pop. (1890), 6600; (1900), 16,806.

KOWTOW, or Kotou, the Chinese ceremonial act of prostration as a sign of homage, submission, or worship. The word is formed from ko, knock, and tou, head. To the emperor, the “kowtow” is performed by kneeling three times, each act accompanied by touching the ground with the forehead.

KOZLOV, a town of Russia, in the government of Tambov, on the Lyesnoi Voronezh River, 45 m. W.N.W. of the city of Tambov by rail. Pop. (1900), 41,555. Kozlov had its origin in a small monastery, founded in the forest in 1627; nine years later, an earthwork was raised close by, for the protection of the Russian frontier against the Tatars. Situated in a very fertile country, on the highway to Astrakhan and at the head of water communication with the Don, the town soon became a centre of trade; as the junction of the railways leading to the Sea of Azov, to Tsaritsyn on the lower Volga, to Saratov and to Orel, its importance has recently been still further increased. Its export of cattle, grain, meat, eggs (22,000,000), tallow, hides, &c., is steadily growing, and it possesses factories, flour mills, tallow works, distilleries, tanneries and glue works.

KRAAL, also spelt craal, kraul, &c. (South African Dutch, derived possibly from a native African word, but probably from the Spanish corral, Portuguese curral, an enclosure for horses, cattle and the like), in South and Central Africa, a native village surrounded by a palisade, mud wall or other fencing roughly circular in form; by transference, the community living within the enclosure. Folds for animals and enclosures made specially for defensive purposes are also called kraals.

KRAFFT (or Kraft), ADAM (c. 1455-1507), German sculptor, of the Nuremberg school, was born, probably at Nuremberg, about the middle of the 15th century, and died, some say in the hospital, at Schwabach, about 1507. He seems to have emerged as sculptor about 1490, the date of the seven reliefs of scenes from the life of Christ, which, like almost every other specimen of his work, are at Nuremberg. The date of his last work, an Entombment, with fifteen life-size figures, in the Holzschuher chapel of the St John’s cemetery, is 1507. Besides these, Krafft’s chief works are several monumental reliefs in the various churches of Nuremberg; he produced the great Schreyer monument (1492) for St Sebald’s at Nuremberg, a skilful though mannered piece of sculpture opposite the Rathaus, with realistic figures in the costume of the time, carved in a way more suited to wood than stone, and too pictorial in effect; Christ bearing the Cross, above the altar of the same church; and various works made for public and private buildings, as the relief over the door of the Wagehaus, a St George and the Dragon, several Madonnas, and some purely decorative pieces, as coats of arms. His masterpiece is perhaps the magnificent tabernacle, 62 ft. high, in the church of St Laurence (1493-1500). He also made the great tabernacle for the Host, 80 ft. high, covered with statuettes, in Ulm Cathedral, and the very spirited “Stations of the Cross” on the road to the Nuremberg cemetery.

See Adam Krafft und seine Schule, by Friedrich Wanderer (1869); Adam Krafft und die Künstler seiner Zeit, by Berthold Daun (1897); Albert Gümbel in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, Bd. xxv. Heft 5, 1902.

KRAGUYEVATS (also written Kraguievatz and Kragujevac), the capital of the Kraguyevats department of Servia; situated 59 m. S.S.W. of Belgrade, in a valley of the Shumadia, or “forest-land,” and on the Lepenitsa, a small stream flowing north-east to join the Morava. On the opposite bank stands the picturesque hamlet of Obilichevo, with a large powder factory. Kraguyevats itself is the main arsenal of Servia, and possesses an iron-foundry and a steam flour-mill. It is the seat of the district prefecture, of a tribunal, of a fine library, and of a large garrison. It boasts the finest college building and the finest modern cathedral (in Byzantine style) in Servia. In the first years of Servia’s autonomy under Prince Milosh, it was the residence of the prince and the seat of government (1818-1839). Even later, between 1868 and 1880, the national assembly (Narodna Skupshtina) usually met there. In 1885 it was connected by a branch line (Kraguyevats-Lapovo) with the principal railway (Belgrade-Nish), and thenceforward the prosperity of the town steadily increased. Pop. (1900), 14,160.

KRAKATOA (Krakatao, Krakatau), a small volcanic island in Sunda Strait, between the islands of Java and Sumatra, celebrated for its eruption in 1883, one of the most stupendous ever recorded. At some early period a large volcano rose in the centre of the tract where the Sunda Strait now runs. Long before any European had visited these waters an explosion took place by which the mountain was so completely blown away that only the outer portions of its base were left as a broken ring of islands. Subsequent eruptions gradually built up a new series of small cones within the great crater ring. Of these the most important rose to a height of 2623 ft. above the sea and formed the peak of the volcanic island of Krakatoa. But compared with the great neighbouring volcanoes of Java and Sumatra, the islets of the Sunda Strait were comparatively unknown. Krakatoa was uninhabited, and no satisfactory map or chart of it had been made. In 1680 it appears to have been in eruption, when great earthquakes took place and large quantities of pumice were ejected. But the effects of this disturbance had been so concealed by the subsequent spread of tropical vegetation that the very occurrence of the eruption had sometimes been called in question. At last, about 1877, earthquakes began to occur frequently in the Sunda Strait and continued for the next few years. In 1883 the manifestations of subterranean commotion became more decided, for in May Krakatoa broke out in eruption. For some time the efforts of the volcano appear to have consisted mainly in the discharge of pumice and dust, with the usual accompaniment of detonations and earthquakes. But on the 26th of August a succession of paroxysmal explosions began which lasted till the morning of the 28th. The four most violent took place on the morning of the 27th. The whole of the northern and lower portion of the island of Krakatoa, lying within the original crater ring of prehistoric times, was blown away; the northern part of the cone of Rakata almost entirely disappeared, leaving a vertical cliff which laid bare the inner structure of that volcano. Instead of the volcanic island which had previously existed, and rose from 300 to 1400 ft. above the sea, there was now left a submarine cavity, the bottom of which was here and there more than 1000 ft. below the sea-level. This prodigious evisceration was the result of successive violent explosions of the superheated vapour absorbed in the molten magma within the crust of the earth. The vigour and repetition of these explosions, it has been suggested, may have been caused by sudden inrushes of the water of the ocean as the throat of the volcano was cleared and the crater ring was lowered and ruptured. The access of large bodies of cold water to the top of the column of molten lava would probably give rise at once to some minor explosions, and then to a chilling of the surface of the lava and a consequent temporary diminution or even cessation of the volcanic eructations. But until the pent-up water-vapour in the lava below had found relief it would only gather strength until it was able to burst through the chilled crust and overlying water, and to hurl a vast mass of cooled lava, pumice and dust into the air.

The amount of material discharged during the two days of paroxysmal energy was enormous, though there are no satisfactory data for even approximately estimating it. A large cavity was formed where the island had previously stood, and the sea-bottom around this crater was covered with a wide and thick sheet of fragmentary materials. Some of the surrounding islands received such a thick accumulation of ejected stones and dust as to bury their forests and greatly to increase the area of the land. So much was the sea filled up that a number of new islands rose above its level. But a vast body of the fine dust was carried far and wide by aerial currents, while the floating pumice was transported for many hundreds of miles on the surface of the ocean. At Batavia, 100 m. from the centre of eruption, the sky was darkened by the quantity of ashes borne across it, and lamps had to be used in the houses at midday. The darkness even reached as far as Bandong, a distance of nearly 150 miles. It was computed that the column of stones, dust and ashes projected from the volcano shot up into the air for a height of 17 m. or more. The finer particles coming into the higher layers of the atmosphere were diffused over a large part of the surface of the earth, and showed their presence by the brilliant sunset glows to which they gave rise. Within the tropics they were at first borne along by air-currents at an estimated rate of about 73 m. an hour from east to west, until within a period of six weeks they were diffused over nearly the whole space between the latitudes 30° N. and 45° S. Eventually they spread northwards and southwards and were carried over North and South America, Europe, Asia, South Africa and Australasia. In the Old World they spread from the north of Scandinavia to the Cape of Good Hope.

Another remarkable result of this eruption was the world-wide disturbance of the atmosphere. The culminating paroxysm on the morning of the 27th of August gave rise to an atmospheric wave or oscillation, which, travelling outwards from the volcano as a centre, became a great circle at 180° from its point of origin, whence it continued travelling onwards and contracting till it reached a node at the antipodes to Krakatoa. It was then reflected or reproduced, travelling backwards again to the volcano, whence it once more returned in its original direction. “In this manner its repetition was observed not fewer than seven times at many of the stations, four passages having been those of the wave travelling from Krakatoa, and three those of the wave travelling from its antipodes, subsequently to which its traces were lost” (Sir R. Strachey).

The actual sounds of the volcanic explosions were heard over a vast area, especially towards the west. Thus they were noticed at Rodriguez, nearly 3000 English miles away, at Bangkok (1413 m.), in the Philippine Islands (about 1450 m.), in Ceylon (2058 m.) and in West and South Australia (from 1300 to 2250 m.). On no other occasion have sound-waves ever been perceived at anything like the extreme distances to which the detonations of Krakatoa reached.

Not less manifest and far more serious were the effects of the successive explosions of the volcano upon the waters of the ocean. A succession of waves was generated which appear to have been of two kinds, long waves with periods of more than an hour, and shorter but higher waves, with irregular and much briefer intervals. The greatest disturbance, probably resulting from a combination of both kinds of waves, reached a height of about 50 ft. The destruction caused by the rush of such a body of sea-water along the coasts and low islands was enormous. All vessels lying in harbour or near the shore were stranded, the towns, villages and settlements close to the sea were either at once, or by successive inundations, entirely destroyed, and more than 36,000 human beings perished. The sea-waves travelled to vast distances from the centre of propagation. The long wave reached Cape Horn (7818 geographical miles) and possibly the English Channel (11,040 m.). The shorter waves reached Ceylon and perhaps Mauritius (2900 m.).

See R. D. M. Verbeek, Krakatau (Batavia, 1886); “The Eruption of Krakatoa and Subsequent Phenomena,” Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society (London, 1888).

KRAKEN, in Norwegian folk-lore, a sea-monster, believed to haunt the coasts of Norway. It was described in 1752 by the Norwegian bishop Pontoppidan as having a back about a mile and a half round and a body which showed above the sea like an island, and its arms were long enough to enclose the largest ship. The further assertion that the kraken darkened the water around it by an excretion suggests that the myth was based on the appearance of some gigantic cuttle-fish.

See J. Gibson, Monsters of the Sea (1887); A. S. Packard, “Colossal Cuttle-fishes,” American Naturalist (Salem, 1873), vol. vii.; A. E. Verrill, “The Colossal Cephalopods of the Western Atlantic,” in American Naturalist (Salem, 1875), vol. ix.; and “Gigantic Squids,” in Trans. of Connecticut Academy (1879), vol. v.

KRALYEVO (sometimes written Kraljevo or Kralievo), a city of Servia, and capital of a department bearing the same name. Kralyevo is built beside the river Ibar, 4 m. W. of its confluence with the Servian Morava; and in the midst of an upland valley, between the Kotlenik Mountains, on the north, and the Stolovi Mountains, on the south. Formerly known as Karanovats, Kralyevo received its present name, signifying “the King’s Town,” from King Milan (1868-1889), who also made it a bishopric, instead of Chachak, 22 m. W. by N. Kralyevo is a garrison town, with a prefecture, court of first instance, and an agricultural school. But by far its most interesting feature is the Coronation church belonging to Jicha monastery. Here six or seven kings are said to have been crowned. The church is Byzantine in style, and has been partially restored; but the main tower dates from the year 1210, when it was founded by St Sava, the patron saint of Servia. Pop. (1900), about 3600.

The famous monastery of Studenitsa, 24 m. S. by W. of Kralyevo, stands high up among the south-western mountains, overlooking the Studenitsa, a tributary of the Ibar. It consists of a group of old-fashioned timber and plaster buildings, a tall belfry, and a diminutive church of white marble, founded in 1190 by King Stephen Nemanya, who himself turned monk and was canonized as St Simeon. The carvings round the north, south and west doors have been partially defaced by the Turks. The inner walls are decorated with Byzantine frescoes, among which only a painting of the Last Supper, and the portraits of five saints, remain unrestored. The dome and narthex are modern additions. Besides the silver shrine of St Simeon, many gold and silver ornaments, church vessels and old manuscripts, there are a set of vestments and a reliquary, believed by the monks to have been the property of St Sava.

KRANTZ (or Crantz), ALBERT (c. 1450-1517), German historian, was a native of Hamburg. He studied law, theology and history at Rostock and Cologne, and after travelling through western and southern Europe was appointed professor, first of philosophy and subsequently of theology, in the university of Rostock, of which he was rector in 1482. In 1493 he returned to Hamburg as theological lecturer, canon and prebendary in the cathedral. By the senate of Hamburg he was employed on more than one diplomatic mission abroad, and in 1500 he was chosen by the king of Denmark and the duke of Holstein as arbiter in their dispute regarding the province of Dithmarschen. As dean of the cathedral chapter, to which office he was appointed in 1508, Krantz applied himself with zeal to the reform of ecclesiastical abuses, but, though opposed to various corruptions connected with church discipline, he had little sympathy with the drastic measures of Wycliffe or Huss. With Luther’s protest against the abuse of Indulgences he was in general sympathy, but with the reformer’s later attitude he could not agree. When, on his death-bed, he heard of the ninety-five theses, he is said, on good authority, to have exclaimed: “Brother, Brother, go into thy cell and say, God have mercy upon me!” Krantz died on the 7th of December 1517.

Krantz was the author of a number of historical works which for the period when they were written are characterized by exceptional impartiality and research. The principal of these are Chronica regnorum aquilonarium Daniae, Sueciae, et Norvagiae (Strassburg, 1546); Vandalia, sive Historia de Vandalorum vera origine, &c. (Cologne, 1518); Saxonia (1520); and Metropolis, sive Historia de ecclesiis sub Carolo Magno in Saxonia (Basel, 1548). See life by N. Wilckens (Hamburg, 1722).

KRASNOVODSK, a seaport of Russian Transcaspia, on the N. shore of Balkhan or Krasnovodsk Bay, on the S. side of the Caspian Sea, opposite to Baku, and at 69 ft. below sea-level. Pop. (1897), 6359. It is defended by a fort. Here begins the Transcaspian railway to Merv and Bokhara. There is a fishing industry, and salt and sulphur are obtained. Krasnovodsk, which is the capital of the Transcaspian province, was founded in 1869.

KRASNOYARSK, a town of Eastern Siberia, capital of the government of Yeniseisk, on the left bank of the Yenisei River, at its confluence with the Kacha, and on the highway from Moscow to Irkutsk, 670 m. by rail N.W. from the latter. Pop. (1900), 33,337. It has a municipal museum and a railway technical school. It was founded by Cossacks in 1628, and during the early years of its existence it was more than once besieged by the Tatars and the Kirghiz. Its commercial importance depends entirely upon the gold-washings of the Yeniseisk district. Brick-making, soap-boiling, tanning and iron-founding are carried on. The climate is very cold, but dry. The Yenisei River is frozen here for 160 days in the year.

KRASZEWSKI, JOSEPH IGNATIUS (1812-1887), Polish novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Warsaw on the 28th of July 1812, of an aristocratic family. He showed a precocious talent for authorship, beginning his literary career with a volume of sketches from society as early as 1829, and for more than half a century scarcely ever intermitting his literary production, except during a period of imprisonment upon a charge of complicity in the insurrection of 1831. He narrowly escaped being sent to Siberia, but, rescued by the intercession of powerful friends, he settled upon his landed property near Grodno, and devoted himself to literature with such industry that a mere selection from his fiction alone, reprinted at Lemberg from 1871 to 1875, occupies 102 volumes. He was thus the most conspicuous literary figure of his day in Poland. His extreme fertility was suggestive of haste and carelessness, but he declared that the contrivance of his plot gave him three times as much trouble as the composition of his novel. Apart from his gifts as a story-teller, he did not possess extraordinary mental powers; the “profound thoughts” culled from his writings by his admiring biographer Bohdanowicz are for the most part mere truisms. His copious invention is nevertheless combined with real truth to nature, especially evinced in the beautiful little story of Jermola the Potter (1857), from which George Eliot appears to have derived the idea of Silas Marner, though she can only have known it at second hand. Compared with the exquisite art of Silas Marner, Jermola appears rude and unskilful, but it is not on this account the less touching in its fidelity to the tenderest elements of human nature. Kraszewski’s literary activity falls into two well-marked epochs, the earlier when, residing upon his estate, he produced romances like Jermola, Ulana (1843), Kordecki (1852), devoid of any special tendency, and that after 1863, when the suspicions of the Russian government compelled him to settle in Dresden. To this period belong several political novels published under the pseudonym of Boleslawita, historical fictions such as Countess Cosel, and the “culture” romances Morituri (1874-1875) and Resurrecturi (1876), by which he is perhaps best known out of his own country. In 1884 he was accused of plotting against the German government and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in a fortress, but was released in 1886, and withdrew to Geneva, where he died on the 19th of March 1887. His remains were brought to Poland and interred at Cracow. Kraszewski was also a poet and dramatist; his most celebrated poem is his epic Anafielas (3 vols., 1840-1843) on the history of Lithuania. He was indefatigable as literary critic, editor and translator, wrote several historical works, and was conspicuous as a restorer of the study of national archaeology in Poland. Among his most valuable works were Litwa (Warsaw, 2 vols., 1847-1850), a collection of Lithuanian antiquities; and an aesthetic history of Poland (Posen, 3 vols., 1873-1875).

(R. G.)

KRAUSE, KARL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (1781-1832), German philosopher, was born at Eisenberg on the 4th of May 1781, and died at Munich on the 27th of September 1832. Educated at first at Eisenberg, he proceeded to Jena, where he studied philosophy under Hegel and Fichte and became privatdozent in 1802. In the same year, with characteristic imprudence, he married a wife without dowry. Two years after, lack of pupils compelled him to move to Rudolstadt and later to Dresden, where he gave lessons in music. In 1805 his ideal of a universal world-society led him to join the Freemasons, whose principles seemed to tend in the direction he desired. He published two books on Freemasonry, Die drei ältesten Kunsturkunden der Freimaurerbrüderschaft and Höhere Vergeistigung der echt überlieferten Grundsymbole der Freimaurerei, but his opinions drew upon him the opposition of the Masons. He lived for a time in Berlin and became a privatdozent, but was unable to obtain a professorship. He therefore proceeded to Göttingen and afterwards to Munich, where he died of apoplexy at the very moment when the influence of Franz von Baader had at last obtained a position for him.

One of the so-called “Philosophers of Identity,” Krause endeavoured to reconcile the ideas of a God known by Faith or Conscience and the world as known to sense. God, intuitively known by Conscience, is not a personality (which implies limitations), but an all-inclusive essence (Wesen), which contains the Universe within itself. This system he called Panentheism, a combination of Theism and Pantheism. His theory of the world and of humanity is universal and idealistic. The world itself and mankind, its highest component, constitute an organism (Gliedbau), and the universe is therefore a divine organism (Wesengliedbau). The process of development is the formation of higher unities, and the last stage is the identification of the world with God. The form which this development takes, according to Krause, is Right or the Perfect Law. Right is not the sum of the conditions of external liberty but of absolute liberty, and embraces all the existence of nature, reason and humanity. It is the mode, or rationale, of all progress from the lower to the highest unity or identification. By its operation the reality of nature and reason rises into the reality of humanity. God is the reality which transcends and includes both nature and humanity. Right is, therefore, at once the dynamic and the safeguard of progress. Ideal society results from the widening of the organic operation of this principle from the individual man to small groups of men, and finally to mankind as a whole. The differences disappear as the inherent identity of structure predominates in an ever-increasing degree, and in the final unity Man is merged in God.

The comparatively small area of Krause’s influence was due partly to the overshadowing brilliance of Hegel, and partly to two intrinsic defects. The spirit of his thought is mystical and by no means easy to follow, and this difficulty is accentuated, even to German readers, by the use of artificial terminology. He makes use of germanized foreign terms which are unintelligible to the ordinary man. His principal works are (beside those quoted above): Entwurf des Systems der Philosophie (1804); System der Sittenlehre (1810); Das Urbild der Menschheit (1811); and Vorlesungen über das System der Philosophie (1828). He left behind him at his death a mass of unpublished notes, part of which has been collected and published by his disciples, H. Ahrens (1808-1874), Leonhardi, Tiberghien and others.

See H. S. Lindemann, Uebersichtliche Darstellung des Lebens ... Krauses (1839); P. Hohlfeld, Die Krausesche Philosophie (1879); A. Procksch, Krause, ein Lebensbild nach seinen Briefen (1880); R. Eucken, Zur Erinnerung an Krause (1881); B. Martin, Krauses Leben und Bedeutung (1881), and Histories of Philosophy by Zeller, Windelband and Höffding.

KRAWANG, a residency of the island of Java, Dutch East Indies, bounded E. and S. by Charibon and the Preanger, W. by Batavia, and N. by the Java Sea, and comprising a few insignificant islands. The natives are Sundanese, but contain a large admixture of Middle Javanese and Bantamers in the north, where they established colonies in the 17th century. Like the residency of Batavia, the northern half of Krawang is flat and occasionally marshy, while the southern half is mountainous and volcanic. Warm and cold mineral, salt and sulphur springs occur in the hills. Salt is extracted by the government, though in smaller quantities now than formerly. The principal products are rice, coffee, sugar, vanilla, indigo and nutmeg. Fishing is practised along the coast and forest culture in the hills, while the industries also include the manufacture of coarse linen, sacks and leather tanning. Gold and silver were formerly thought to be hidden in the Parang mountain in the Gandasoli district south-west of Purwakarta, and mining was begun by the Dutch East India Company in 1722. The largest part of the residency consists of private lands, and only the Purwakarta and Krawang divisions forming the middle and north-west sections come directly under government control. The remainder of the residency is divided between the Pamanukan-Chiasem lands occupying the whole eastern half of the residency and the Tegalwaru lands in the south-western corner. The former is owned by a company and forms the largest estate in Java. The Tegalwaru is chiefly owned by Chinese proprietors. Purwakarta is the capital of the residency. Subang and Pamanukan both lie at the junction of several roads near the borders of Cheribon and are the chief centres of activity in the east of the residency.

KRAY VON KRAJOVA, PAUL, Freiherr (1735-1804), Austrian soldier. Entering the Austrian army at the age of nineteen, he arrived somewhat rapidly at the grade of major, but it was many years before he had any opportunity of distinguishing himself. In 1784 he suppressed a rising in Transylvania, and in the Turkish wars he took an active part at Porczeny and the Vulcan Pass. Made major-general in 1790, three years later he commanded the advanced guard of the Allies operating in France. He distinguished himself at Famars, Charleroi, Fleurus, Weissenberg, and indeed at almost every encounter with the troops of the French Republic. In the celebrated campaign of 1796 on the Rhine and Danube he did conspicuous service as a corps commander. At Wetzlar he defeated Kléber, and at Amberg and Würzburg he was largely responsible for the victory of the archduke Charles. In the following year he was less successful, being twice defeated on the Lahn and the Main. Kray commanded in Italy in 1799, and reconquered from the French the plain of Lombardy. For his victories of Verona, Mantua, Legnago and Magnano he was promoted Feldzeugmeister, and he ended the campaign by further victories at Novi and Fossano. Next year he commanded on the Rhine against Moreau. (For the events of this memorable campaign see French Revolutionary Wars.) As a consequence of the defeats he underwent at Biberach, Messkirch, &c., Kray was driven into Ulm, but by a skilful march round Moreau’s flank succeeded in escaping to Bohemia. He was relieved of his command by the Austrian government, and passed his remaining years in retirement. He died in 1804. Kray was one of the best representatives of the old Austrian army. Tied to an obsolete system and unable from habit to realize the changed conditions of warfare, he failed, but his enemies held him in the highest respect as a brave, skilful and chivalrous opponent. It was he who at Altenkirchen cared for the dying Marceau, and the white uniforms of Kray and his staff mingled with the blue of the French in the funeral procession of the young general of the Republic.

KREMENCHUG, a town of south-west Russia, in the government of Poltava, on the left bank of the Dnieper (which periodically overflows its banks), 73 m. S.W. of the city of Poltava, on the Kharkov-Nikolayev railway. Pop. (1887), 31,000; (1897, with Kryukov suburb), 58,648. The most notable public buildings are the cathedral (built in 1808), the arsenal and the town-hall. The town is supposed to have been founded in 1571. From its situation at the southern terminus of the navigable course of the Dnieper, and on the highway from Moscow to Odessa, it early acquired great commercial importance, and by 1655 it was a wealthy town. From 1765 to 1789 it was the capital of “New Russia.” It has a suburb, Kryukov, on the right bank of the Dnieper, united with the town by a railway bridge. Nearly all commercial transactions in salt with White Russia are effected at Kremenchug. The town is also the centre of the tallow trade with Warsaw; considerable quantities of timber are floated down to this place. Nearly all the trade in the brandy manufactured in the government of Kharkov, and destined for the governments of Ekaterinoslav and Taurida, is concentrated here, as also is the trade in linseed between the districts situated on the left affluents of the Dnieper and the southern ports. Other articles of commerce are rye, rye-flour, wheat, oats and buckwheat, which are sent partly up the Dnieper to Pinsk, partly by land to Odessa and Berislav, but principally to Ekaterinoslav, on light boats floated down during the spring floods. The Dnieper is crossed at Kremenchug by a tubular bridge 1081 yds. long; there is also a bridge of boats. The manufactures consist of carriages, agricultural machinery, tobacco, steam flour-mills, steam saw-mills and forges.

KREMENETS (Polish, Krzemieniec), a town of south-west Russia, in the government of Volhynia, 130 m. W. of Zhitomir, and 25 m. E. of Brody railway station (Austrian Galicia). Pop. (1900), 16,534. It is situated in a gorge of the Kremenets Hills. The Jews, who are numerous, carry on a brisk trade in tobacco and grain exported to Galicia and Odessa. The picturesque ruins of an old castle on a crag close by the town are usually known as the castle of Queen Bona, i.e. Bona Sforza (wife of Sigismund I. of Poland); it was built, however, in the 8th or 9th century. The Mongols vainly besieged it in 1241 and 1255. From that time Kremenets was under the dominion alternately of Lithuania and Poland, till 1648, when it was taken by the Zaporogian Cossacks. From 1805 to 1832 its Polish lyceum was the centre of superior instruction for the western provinces of Little Russia; but after the Polish insurrection of 1831 the lyceum was transferred to Kiev, and is now the university of that town.

KREMS, a town of Austria, in lower Austria, 40 m. W.N.W. of Vienna by rail. Pop. (1900), 12,657. It is situated at the confluence of the Krems with the Danube. The manufactures comprise steel goods, mustard and vinegar, and a special kind of white lead (Kremser Weiss) is prepared from deposits in the neighbourhood. The trade is mainly in these products and in wine and saffron. The Danube harbour of Krems is at the adjoining town of Stein (pop., 4299).

KREMSIER, (Czech, Kroměříž), a town of Austria, in Moravia, 37 m. E. by N. of Brünn by rail. Pop. (1900), 13,991, mostly Czech. It is situated on the March, in the fertile region of the Hanna, and not far from the confluence of these two rivers. It is the summer residence of the bishop of Olmütz, whose palace, surrounded by a fine park and gardens, and containing a picture gallery, library and various collections, forms the chief object of interest. Its industries include the manufacture of machinery and iron-founding, brewing and corn-milling, and there is a considerable trade in corn, cattle, fruit and manufactures. In 1131 Kremsier was the seat of a bishopric. It suffered considerably during the Hussite war; and in 1643 it was taken and burned by the Swedes. After the rising of 1848 the Austrian parliament met in the palace at Kremsier from November 1848 till March 1849. In August 1885 a meeting took place here between the Austrian and the Russian emperors.

KREUTZER, KONRADIN (1780-1849), German musical composer, was born on the 22nd of November 1780 in Messkirch in Baden, and died on the 14th of December 1849 in Riga. He owes his fame almost exclusively to one opera, Das Nachtlager von Granada (1834), which kept the stage for half a century in spite of the changes in musical taste. It was written in the style of Weber, and is remarkable especially for its flow of genuine melody and depth of feeling. The same qualities are found in Kreutzer’s part-songs for men’s voices, which at one time were extremely popular in Germany, and are still listened to with pleasure. Amongst these “Der Tag des Herrn” (“The Lord’s Day”) may be named as the most excellent. Kreutzer was a prolific composer, and wrote a number of operas for the theatre at Vienna, which have disappeared from the stage and are not likely to be revived. He was from 1812 to 1816 Kapellmeister to the king of Württemberg, and in 1840 became conductor of the opera at Cologne. His daughter, Cecilia Kreutzer, was a singer of some renown.

KREUTZER, RUDOLPH (1766-1831), French violinist, of German extraction, was born at Versailles, his father being a musician in the royal chapel. Rudolph gradually became famous as a violinist, playing with great success at various continental capitals. It was to him that in 1803 Beethoven dedicated his famous violin sonata (op. 47) known as the “Kreutzer.” Apart, however, from his fame as a violinist, Kreutzer was also a prolific composer; he wrote twenty-nine operas, many of which were successfully produced, besides nineteen violin concertos and chamber music. He died at Geneva in 1831.

KREUZBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, on the Stober, 24 m. N.N.E. of Oppeln. Pop. (1905), 10,919. It has an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a gymnasium and a teacher’s seminary. Here are flour-mills, distilleries, iron-works, breweries, and manufactories of sugar and of machinery. Kreuzburg, which became a town in 1252, was the birthplace of the novelist Gustav Freytag.

KREUZNACH (Creuznach), a town and watering-place of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, situated on the Nahe, a tributary of the Rhine, 9 m. by rail S. of Bingerbrück. Pop. (1900), 21,321. It consists of the old town on the right bank of the river, the new town on the left, and the Bade Insel (bath island), connected by a fine stone bridge. The town has two Evangelical and three Roman Catholic churches, a gymnasium, a commercial school and a hospital. There is a collection of Roman and medieval antiquities, among which is preserved a fine Roman mosaic discovered in 1893. On the Bade Insel is the Kurhaus (1872) and also the chief spring, the Elisabethquelle, impregnated with iodine and bromine, and prescribed for scrofulous, bronchial and rheumatic disorders. The chief industries are marble-polishing and the manufacture of leather, glass and tobacco. Vines are cultivated on the neighbouring hills, and there is a trade in wine and corn.

The earliest mention of the springs of Kreuznach occurs in 1478, but it was only in the early part of the 19th century that Dr Prieger, to whom there is a statue in the town, brought them into prominence. Now the annual number of visitors amounts to several thousands. Kreuznach was evidently a Roman town, as the ruins of a Roman fortification, the Heidenmauer, and various antiquities have been found in its immediate neighbourhood. In the 9th century it was known as Cruciniacum, and it had a palace of the Carolingian kings. In 1065 the emperor Henry IV. presented it to the bishopric of Spires; in the 13th century it obtained civic privileges and passed to the counts of Sponheim; in 1416 it became part of the Palatinate. The town was ceded to Prussia in 1814. In 1689 the French reduced the strong castle of Kauzenberg to the ruin which now stands on a hill above Kreuznach.

See Schneegans, Historisch-topographische Beschreibung Kreuznachs und seiner Umgebung (7th ed., 1904); Engelmann, Kreuznach und seine Heilquellen (8th ed., 1890); and Stabel, Das Solbad Kreuznach für Ärzte dargestellt (Kreuznach, 1887).

KRIEGSPIEL (Kriegsspiel), the original German name, still used to some extent in England, for the War Game (q.v.).

KRIEMHILD (Grîmhild), the heroine of the Nibelungenlied and wife of the hero Siegfried. The name (from O. H. Ger. grîma, a mask or helm, and hiltja or hilta, war) means “the masked warrior woman,” and has been taken to prove her to have been originally a mythical, daemonic figure, an impersonation of the powers of darkness and of death. In the north, indeed, the name Grimhildr continued to have a purely mythical character and to be applied only to daemonic beings; but in Germany, the original home of the Nibelungen myth, it certainly lost all trace of this significance, and in the Nibelungenlied Kriemhild is no more than a beautiful princess, the daughter of King Dancrât and Queen Uote, and sister of the Burgundian kings Gunther, Giselhêr and Gêrnôt, the masters of the Nibelungen hoard. As she appears in the Nibelungen legend, however, Kriemhild would seem to have an historical origin, as the wife of Attila, king of the Huns, as well as sister of the Nibelung kings. According to Jordanes (c. 49), who takes his information from the contemporary and trustworthy account of Priscus, Attila died of a violent hemorrhage at night, as he lay beside a girl named Ildico (i.e. O. H. Ger. Hildikô). The story got abroad that he had perished by the hand of a woman in revenge for her relations slain by him; according to some (e.g. Saxo Poeta and the Quedlinburg chronicle) it was her father whom she revenged; but when the treacherous overthrow of the Burgundians by Attila had become a theme for epic poets, she figured as a Burgundian princess, and her act as done in revenge for her brothers. Now the name Hildikô is the diminutive of Hilda or Hild, which again—in accordance with a custom common enough—may have been used as an abbreviation of Grîmhild (cf. Hildr for Brynhildr). It has been suggested (Symons, Heldensage, p. 55) that when the legend of the overthrow of the Burgundians, which took place in 437, became attached to that of the death of Attila (453), Hild, the supposed sister of the Burgundian kings, was identified with the daemonic Grîmhild, the sister of the mythical Nibelung brothers, and thus helped the process by which the Nibelung myth became fused with the historical story of the fall of the Burgundian kingdom. The older story, according to which Grîmhild slays her husband Attila in revenge for her brothers, is preserved in the Norse tradition, though Grîmhild’s part is played by Gudrun, a change probably due to the fact, mentioned above, that the name Grîmhild still retained in the north its sinister significance. The name of Grîmhild is transferred to Gudrun’s mother, the “wise wife,” a semi-daemonic figure, who brews the potion that makes Sigurd forget his love for Brunhild and his plighted troth. In the Nibelungenlied, however, the primitive supremacy of the blood-tie has given place to the more modern idea of the supremacy of the passion of love, and Kriemhild marries Attila (Etzel) in order to compass the death of her brothers, in revenge for the murder of Siegfried. Theodor Abeling, who is disposed to reject or minimize the mythical origins, further suggests a confusion of the story of Attila’s wife Ildico with that of the murder of Sigimund the Burgundian by the sons of Chrothildis, wife of Clovis. (See Nibelungenlied.)

See B. Symons, Germanische Heldensage (Strassburg, 1905); F. Zarnke, Das Nibelungenlied, p. ii. (Leipzig, 1875); T. Abeling, Einleitung in das Nibelungenlied (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1909).

(W. A. P.)

KRILOFF (or Kruilov), IVAN ANDREEVICH (1768-1844), the great national fabulist of Russia, was born on the 14th of February 1768, at Moscow, but his early years were spent at Orenburg and Tver. His father, a distinguished military officer, died in 1779; and young Kriloff was left with no richer patrimony than a chest of old books, to be brought up by the exertions of a heroic mother. In the course of a few years his mother removed to St Petersburg, in the hope of securing a government pension; and there Kriloff obtained a post in the civil service, but he gave it up immediately after his mother’s death in 1788. Already in 1783 he had sold to a bookseller a comedy of his own composition, and by this means had procured for himself the works of Molière, Racine, Boileau; and now, probably under the influence of these writers, he produced Philomela and Cleopatra, which gave him access to the dramatic circle of Knyazhin. Several attempts he made to start a literary magazine met with little success; but, together with his plays, they served to make the author known in society. For about four years (1797-1801) Kriloff lived at the country seats of Prince Sergius Galitzin, and when the prince was appointed military governor of Livonia he accompanied him as official secretary. Of the years which follow his resignation of this post little is known, the common opinion being that he wandered from town to town under the influence of a passion for card-playing. Before long he found his place as a fabulist, the first collection of his Fables, 23 in number, appearing in 1809. From 1812 to 1841 he held a congenial appointment in the Imperial Public Library—first as assistant, and then as head of the Russian books department. He died on the 21st of November 1844. His statue in the Summer Garden is one of the finest monuments in St Petersburg.

Honours were showered upon Kriloff while he yet lived: the Academy of Sciences admitted him a member in 1811, and bestowed upon him its gold medal; in 1838 a great festival was held under imperial sanction to celebrate the jubilee of his first appearance as an author; and the emperor assigned him a handsome pension. Before his death about 77,000 copies of his Fables had found sale in Russia; and his wisdom and humour had become the common possession of the many. He was at once poet and sage. His fables for the most part struck root in some actual event, and they told at once by their grip and by their beauty. Though he began as a translator and imitator he soon showed himself a master of invention, who found abundant material in the life of his native land. To the Russian ear his verse is of matchless quality; while word and phrase are direct, simple and eminently idiomatic, colour and cadence vary with the theme.

A collected edition of Kriloff’s works appeared at St Petersburg, 1844. Of the numerous editions of his Fables, which have been often translated, may be mentioned that illustrated by Trutovski, 1872. The author’s life has been written in Russian by Pletneff, by Lebanoff and by Grot, Liter, zhizn Kruilova. “Materials” for his life are published in vol. vi. of the Sbornik Statei of the literary department of the Academy of Sciences. W. R. S. Ralston prefixed an excellent sketch to his English prose version of the Fables (1868; 2nd ed. 1871). Another translation, by T. H. Harrison, appeared in 1883.

KRISHNA (the Dark One), an incarnation of Vishnu, or rather the form in which Vishnu himself is the most popular object of worship throughout northern India. In origin, Krishna, like Rama, was undoubtedly a deified hero of the Kshatriya caste. In the older framework of the Mahābhārata he appears as a great chieftain and ally of the Pandava brothers; and it is only in the interpolated episode of the Bhagavad-gita that he is identified with Vishnu and becomes the revealer of the doctrine of bhakti or religious devotion. Of still later date are the popular developments of the modern cult of Krishna associated with Radha, as found in the Vishnu Purana. Here he is represented as the son of a king saved from a slaughter of the innocents, brought up by a cowherd, sporting with the milkmaids, and performing miraculous feats in his childhood. The scene is laid in the neighbourhood of Muttra, on the right bank of the Jumna, where the whole country to the present day is holy ground. Another place associated with incidents of his later life is Dwarka, the westernmost point in the peninsula of Kathiawar. The two most famous preachers of Krishna-worship and founders of sects in his honour were Vallabha and Chaitanya, both born towards the close of the 15th century. The followers of the former are now found chiefly in Rajputana and Gujarat. They are known as Vallabhacharyas, and their gosains or high priests as maharajas, to whom semi-divine honours are paid. The licentious practices of this sect were exposed in a lawsuit before the high court at Bombay in 1862. Chaitanya was the Vaishnav reformer of Bengal, with his home at Nadiya. A third influential Krishna-preacher of the 19th century was Swami Narayan, who was encountered by Bishop Heber in Gujarat, where his followers at this day are numerous and wealthy. Among the names of Krishna are Gopal, the cowherd; Gopinath, the lord of the milkmaids; and Mathuranath, the lord of Muttra. His legitimate consort was Rukmini, daughter of the king of Berar; but Radha is always associated with him in his temples. (See Hinduism.)

KRISHNAGAR, a town of British India, headquarters of Nadia district in Bengal, situated on the left bank of the river Jalangi and connected with Ranaghat, on the Eastern Bengal railway, by a light railway. Pop. (1901), 24,547. It is the residence of the raja of Nadia and contains a government college. Coloured clay figures are manufactured.

KRISTIANSTAD (Christianstad), a port of Sweden, chief town of the district (län) of Kristianstad, on a peninsula in Lake Sjövik, an expansion of the river Helge, 10 m. from the Baltic. Pop. (1900), 10,318. Its harbour, custom-house, &c., are at Åhus at the mouth of the river. It is among the first twelve manufacturing towns of Sweden as regards value of output, having engineering works, flour-mills, distilleries, weaving mills and sugar factories. Granite and wood-pulp are exported, and coal and grain imported. The town is the seat of the court of appeal for the provinces of Skane and Blekinge. It was founded and fortified in 1614 by Christian IV. of Denmark, who built the fine ornate church. The town was ceded to Sweden in 1658, retaken by Christian V. in 1676, and again acquired by Sweden in 1678.

KRIVOY ROG, a town of south Russia, in the government of Kherson, on the Ingulets River, near the station of the same name on the Ekaterinoslav railway, 113 m. S.W. of the city of Ekaterinoslav. Pop. (1900), about 10,000. It is the centre of a district very rich in minerals, obtained from a narrow stretch of crystalline schists underlying the Tertiary deposits. Iron ores (60 to 70% of iron), copper ores, colours, brown coal, graphite, slate, and lithographic stone are obtained—nearly 2,000,000 tons of iron ore annually.

KROCHMAL, NAḤMAN (1785-1840), Jewish scholar, was born at Brody in Galicia in 1785. He was one of the pioneers in the revival of Jewish learning which followed on the age of Moses Mendelssohn. His chief work was the Moreh Nebuche hazeman (“Guide for the Perplexed of the Age”), a title imitated from that of the 12th-century “Guide for the Perplexed” of Maimonides (q.v.). This book was not published till after the author’s death, when it was edited by Zunz (1851). The book is a philosophy of Jewish history, and has a double importance. On the one side it was a critical examination of the Rabbinic literature and much influenced subsequent investigators. On the other side, Krochmal, in the words of N. Slouschz, “was the first Jewish scholar who views Judaism, not as a distinct and independent entity, but as a part of the whole of civilization.” Krochmal, under Hegelian influences, regarded the nationality of Israel as consisting in its religious genius, its spiritual gifts. Thus Krochmal may be called the originator of the idea of the mission of the Jewish people, “cultural Zionism” as it has more recently been termed. He died at Tarnopol in 1840.

See S. Schechter, Studies in Judaism (1896), pp. 56 seq.; N. Slouschz, Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1909), pp. 63 seq.

(I. A.)

KRONENBERG, a town of Germany in the Prussian Rhine Province, 6 m. S.W. from Elberfeld, with which it is connected by railway and by an electric tramway line. Pop. (1905), 11,340. It is a scattered community, consisting of an agglomeration of seventy-three different hamlets. It has a Roman Catholic and two Protestant churches, a handsome modern town-hall and considerable industries, consisting mainly of steel and iron manufactures.

KRONSTADT or Cronstadt, a strongly fortified seaport town of Russia, the chief naval station of the Russian fleet in the northern seas, and the seat of the Russian admiralty. Pop. (1867), 45,115; (1897), 59,539. It is situated on the island of Kotlin, near the head of the Gulf of Finland, 20 m. W. of St Petersburg, of which it is the chief port, in 59° 59´ 30´´ N. and 29° 46´ 30´´ E. Kronstadt, always strong, has been thoroughly refortified on modern principles. The old “three-decker” forts, five in number, which formerly constituted the principal defences of the place, and defied the Anglo-French fleets during the Crimean War, are now of secondary importance. From the plans of Todleben a new fort, Constantine, and four batteries were constructed (1856-1871) to defend the principal approach, and seven batteries to cover the shallower northern channel. All these modern fortifications are low and thickly armoured earthworks, powerfully armed with heavy Krupp guns in turrets. The town itself is surrounded with an enceinte. The island of Kotlin, or Kettle (Finn., Retusari, or Rat Island) in general outline forms an elongated triangle, 7½ m. in length by about 1 in breadth, with its base towards St Petersburg. The eastern or broad end is occupied by the town of Kronstadt, and shoals extend for a mile and a half from the western point of the island to the rock on which the Tolbaaken lighthouse is built. The island thus divides the seaward approach to St Petersburg into two channels; that on the northern side is obstructed by shoals which extend across it from Kotlin to Lisynos on the Finnish mainland, and is only passable by vessels drawing less than 15 ft. of water; the southern channel, the highway to the capital, is narrowed by a spit which projects from opposite Oranienbaum on the Russian mainland, and, lying close to Kronstadt, has been strongly guarded by batteries. The approach to the capital has been greatly facilitated by the construction in 1875-1885 of a canal, 23 ft. deep, through the shallows. The town of Kronstadt is built on level ground, and is thus exposed to inundations, from one of which it suffered in 1824. On the south side of the town there are three harbours—the large western or merchant harbour, the western flank of which is formed by a great mole joining the fortifications which traverse the breadth of the island on this side; the middle harbour, used chiefly for fitting out and repairing vessels; and the eastern or war harbour for vessels of the Russian navy. The Peter and Catherine canals, communicating with the merchant and middle harbours, traverse the town. Between them stood the old Italian palace of Prince Menshikov, the site of which is now occupied by the pilot school. Among other public buildings are the naval hospital, the British seaman’s hospital (established in 1867), the civic hospital, admiralty (founded 1785), arsenal, dockyards and foundries, school of marine engineering, the cathedral of St Andrew, and the English church. The port is ice-bound for 140 to 160 days in the year, from the beginning of December till April. A very large proportion of the inhabitants are sailors, and large numbers of artisans are employed in the dockyards. Kronstadt was founded in 1710 by Peter the Great, who took the island of Kotlin from the Swedes in 1703, when the first fortifications were constructed.

(P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

KROONSTAD, a town of Orange River Colony, 127 m. by rail N.E. of Bloemfontein and 130 m. S.W. of Johannesburg. Pop. (1904), 7191, of whom 3708 were whites. Kroonstad lies 4489 ft. above the sea and is built on the banks of the Valsch River, a perennial tributary of the Vaal. It is a busy town, being the centre of a rich agricultural district and of the diamond and coal-mining industry of the north-western parts of the colony. It is also a favourite residential place and resort of visitors from Johannesburg. It enjoys a healthy climate, affords opportunities for boating rare in South Africa, and boasts a golf-links. The principal building is the Dutch Reformed church in the centre of the market square.

On the capture of Bloemfontein by the British during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 Kroonstad was chosen by the Orange Free State Boers as the capital of the state, a dignity it held from the 13th of March to the 11th of May 1900. On the following day the town was occupied by Lord Roberts. The linking of the town in 1906 with the Natal system made the route via Kroonstad the shortest railway connexion between Cape Town and Durban. Another line goes N.W. from Kroonstad to Klerksdorp, passing (17 miles) the Lace diamond mine and (45 miles) the coal mines at Vierfontein.

KROPOTKIN, PETER ALEXEIVICH, Prince (1842- ), Russian geographer, author and revolutionary, was born at Moscow in 1842. His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, belonged to the old Russian nobility; his mother, the daughter of a general in the Russian army, had remarkable literary and liberal tastes. At the age of fifteen Prince Peter Kropotkin, who had been designed by his father for the army, entered the Corps of Pages at St Petersburg (1857). Only a hundred and fifty boys—mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court—were educated in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a Court institution attached to the imperial household. Here he remained till 1862, reading widely on his own account, and giving special attention to the works of the French encyclopaedists and to modern French history. Before he left Moscow Prince Kropotkin had developed an interest in the condition of the Russian peasantry, and this interest increased as he grew older. The years 1857-1861 witnessed a rich growth in the intellectual forces of Russia, and Kropotkin came under the influence of the new Liberal-revolutionary literature, which indeed largely expressed his own aspirations. In 1862 he was promoted from the Corps of Pages to the army. The members of the corps had the prescriptive right of choosing the regiment to which they would be attached. Kropotkin had never wished for a military career, but, as he had not the means to enter the St Petersburg University, he elected to join a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district, where there were prospects of administrative work. For some time he was aide de camp to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita, subsequently being appointed attaché for Cossack affairs to the governor-general of East Siberia at Irkutsk. Opportunities for administrative work, however, were scanty, and in 1864 Kropotkin accepted charge of a geographical survey expedition, crossing North Manchuria from Transbaikalia to the Amur, and shortly afterwards was attached to another expedition which proceeded up the Sungari River into the heart of Manchuria. Both these expeditions yielded most valuable geographical results. The impossibility of obtaining any real administrative reforms in Siberia now induced Kropotkin to devote himself almost entirely to scientific exploration, in which he continued to be highly successful. In 1867 he quitted the army and returned to St Petersburg, where he entered the university, becoming at the same time secretary to the physical geography section of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1873 he published an important contribution to science, a map and paper in which he proved that the existing maps of Asia entirely misrepresented the physical formation of the country, the main structural lines being in fact from south-west to north-east, not from north to south, or from east to west as had been previously supposed. In 1871 he explored the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Russian Geographical Society, and while engaged in this work was offered the secretaryship of that society. But by this time he had determined that it was his duty not to work at fresh discoveries but to aid in diffusing existing knowledge among the people at large, and he accordingly refused the offer, and returned to St Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party. In 1872 he visited Switzerland, and became a member of the International Workingmen’s Association at Geneva. The socialism of this body was not, however, advanced enough for his views, and after studying the programme of the more violent Jura Federation at Neuchâtel and spending some time in the company of the leading members, he definitely adopted the creed of anarchism (q.v.) and, on returning to Russia, took an active part in spreading the nihilist propaganda. In 1874 he was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped in 1876 and went to England, removing after a short stay to Switzerland, where he joined the Jura Federation. In 1877 he went to Paris, where he helped to start the socialist movement, returning to Switzerland in 1878, where he edited for the Jura Federation a revolutionary newspaper, Le Révolté, subsequently also publishing various revolutionary pamphlets. Shortly after the assassination of the tsar Alexander II. (1881) Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland by the Swiss government, and after a short stay at Thonon (Savoy) went to London, where he remained for nearly a year, returning to Thonon towards the end of 1882. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by the French government, and, after a trial at Lyons, sentenced by a police-court magistrate (under a special law passed on the fall of the Commune) to five years’ imprisonment, on the ground that he had belonged to the International Workingmen’s Association (1883). In 1886 however, as the result of repeated agitation on his behalf in the French Chamber, he was released, and settled near London.

Prince Kropotkin’s authority as a writer on Russia is universally acknowledged, and he has contributed largely to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Among his other works may be named Paroles d’un révolté (1884); La Conquête du pain (1888); L’Anarchie: sa philosophie, son idéal (1896); The State, its Part in History (1898); Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899); Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1900); Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution (1902); Modern Science and Anarchism (Philadelphia, 1903); The Desiccation of Asia (1904); The Orography of Asia (1904); and Russian Literature (1905).

KROTOSCHIN (in Polish, Krotoszyn), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Posen, 32 m. S.E. of Posen. Pop. (1900), 12,373. It has three churches, a synagogue, steam saw-mills, and a steam brewery, and carries on trade in grain and seeds. The castle of Krotoschin is the chief place of a mediatized principality which was formed in 1819 out of the domains of the Prussian crown and was granted to the prince of Thurn and Taxis in compensation for the relinquishment by him of the monopoly of the Prussian postal system, formerly held by his family.

KRÜDENER, BARBARA JULIANA, Baroness von (1764-1824), Russian religious mystic and author, was born at Riga in Livonia on the 11th of November 1764. Her father, Otto Hermann von Vietinghoff, who had fought as a colonel in Catherine II.’s wars, was one of the two councillors for Livonia and a man of immense wealth; her mother, née Countess Anna Ulrica von Münnich, was a grand-daughter of the celebrated field marshal. Juliana, as she was usually called, was one of a numerous family. Her education, according to her own account, consisted of lessons in French spelling, deportment and sewing; and at the age of eighteen (Sept. 29, 1782) she was married to Baron Burckhard Alexis Constantin von Krüdener, a widower sixteen years her senior. The baron, a diplomatist of distinction, was cold and reserved; the baroness was frivolous, pleasure-loving, and possessed of an insatiable thirst for attention and flattery; and the strained relations due to this incompatibility of temper were embittered by her limitless extravagance, which constantly involved herself and her husband in financial difficulties. At first indeed all went well. On the 31st of January 1784 a son was born to them, named Paul after the grand-duke Paul (afterwards emperor), who acted as god-father. The same year Baron Krüdener became ambassador at Venice, where he remained until transferred to Copenhagen in 1786.

In 1787 the birth of a daughter (Juliette) aggravated the nervous disorders from which the baroness had for some time been suffering, and it was decided that she must go to the south for her health; she accordingly left, with her infant daughter and her step-daughter Sophie. In 1789 she was at Paris when the states general met; a year later, at Montpellier, she met a young cavalry captain, Charles Louis de Frégeville, and a passionate attachment sprang up between them. They returned together to Copenhagen, where the baroness told her husband that her heart could no longer be his. The baron was coldly kind; he refused to hear of a divorce and attempted to arrange a modus vivendi, which was facilitated by the departure of De Frégeville for the war. All was useless; Juliana refused to remain at Copenhagen, and, setting out on her travels, visited Riga, St Petersburg—where her father had become a senator—Berlin, Leipzig and Switzerland. In 1798 her husband became ambassador at Berlin, and she joined him there. But the stiff court society of Prussia was irksome to her; money difficulties continued; and by way of climax, the murder of the tsar Paul, in whose favour Baron Krüdener had stood high, made the position of the ambassador extremely precarious. The baroness seized the occasion to leave for the baths of Teplitz, whence she wrote to her husband that the doctors had ordered her to winter in the south. He died on the 14th of June 1802, without ever having seen her again.

Meanwhile the baroness had been revelling in the intellectual society of Coppet and of Paris. She was now thirty-six; her charms were fading, but her passion for admiration survived. She had tried the effect of the shawl dance, in imitation of Emma, Lady Hamilton; she now sought fame in literature, and in 1803, after consulting Châteaubriand and other writers of distinction, published her Valérie, a sentimental romance, of which under a thin veil of anonymity she herself was the heroine. In January 1804 she returned to Livonia.

At Riga occurred her “conversion.” A gentleman of her acquaintance when about to salute her fell dying at her feet. The shock overset her not too well balanced mind; she sought for consolation, and found it in the ministrations of her shoemaker, an ardent disciple of the Moravian Brethren. Though she had “found peace,” however, the disorder of her nerves continued, and she was ordered by her doctor to the baths of Wiesbaden. At Königsberg she had an interview with Queen Louise, and, more important still, with one Adam Müller, a rough peasant, to whom the Lord had revealed a prophetic mission to King Frederick William III. “Chiliasm” was in the air. Napoleon was evidently Antichrist; and the “latter days” were about to be accomplished. Under the influence of the pietistic movement the belief was widely spread, in royal courts, in country parsonages, in peasants’ hovels: a man would be raised up “from the north ... from the rising of the sun” (Isa. xli. 25); Antichrist would be overthrown, and Christ would come to reign a thousand years upon the earth. The interview determined the direction of the baroness’s religious development. A short visit to the Moravians at Herrenhut followed; then she went, via Dresden, to Karlsruhe, to sit at the feet of Heinrich Jung-Stilling (q.v.), the high priest of occultist pietism, whose influence was supreme at the court of Baden and infected those of Stockholm and St Petersburg. By him she was instructed in the chiliastic faith and in the mysteries of the supernatural world. Then, hearing that a certain pastor in the Vosges, Jean Frédéric Fontaines, was prophesying and working miracles, she determined to go to him. On the 5th of June 1801, accordingly, she arrived at the Protestant parsonage of Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, accompanied by her daughter Juliette, her step-daughter Sophie and a Russian valet.

This remained for two years her headquarters. Fontaines, half-charlatan, half-dupe, had introduced into his household a prophetess named Marie Gottliebin Kummer, whose visions, carefully calculated for her own purposes, became the oracle of the divine mysteries for the baroness. Under this influence she believed more firmly than ever in the approaching millennium and her own mission to proclaim it. Her rank, her reckless charities, and her exuberant eloquence produced a great effect on the simple country folk; and when, in 1809, it was decided to found a colony of the “elect” in order to wait for “the coming of the Lord,” many wretched peasants sold or distributed all they possessed and followed the baroness and Fontaines into Württemberg, where the settlement was established at Catharinenplaisir and the château of Bönnigheim, only to be dispersed (May 1) by an unsympathetic government. Further wanderings followed: to Lichtenthal near Baden; to Karlsruhe and the congenial society of pietistic princesses; to Riga, where she was present at the death-bed of her mother (Jan. 24, 1811); then back to Karlsruhe. The influence of Fontaines, to whom she had been “spiritually married” (Madame Fontaines being content with the part of Martha in the household, so long as the baroness’s funds lasted), had now waned, and she had fallen under that of Johann Kaspar Wegelin (1766-1833), a pious linen-draper of Strassburg, who taught her the sweetness of “complete annihilation of the will and mystic death.” Her preaching and her indiscriminate charities now began to attract curious crowds from afar; and her appearance everywhere was accompanied by an epidemic of visions and prophesyings, which culminated in the appearance in 1811 of the comet, a sure sign of the approaching end. In 1812 she was at Strassburg, whence she paid more than one visit to J. F. Oberlin (q.v.), the famous pastor of Waldbach in Steinthal (Ban de la Roche), and where she had the glory of converting her host, Adrien de Lazay-Marnesia, the prefect. In 1813 she was at Geneva, where she established the faith of a band of young pietists in revolt against the Calvinist Church authorities—notably Henri Louis Empeytaz, afterwards destined to be the companion of her crowning evangelistic triumph. In September 1814 she was again at Waldbach, where Empeytaz had preceded her; and at Strassburg, where the party was joined by Franz Karl von Berckheim, who afterwards married Juliette. At the end of the year she returned with her daughters and Empeytaz to Baden, a fateful migration.

The empress Elizabeth of Russia was now at Karlsruhe; and she and the pietist ladies of her entourage hoped that the emperor Alexander might find at the hands of Madame de Krüdener the peace which an interview with Jung-Stilling had failed to bring him. The baroness herself wrote urgent letters to Roxane de Stourdza, sister of the tsar’s Rumanian secretary, begging her to procure an interview. There seemed to be no result; but the correspondence paved the way for the opportunity which a strange chance was to give her of realizing her ambition. In the spring of 1815 the baroness was settled at Schlüchtern, a piece of Baden territory enclavé in Württemberg, busy persuading the peasants to sell all and fly from the wrath to come. Near this, at Heilbronn, the emperor Alexander established his headquarters on the 4th of June. That very night the baroness sought and obtained an interview. To the tsar, who had been brooding alone over an open Bible, her sudden arrival seemed an answer to his prayers; for three hours the prophetess preached her strange gospel, while the most powerful man in Europe sat, his face buried in his hands, sobbing like a child; until at last he declared that he had “found peace.” At the tsar’s request she followed him to Heidelberg and later to Paris, where she was lodged at the Hôtel Montchenu, next door to the imperial headquarters in the Elysée Palace. A private door connected the establishments, and every evening the emperor went to take part in the prayer-meetings conducted by the baroness and Empeytaz. Chiliasm seemed to have found an entrance into the high councils of Europe, and the baroness von Krüdener had become a political force to be reckoned with. Admission to her religious gatherings was sought by a crowd of people celebrated in the intellectual and social world; Châteaubriand came, and Benjamin Constant, Madame Récamier, the duchesse de Bourbon, and Madame de Duras. The fame of the wonderful conversion, moreover, attracted other members of the chiliastic fraternity, among them Fontaines, who brought with him the prophetess Marie Kummer.

In this religious forcing-house the idea of the Holy Alliance germinated and grew to rapid maturity. On the 26th of September the portentous proclamation, which was to herald the opening of a new age of peace and goodwill on earth, was signed by the sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia (see Holy Alliance; and Europe: History). Its authorship has ever been a matter of dispute. Madame de Krüdener herself claimed that she had suggested the idea, and that Alexander had submitted the draft for her approval. This is probably correct, though the tsar later, when he had recovered his mental equilibrium, reproved her for her indiscretion in talking of the matter. His eyes, indeed, had begun to be opened before he left Paris, and Marie Kummer was the unintentional cause. At the very first séance the prophetess, whose revelations had been praised by the baroness in extravagant terms, had the evil inspiration to announce in her trance to the emperor that it was God’s will that he should endow the religious colony to which she belonged! Alexander merely remarked that he had received too many such revelations before to be impressed. The baroness’s influence was shaken but not destroyed, and before he left Paris Alexander gave her a passport to Russia. She was not, however, destined to see him again.

She left Paris on the 22nd of October 1815, intending to travel to St Petersburg by way of Switzerland. The tsar, however, offended by her indiscretions and sensible of the ridicule which his relations with her had brought upon him, showed little disposition to hurry her arrival. She remained in Switzerland, where she presently fell under the influence of an unscrupulous adventurer named J. G. Kellner. For months Empeytaz, an honest enthusiast, struggled to save her from this man’s clutches, but in vain. Kellner too well knew how to flatter the baroness’s inordinate vanity: the author of the Holy Alliance could be none other than the “woman clothed with the sun” of Rev. xii. 1. She wandered with Kellner from place to place, proclaiming her mission, working miracles, persuading her converts to sell all and follow her. Crowds of beggars and rapscallions of every description gathered wherever she went, supported by the charities squandered from the common fund. She became a nuisance to the authorities and a menace to the peace; Württemberg had expelled her, and the example was followed by every Swiss canton she entered in turn. At last, in August 1817, she set out for her estate in Livonia, accompanied by Kellner and a remnant of the elect.

The emperor Alexander having opened the Crimea to German and Swiss chiliasts in search of a land of promise, the baroness’s son-in-law Berckheim and his wife now proceeded thither to help establish the new colonies. In November 1820 the baroness at last went herself to St Petersburg, where Berckheim was lying ill. She was there when the news arrived of Ypsilanti’s invasion of the Danubian principalities, which opened the war of Greek independence. She at once proclaimed the divine mission of the tsar to take up arms on behalf of Christendom. Alexander, however, had long since exchanged her influence for that of Metternich, and he was far from anxious to be forced into even a holy war. To the baroness’s overtures he replied in a long and polite letter, the gist of which was that she must leave St Petersburg at once. In 1823 the death of Kellner, whom to the last she regarded as a saint, was a severe blow to her. Her health was failing, but she allowed herself to be persuaded by Princess Galitzin to accompany her to the Crimea, where she had established a Swiss colony. Here, at Karasu Bazar, she died on the 25th of December 1824.

Sainte-Beuve said of Madame de Krüdener: “Elle avait un immense besoin que le monde s’occupât d’elle...; l’amour propre, toujours l’amour propre...!” A kindlier epitaph might, perhaps, be written in her own words, uttered after the revelation of the misery of the Crimean colonists had at last opened her eyes: “The good that I have done will endure; the evil that I have done (for how often have I not mistaken for the voice of God that which was no more than the result of my imagination and my pride) the mercy of God will blot out.”

Much information about Madame de Krüdener, coloured by the author’s views, is to be found in H. L. Empeytaz’s Notice sur Alexandre, empereur de Russie (2nd ed., Paris, 1840). The Vie de Madame de Krudener (2 vols., Paris, 1849), by the Swiss banker and Philhellene J. G. Eynard, was long the standard life and contains much material, but is far from authoritative. In English appeared the Life and Letters of Madame de Krüdener, by Clarence Ford (London, 1893). The most authoritative study, based on a wealth of original research, is E. Muhlenbeck’s Étude sur les origines de la Sainte-Alliance (Paris, 1909), in which numerous references are given.

(W. A. P.)


A portrait of Madame de Krüdener and her son as “Venus disarming Cupid,” by Angelica Kauffmann, of this period, is in the Louvre.

He died while she was there in 1792.

The consorts of Alexander I. of Russia and of Gustavus Adolphus IV. of Sweden were princesses of Baden.

She had been condemned some years previously in Württemberg to the pillory and three years’ imprisonment as a “swindler” (Betrügerin), on her own confession. Her curious history is given in detail by M. Muhlenbeck.

In 1809 it was obviously inconvenient to have people proclaiming Napoleon as “the Beast.”

Berckheim had been French commissioner of police in Mainz and had abandoned his post in 1813.

KRUG, WILHELM TRAUGOTT (1770-1842), German philosopher and author, was born at Radis in Prussia on the 22nd of June 1770, and died at Leipzig on the 12th of January 1842. He studied at Wittenberg under Reinhard and Jehnichen, at Jena under Reinhold, and at Göttingen. From 1801 to 1804 he was professor of philosophy at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, after which he succeeded Kant in the chair of logic and metaphysics at the university of Königsberg. From 1809 till his death he was professor of philosophy at Leipzig. He was a prolific writer on a great variety of subjects, in all of which he excelled as a popularizer rather than as an original thinker. In philosophy his method was psychological; he attempted to explain the Ego by examining the nature of its reflection upon the facts of consciousness. Being is known to us only through its presentation in consciousness; consciousness only in its relation to Being. Both Being and Consciousness, however, are immediately known to us, as also the relation existing between them. By this Transcendental Synthesis he proposed to reconcile Realism and Idealism, and to destroy the traditional difficulty between transcendental, or pure, thought and “things in themselves.” Apart from the intrinsic value of his work, it is admitted that it had the effect of promoting the study of philosophy and of stimulating freedom of thought in religion and politics. His principal works are: Briefe über den neuesten Idealismus (1801); Versuch über die Principien der philosophischen Erkenntniss (1801); Fundamentalphilosophie (1803); System der theoretischen Philosophie (1806-1810), System der praktischen Philosophie (1817-1819); Handbuch der Philosophie (1820; 3rd ed., 1828); Logik oder Denklehre (1827); Geschichte der Philos. alter Zeit (1815; 2nd ed., 1825); Allgemeines Handwörterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1827-1834; 2nd ed., 1832-1838); Universal-philosophische Vorlesungen für Gebildete beiderlei Geschlechts. His work Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philos. des XIX. Jahrh. (1835-1837) contains interesting criticisms of Hegel and Schelling.

See also his autobiography, Meine Lebensreise (Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1840).

KRUGER, STEPHANUS JOHANNES PAULUS (1825-1904), president of the Transvaal Republic, was born in Colesberg, Cape Colony, on the 10th of October 1825. His father was Caspar Jan Hendrick Kruger, who was born in 1796, and whose wife bore the name of Steyn. In his ancestry on both sides occur Huguenot names. The founder of the Kruger family appears to have been a German named Jacob Kruger, who in 1713 was sent with others by the Dutch East India Company to the Cape. At the age of ten Paul Kruger—as he afterwards came to be known—accompanied his parents in the migration, known as the Great Trek, from the Cape Colony to the territories north of the Orange in the years 1835-1840. From boyhood his life was one of adventure. Brought up on the borderland between civilization and barbarism, constantly trekking, fighting and hunting, his education was necessarily of the most primitive character. He learnt to read and to write, and was taught the narrowest form of Dutch Presbyterianism. His literature was almost confined to the Bible, and the Old Testament was preferred to the New. It is related of Kruger, as indeed it has been said of Piet Retief and others of the early Boer leaders, that he believed himself the object of special Divine guidance. At about the age of twenty-five he is said to have disappeared into the veldt, where he remained alone for several days, under the influence of deep religious fervour. During this sojourn in the wilderness Kruger stated that he had been especially favoured by God, who had communed with and inspired him. Throughout his life he professed this faith in God’s will and guidance, and much of his influence over his followers is attributable to their belief in his sincerity and in his enjoyment of Divine favour. The Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal, pervaded by a spirit and faith not unlike those which distinguished the Covenanters, was divided in the early days into three sects. Of these the narrowest, most puritanical, and most bigoted was the Dopper sect, to which Kruger belonged. His Dopper following was always unswerving in its support, and at all critical times in the internal quarrels of the state rallied round him. The charge of hypocrisy, frequently made against Kruger—if by this charge is meant the mere juggling with religion for purely political ends—does not appear entirely just. The subordination of reason to a sense of superstitious fanaticism is the keynote of his character, and largely the explanation of his life. Where faith is so profound as to believe the Divine guidance all, and the individual intelligence nil, a man is able to persuade himself that any course he chooses to take is the one he is directed to take. Where bigotry is so blind, reason is but dust in the balance. At the same time there were incidents in Kruger’s life which but ill conform to any Biblical standard he might choose to adopt or feel imposed upon him. Even van Oordt, his eloquent historian and apologist, is cognisant of this fact.

When the lad, who had already taken part in fights with the Matabele and the Zulus, was fourteen his family settled north of the Vaal and were among the founders of the Transvaal state. At the age of seventeen Paul found himself an assistant field cornet, at twenty he was field cornet, and at twenty-seven held a command in an expedition against the Bechuana chief Sechele—the expedition in which David Livingstone’s mission-house was destroyed.

In 1853 he took part in another expedition against Montsioa. When not fighting natives in those early days Kruger was engaged in distant hunting excursions which took him as far north as the Zambezi. In 1852 the Transvaal secured the recognition of its independence from Great Britain in the Sand River convention. For many years after this date the condition of the country was one bordering upon anarchy, and into the faction strife which was continually going on Kruger freely entered. In 1856-1857 he joined M. W. Pretorius in his attempt to abolish the district governments in the Transvaal and to overthrow the Orange Free State government and compel a federation between the two countries. The raid into the Free State failed; the blackest incident in connexion with it was the attempt of the Pretorius and Kruger party to induce the Basuto to harass the Free State forces behind, while they were attacking them in front.

From this time forward Kruger’s life is so intimately bound up with the history of his country, and even in later years of South Africa, that a study of that history is essential to an understanding of it (see Transvaal and South Africa). In 1864, when the faction fighting ended and Pretorius was president, Kruger was elected commandant-general of the forces of the Transvaal. In 1870 a boundary dispute arose with the British government, which was settled by the Keate award (1871). The decision caused so much discontent in the Transvaal that it brought about the downfall of President Pretorius and his party; and Thomas François Burgers, an educated Dutch minister, resident in Cape Colony, was elected to succeed him. During the term of Burgers’ presidency Kruger appeared to great disadvantage. Instead of loyally supporting the president in the difficult task of building up a stable state, he did everything in his power to undermine his authority, going so far as to urge the Boers to pay no taxes while Burgers was in office. The faction of which he was a prominent member was chiefly responsible for bringing about that impasse in the government of the country which drew such bitter protest from Burgers and terminated in the annexation by the British in April 1877. At this period of Transvaal history it is impossible to trace any true patriotism in the action of the majority of the inhabitants. The one idea of Kruger and his faction was to oust Burgers from office on any pretext, and, if possible, to put Kruger in his place. When the downfall of Burgers was assured and annexation offered itself as the alternative resulting from his downfall, it is true that Kruger opposed it. But matters had gone too far. Annexation became an accomplished fact, and Kruger accepted paid office under the British government. He continued, however, so openly to agitate for the retrocession of the country, being a member of two deputations which went to England endeavouring to get the annexation annulled, that in 1878 Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British administrator, dismissed him from his service. In 1880 the Boer rebellion occurred, and Kruger was one of the famous triumvirate, of which General Piet Joubert and Pretorius were the other members, who, after Majuba, negotiated the terms of peace on which the Pretoria convention of August 1881 was drafted. In 1883 he was elected president of the Transvaal, receiving 3431 votes as against 1171 recorded for Joubert.

In November 1883 President Kruger again visited England, this time for the purpose of getting another convention. The visit was successful, the London convention, which for years was a subject of controversy, being granted by Lord Derby in 1884 on behalf of the British government. The government of the Transvaal being once more in the hands of the Boers, the country rapidly drifted towards that state of national bankruptcy from which it had only been saved by annexation in 1877. In 1886, the year in which the Rand mines were discovered, President Kruger was by no means a popular man even among his own followers; as an administrator of internal affairs he had shown himself grossly incompetent, and it was only the specious success of his negotiations with the British government which had retained him any measure of support. In 1888 he was elected president for a second term of office. In 1889 Dr. Leyds, a young Hollander, was appointed state secretary, and the system of state monopolies around which so much corruption grew up was soon in full course of development. The principle of government monopoly in trade being thus established, President Kruger now turned his attention to the further securing of Boer political monopoly. The Uitlanders were increasing in numbers, as well as providing the state with a revenue. In 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1894 the franchise laws (which at the time of the convention were on a liberal basis) were so modified that all Uitlanders were practically excluded altogether. In 1893 Kruger had to face a third presidential election, and on this occasion the opposition he had raised among the burgers, largely by the favouritism he displayed to the Hollander party, was so strong that it was fully anticipated that his more liberal opponent, General Joubert, would be elected. Before the election was decided Kruger took care to conciliate the volksraad members, as well as to see that at all the volksraad elections, which occurred shortly before the presidential election, his supporters were returned, or, if not returned, that his opponents were objected to on some trivial pretext, and by this means prevented from actually sitting in the volksraad until the presidential election was over. The Hollander and concessionnaire influence, which had become a strong power in the state, was all in favour of President Kruger. In spite of these facts Kruger’s position was insecure. “General Joubert was, without any doubt whatever, elected by a very considerable majority.” But the figures as announced gave Kruger a majority of about 700 votes. General Joubert accused the government of tampering with the returns, and appealed to the volksraad. The appeal, however, was fruitless, and Kruger retained office. The action taken by President Kruger at this election, and his previous actions in ousting President Burgers and in absolutely excluding the Uitlanders from the franchise, all show that at any cost, in his opinion, the government must remain a close corporation, and that while he lived he must remain at the head of it.

From 1877 onward Kruger’s external policy was consistently anti-British, and on every side—in Bechuanaland, in Rhodesia, in Zululand—he attempted to enlarge the frontiers of the Transvaal at the expense of Great Britain. In these disputes he usually gained something, and it was not until 1895 that he was definitely defeated in his endeavours to obtain a seaport. His internal policy was blind, reckless and unscrupulous, and inevitably led to disaster. It may be summed up in his own words when replying to a deputation of Uitlanders, who desired to obtain the legalization of the use of the English language in the Transvaal. “This,” said Kruger, “is my country; these are my laws. Those who do not like to obey my laws can leave my country.” This rejection of the advances of the Uitlanders—by whose aid he could have built up a free and stable republic—led to his downfall, though the failure of the Jameson Raid in the first days of 1896 gave him a signal opportunity to secure the safety of his country by the grant of real reforms. But the Raid taught him no lesson of this kind, and despite the intervention of the British government the Uitlanders’ grievances were not remedied.

In 1898 Kruger was elected president of the Transvaal for the fourth and last time. In 1899 relations between the Transvaal and Great Britain had become so strained, by reason of the oppression of the foreign population, that a conference was arranged at Bloemfontein between Sir Alfred (afterwards Lord) Milner, the high commissioner, and President Kruger. Kruger was true to his principles. At every juncture in his life his object had been to gain for himself and his own narrow policy everything that he could, while conceding nothing in return. It was for this reason that he invariably failed to come to any arrangement with Sir John Brand while the latter was president of the Free State. In 1889, the very year following President Brand’s death, he was able to make a treaty with President Reitz, his successor, which bound each of the Boer republics to assist the other in case its independence was menaced, unless the quarrel could be shown to be an unjust one on the part of the state so menaced. In effect it bound the Free State to share all the hazardous risk of the reckless anti-British Transvaal policy, without the Free State itself receiving anything in return. Kruger thus achieved one of the objects of his life. With such a history of apparent success, it is not to be wondered at that the Transvaal president came to Bloemfontein to meet Sir Alfred Milner in no mood for concession. It is true that he made an ostensible offer on the franchise question, but that proposal was made dependent on so many conditions that it was a palpable sham. Every proposition which Sir Alfred Milner made was met by the objection that it threatened the independence of the Transvaal. This retort was President Kruger’s rallying cry whenever he found himself in the least degree pressed, either from within or without the state. To admit Uitlanders to the franchise, to no matter how moderate a degree, would destroy the independence of the state. In October 1899, after a long and fruitless correspondence with the British government, war with Great Britain was ushered in by an ultimatum from the Transvaal. Immediately after the ultimatum Natal and the Cape Colony were invaded by the Boers both of the Transvaal and the Free State. Yet one of the most memorable utterances made by Kruger at the Bloemfontein conference was couched in the following terms: “We follow out what God says, ‘Accursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.’ As long as your Excellency lives you will see that we shall never be the attacking party on another man’s land.” The course of the war that followed is described under Transvaal. In 1900, Bloemfontein and Pretoria having been occupied by British troops, Kruger, too old to go on commando, with the consent of his executive proceeded to Europe, where he endeavoured to induce the European powers to intervene on his behalf, but without success.

From this time he ceased to have any political influence. He took up his residence at Utrecht, where he dictated a record of his career, published in 1902 under the title of The Memoirs of Paul Kruger. He died on the 14th of July 1904 at Clarens, near Vevey, on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, whither he had gone for the sake of his health. He was buried at Pretoria on the following 16th of December, Dingaan’s Day, the anniversary of the day in 1838 when the Boers crushed the Zulu king Dingaan—a fight in which Kruger, then a lad of thirteen, had taken part. Kruger was thrice married, and had a large family. His second wife died in 1891. When he went to Europe he left his third wife in Lord Roberts’s custody at Pretoria, but she gradually failed, and died there (July 1901). It was in her grave that the body of her husband was laid. It is recorded that when a statue to President Kruger at Pretoria was erected, it was by Mrs. Kruger’s wish that the hat was left open at the top, in order that the rain-water might collect there for the birds to drink.

See J. F. van Oordt, P. Kruger en de opkomst d. Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (Amsterdam, 1898); the Memoirs already mentioned; F. R. Statham, Paul Kruger and his Times (1898); and, among works with a wider scope, G. M. Theal, History of South Africa (for events down to 1872 only); Sir J. P. Fitzpatrick, The Transvaal from Within (1899); The Times History of the War in South Africa (1900-9); and A. P. Hillier, South African Studies (1900).


Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, in The Transvaal from Within, ch. iii.

KRUGERSDORP, a town of the Transvaal, 21 m. N.W. of Johannesburg by rail. Pop. (1904), 20,073, of whom 6946 were whites. It is built on the Witwatersrand at an elevation of 5709 ft. above the sea, and is a mining centre of some importance. It is also the starting-point of a railway to Zeerust and Mafeking. Krugersdorp was founded in 1887 at the time of the discovery of gold on the Rand and is named after President Kruger. Within the municipal area is the Paardekraal monument erected to commemorate the victory gained by the Boers under Andries Pretorius in 1838 over the Zulu king Dingaan, and on the 16th of December each year, kept as a public holiday, large numbers of Boers assemble at the monument to celebrate the event. Here in December 1880 a great meeting of Boers resolved again to proclaim the independence of the Transvaal. The formal proclamation was made on Dingaan’s Day, and after the defeat of the British at Majuba Hill in 1881 that victory was also commemorated at Paardekraal on the 16th of December. The monument, which was damaged during the war of 1899-1902, was restored by the British authorities. It was at Doornkop, near Krugersdorp, that Dr L. S. Jameson and his “raiders” surrendered to Commandant Piet Cronje on the 2nd of January 1896 (see Transvaal: History). At Sterkfontein, 8 m. N.W. of Krugersdorp, are limestone caves containing beautiful stalactites.

KRUMAU (in Czech, Krumlov), is a town in Bohemia situated on the banks of the Moldau (Vitava). It has about 8000 inhabitants, partly of Czech, partly of German nationality. Krumau is principally celebrated because its ancient castle was long the stronghold of the Rosenberg family, known also as pani z ruze, the lords of the rose. Henry II. of Rosenberg (d. 1310) was the first member of the family to reside at Krumau. His son Peter I. (d. 1349) raised the place to the rank of a city. The last two members of the family were two brothers, William, created prince of Ursini-Rosenberg in 1556 (d. 1592), and Peter Vok, who played a very large part in Bohemian history. Their librarian was Wenceslas Brezan, who has left a valuable work on the annals of the Rosenberg family. Peter Vok of Rosenberg, a strong adherent of the Utraquist party, sold Krumau shortly before his death (1611), because the Jesuits had established themselves in the neighbourhood.

The lordship, one of the most extensive in the monarchy, was bought by the emperor Rudolph II. for his natural son, Julius of Austria. In 1622 the emperor Ferdinand II. presented the lordship to his minister, Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, and in 1625 raised it to the rank of an hereditary duchy in his favour. From the Eggenberg family Krumau passed in 1719 to Prince Adam Franz Karl of Schwarzenberg, who was created duke of Krumau in 1723. The head of the Schwarzenberg family bears the title of duke of Krumau. The castle, one of the largest and finest in Bohemia, preserves much of its ancient character.

See W. Brezan, Zivot Vilema z Rosenberka (Life of William of Rosenberg), 1847; also Zivot Petra Voka z Rosenberka (Life of Peter Vok of Rosenberg), 1880.

KRUMBACHER, CARL (1856-1909), German Byzantine scholar, was born at Kürnach in Bavaria on the 23rd of September 1856. He was educated at the universities of Munich and Leipzig, and held the professorship of the middle age and modern Greek language and literature in the former from 1897 to his death. His greatest work is his Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (from Justinian to the fall of the Eastern Empire, 1453), a second edition of which was published in 1897, with the collaboration of A. Ehrhard (section on theology) and H. Gelzer (general sketch of Byzantine history, A.D. 395-1453). The value of the work is greatly enhanced by the elaborate bibliographies contained in the body of the work and in a special supplement. Krumbacher also founded the Byzantinische Zeitschrift (1892) and the Byzantinisches Archiv (1898). He travelled extensively and the results of a journey to Greece appeared in his Griechische Reise (1886). Other works by him are: Casia (1897), a treatise on a 9th-century Byzantine poetess, with the fragments; Michael Glykas (1894); “Die griechische Litteratur des Mittelalters” in P. Hinneberg’s Die Kultur der Gegenwart, i. 8 (1905); Das Problem der neugriechischen Schriftsprache (1902), in which he strongly opposed the efforts of the purists to introduce the classical style into modern Greek literature, and Populäre Aufsätze (1909).

KRUMEN (Kroomen, Krooboys, Krus, or Croos), a negro people of the West Coast of Africa. They dwell in villages scattered along the coast of Liberia from below Monrovia nearly to Cape Palmas. The name has been wrongly derived from the English word “crew,” with reference to the fact that Krumen were the first West African people to take service in European vessels. It is probably from Kraoh, the primitive name of one of their tribes. Under Krumen are now grouped many kindred tribes, the Grebo, Basa, Nifu, &c., who collectively number some 40,000. The Krus proper live in the narrow strip of coast between the Sino river and Cape Palmas, where are their five chief villages, Kruber, Little Kru, Settra Kru, Nana Kru and King William’s Town. They are traditionally from the interior, but have long been noted as skilful seamen and daring fishermen. They are a stout, muscular, broad-chested race, probably the most robust of African peoples. They have true negro features—skin of a blue-black hue and woolly and abundant hair. The women are of a lighter shade than negro women generally, and in several respects come much nearer to a European standard. Morally as well as physically the Krumen are one of the most remarkable races in Africa. They are honest, brave, proud, so passionately fond of freedom that they will starve or drown themselves to escape capture, and have never trafficked in slaves. Politically the Krus are divided into small commonwealths, each with an hereditary chief whose duty is simply to represent the people in their dealings with strangers. The real government is vested in the elders, who wear as insignia iron rings on their legs. Their president, the head fetish-man, guards the national symbols, and his house is sanctuary for offenders till their guilt is proved. Personal property is held in common by each family. Land also is communal, but the rights of the actual cultivator cease only when he fails to farm it.

At 14 or 15 the Kru “boys” eagerly contract themselves for voyages of twelve or eighteen months. Generally they prefer work near at home, and are to be found on almost every ship trading on the Guinea coast. As soon as they have saved enough to buy a wife they return home and settle down. Krumen ornament their faces with tribal marks—black or blue lines on the forehead and from ear to ear. They tattoo their arms and mutilate the incisor teeth. As a race they are singularly intelligent, and exhibit their enterprise in numerous settlements along the coast. Sierra Leone, Grand Bassa and Monrovia all have their Kru towns. Dr Bleek classifies the Kru language with the Mandingo family, and in this he is followed by Dr R. G. Latham; Dr Kölle, who published a Kru grammar (1854), considers it as distinct.

See A. de Quatrefages and E. T. Hamy, Crania ethnica, ix. 363 (1878-1879); Schlagintweit-Sakunlunski, in the Sitzungsberichte of the academy at Munich (1875); Nicholas, in Bull. de la Soc. d’Anthrop. (Paris, 1872); J. Büttikofer, Reisebilder aus Liberia (Leiden, 1890); Sir H. H. Johnston, Liberia (London, 1906).

KRUMMACHER, FRIEDRICH ADOLF (1767-1845), German theologian, was born on the 13th of July 1767 at Tecklenburg, Westphalia. Having studied theology at Lingen and Halle, he became successively rector of the grammar school at Mörs (1793), professor of theology at Duisburg (1800), preacher at Crefeld, and afterwards at Kettwig, Consistorialrath and superintendent in Bernburg, and, after declining an invitation to the university of Bonn, pastor of the Ansgariuskirche in Bremen (1824). He died at Bremen on the 14th of April 1845. He was the author of many religious works, but is best known by his Parabeln (1805; 9th ed. 1876; Eng. trans. 1844).

A. W. Möller published his life and letters in 1849.

His brother Gottfried Daniel Krummacher (1774-1837), who studied theology at Duisburg and became pastor successively in Bärl (1798), Wülfrath (1801) and Elberfeld (1816), was the leader of the “pietists” of Wupperthal, and published several volumes of sermons, including one entitled Die Wanderungen Israels durch d. Wüste nach Kanaan (1834).

Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher (1796-1868), son of Friedrich Adolf, studied theology at Halle and Jena, and became pastor successively at Frankfort (1819), Ruhrort (1823), Gemarke, near Barmen in the Wupperthal (1825), and Elberfeld (1834). In 1847 he received an appointment to the Trinity Church in Berlin, and in 1853 he became court chaplain at Potsdam. He was an influential promoter of the Evangelical Alliance. His best-known works are Elias der Thisbiter (1828-1833; 6th ed. 1874; Eng. trans. 1838); Elisa (1837) and Das Passionsbuch, der leidende Christus (1854, in English The Suffering Saviour, 1870). His Autobiography was published in 1869 (Eng. trans. 1871).

Emil Wilhelm Krummacher (1798-1886), another son, was born at Mörs in 1798. In 1841 he became pastor in Duisburg. He wrote, amongst other works, Herzensmanna aus Luthers Werken (1852). His son Hermann (1828-1890), who was appointed Consistorialrath in Stettin in 1877, was the author of Deutsches Leben in Nordamerika (1874).

KRUPP, ALFRED (1812-1887), German metallurgist, was born at Essen on the 26th of April 1812. His father, Friedrich Krupp (1787-1826), had purchased a small forge in that town about 1810, and devoted himself to the problem of manufacturing cast steel; but though that product was put on the market by him in 1815, it commanded but little sale, and the firm was far from prosperous. After his death the works were carried on by his widow, and Alfred, as the eldest son, found himself obliged, a boy of fourteen, to leave school and undertake their direction. For many years his efforts met with little success, and the concern, which in 1845 employed only 122 workmen, did scarcely more than pay its way. But in 1847 Krupp made a 3 pdr. muzzle-loading gun of cast steel, and at the Great Exhibition of London in 1851 he exhibited a solid flawless ingot of cast steel weighing 2 tons. This exhibit caused a sensation in the industrial world, and the Essen works sprang into fame. Another successful invention, the manufacture of weldless steel tires for railway vehicles, was introduced soon afterwards. The profits derived from these and other steel manufactures were devoted to the expansion of the works and to the development of the artillery with which the name of Krupp is especially associated (see Ordnance). The model settlement, which is one of the best-known features of the Krupp works, was started in the ’sixties, when difficulty began to be found in housing the increasing number of workmen; and now there are various “colonies,” practically separate villages, dotted about to the south and south-west of the town, with schools, libraries, recreation grounds, clubs, stores, &c. The policy also was adopted of acquiring iron and coal mines, so that the firm might have command of supplies of the raw material required for its operations. Alfred Krupp, who was known as the “Cannon King,” died at Essen on the 14th of July 1887, and was succeeded by his only son, Friedrich Alfred Krupp (1854-1902), who was born at Essen on the 17th of February 1854. The latter devoted himself to the financial rather than to the technical side of the business, and under him it again underwent enormous expansion. Among other things he in 1896 leased the “Germania” ship-building yard at Kiel, and in 1902 it passed into the complete ownership of the firm. In the latter year, which was also the year of his death, on the 22nd of November, the total number of men employed at Essen and its associated works was over 40,000. His elder daughter Bertha, who succeeded him, was married in October 1906 to Dr Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, who on that occasion received the right to bear the name Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. The enormous increase in the German navy involved further expansion in the operations of the Krupp firm as manufacturers of the armour plates and guns required for the new ships, and in 1908 its capital, then standing at £9,000,000, was augmented by £2,500,000.

KRUSENSTERN, ADAM IVAN (1770-1846), Russian navigator, hydrographer and admiral, was born at Haggud in Esthonia on the 19th of November 1770. In 1785 he entered the corps of naval cadets, after leaving which, in 1788, with the grade of midshipman, he served in the war against Sweden. Having been appointed to serve in the British fleet for several years (1793-1799), he visited America, India and China. After publishing a paper pointing out the advantages of direct communication between Russia and China by Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, he was appointed by the emperor Alexander I. to make a voyage to the east coast of Asia to endeavour to carry out the project. Two English ships were bought, in which the expedition left Kronstadt in August 1803 and proceeded by Cape Horn and the Sandwich Islands to Kamchatka, and thence to Japan. Returning to Europe by the Cape of Good Hope, after an extended series of explorations, Krusenstern reached Kronstadt in August 1806, his being the first Russian expedition to circumnavigate the world. The emperor conferred several honours upon him, and he ultimately became admiral. As director of the Russian naval school Krusenstern did much useful work. He was also a member of the scientific committee of the marine department, and his contrivance for counteracting the influence of the iron in vessels on the compass was adopted in the navy. He died at Reval on the 24th of August 1846.

Krusenstern’s Voyage Round the World in 1803-1806 was published at St Petersburg in 1810-1814, in 3 vols., with folio atlas of 104 plates and maps (Eng. ed., 2 vols. 1813; French ed., 2 vols., and atlas of 30 plates, 1820). His narrative contains a good many important discoveries and rectifications, especially in the region of Japan, and the contributions made by the various savants were of much scientific importance. A valuable work is his Atlas de l’Océan Pacifique, with its accompanying Recueil des mémoires hydrographiques (St Petersburg, 1824-1827). See Memoir by his daughter, Madame Charlotte Bernhardi, translated by Sir John Ross (1856).

KRUSHEVATS (or Kruševac), a town of Servia, lying in a fertile region of hills and dales near the right bank of the Servian Morava. Pop. (1900), about 10,000. Krushevats is the capital of a department bearing the same name, and has an active trade in tobacco, hemp, flax, grain and livestock, for the sale of which it possesses about a dozen markets. It was in Krushevats that the last Servian tsar, Lazar, assembled his army to march against the Turks, and lose his empire, at Kosovo, in 1389. The site of his palace is marked by a ruined enclosure containing a fragment of the tower of Queen Militsa, whither, according to legend, tidings of the defeat were brought her by crows from the battlefield. Within the enclosure stands a church, dating from the reign of Stephen Dushan (1336-1356), with beautiful rose windows and with imperial peacocks, dragons and eagles sculptured on the walls. Several old Turkish houses were left at the beginning of the 20th century, besides an ancient Turkish fountain and bath.

KSHATTRIYA, one of the four original Indian castes, the other three being the Brahman, the Vaisya and the Sudra. The Kshattriya was the warrior caste, and their function was to protect the people and abstain from sensual pleasures. On the rise of Brahmin ascendancy the Kshattriyas were repressed, and their consequent revolt gave rise to Buddhism and Jainism, the founders of both these religions belonging to the Kshattriya caste. Though, according to tradition, the Kshattriyas were all exterminated by Parasurama, the rank is now conceded to the modern Rajputs, and also to the ruling families of native states. (See Caste.)

KUBAN, a river of southern Russia, rising on the W. slope of the Elbruz, in the Caucasus, at an altitude of 13,930 ft., races down the N. face of the Caucasus as a mountain-torrent, but upon getting down to the lower-lying steppe country S. of Stavropol it turns, at 1075 ft. altitude, towards the N.W., and eventually, assuming a westerly course, enters the Gulf of Kyzyl-tash, on the Black Sea, in the vicinity of the Straits of Kerch. Its lower course lies for some distance through marshes, where in times of overflow its breadth increases from the normal 700 ft. to over half a mile. Its total length is 500 m., the area of its basin 21,480 sq. m. It is navigable for steamers for 73 m., as far as the confluence of its tributary, the Laba (200 m. long). This, like its other affluents, the Byelaya (155 m.), Urup, and Great and Little Zelenchuk, joins it from the left. The Kuban is the ancient Hypanis and Vardanes and the Pshishche of the Circassians.

KUBAÑ, a province of Russian Caucasia, having the Sea of Azov on the W., the territory of Don Cossacks on the N., the government of Stavropol and the province of Terek on the E., and the government of Kutais and the Black Sea district on the S. and S.W. It thus contains the low and marshy lowlands on the Sea of Azov, the western portion of the fertile steppes of northern Caucasia, and the northern slopes of the Caucasus range from its north-west extremity to the Elbruz. The area is 36,370 sq. m. On the south the province includes the parallel ranges of the Black Mountains (Kara-dagh), 3000 to 6000 ft. high, which are intersected by gorges that grow deeper and wider as the main range is approached. Owing to a relatively wet climate and numerous streams, these mountains are densely clothed with woods, under the shadow of which a thick undergrowth of rhododendrons, “Caucasian palms” (Buxus sempervirens), ivy, clematis, &c., develops, so as to render the forests almost impassable. These cover altogether nearly 20% of the aggregate area. Wide, treeless plains, from 1000 to 2000 ft. high, stretch north of the Kubañ, and are profusely watered by that river and its many tributaries—the Little and Great Zelenchuk, Urup, Laba, Byelaya, Pshish—mountain torrents that rush through narrow gorges from the Caucasus range. In its lower course the Kubañ forms a wide, low delta, covered with rushes, haunted by wild boar, and very unhealthy. The same characteristics mark the low plains on the east of the Sea of Azov, dotted over with numerous semi-stagnant lakes. Malaria is the enemy of these regions, and is especially deadly on the Tamañ Peninsula, as also along the left bank of the lower and middle Kubañ.

There is considerable mineral wealth. Coal is found on the Kubañ and its tributaries, but its extraction is still insignificant (less than 10,000 tons per annum). Petroleum wells exist in the district of Maikop, but the best are in the Tamañ Peninsula, where they range over 570 sq. m. Iron ores, silver and zinc are found; alabaster is extracted, as also some salt, soda and Epsom salts. The best mineral waters are at Psekup and Tamañ, where there are also numbers of mud volcanoes, ranging from small hillocks to hills 365 ft. high and more. The soil is very fertile in the plains, parts of which consist of black earth and are being rapidly populated.

The population reached 1,928,419 in 1897, of whom 1,788,622 were Russians, 13,926 Armenians, 20,137 Greeks and 20,778 Germans. There were at the same date 945,873 women, and only 156,486 people lived in towns. The estimated population in 1906 was 2,275,400. The aborigines were represented by 100,000 Circassians, 5000 Nogai Tatars and some Ossetes. The Circassians or Adyghe, who formerly occupied the mountain valleys, were compelled, after the Russian conquest in 1861, either to settle on the flat land or to emigrate; those who refused to move voluntarily were driven across the mountains to the Black Sea coast. Most of them (nearly 200,000) emigrated to Turkey, where they formed the Bashi-bazouks. Peasants from the interior provinces of Russia occupied the plains of the Kubañ, and they now number over 1,000,000, while the Kubañ Cossacks in 1897 numbered 804,372 (405,428 women). In point of religion 90% of the population were in 1897 members of the Orthodox Greek Church, 4% Raskolniks and other Christians and 5.4% Mahommedans, the rest being Jews.

Wheat is by far the chief crop (nearly three-quarters of the total area under crops are under wheat); rye, oats, barley, millet, Indian corn, some flax and potatoes, as also tobacco, are grown. Agricultural machinery is largely employed, and the province is a reserve granary for Russia. Livestock, especially sheep, is kept in large numbers on the steppes. Bee-keeping is general, and gardening and vine-growing are spreading rapidly. Fishing in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, as also in the Kubañ, is important.

Two main lines of railway intersect the province, one running N.W. to S.E., from Rostov to Vladikavkaz, and another starting from the former south-westwards to Novorossiysk on the north coast of the Black Sea. The province is divided into seven districts, the chief towns of which, with their populations in 1897, are Ekaterinodar, capital of the province (65,697), Anapa (6676), Labinsk (6388), Batalpashinsk (8100), Maikop (34,191), Temryuk (14,476) and Yeisk (35,446).

The history of the original settlements of the various native tribes, and their language and worship before the introduction of Mahommedanism, remain a blank page in the legends of the Caucasus. The peninsula of Tamañ, a land teeming with relics of ancient Greek colonists, has been occupied successively by the Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Khazars, Mongols and other nations. The Genoese, who established an extensive trade in the 13th century, were expelled by the Turks in 1484, and in 1784 Russia obtained by treaty the entire peninsula and the territory on the right bank of the Kubañ, the latter being granted by Catherine II. in 1792 to the Cossacks of the Dnieper. Then commenced the bloody struggle with the Circassians, which continued for more than half a century. Not only domestic, but even field work, is conducted mostly by the women, who are remarkable for their physical strength and endurance. The native mountaineers, known under the general name of Circassians, but locally distinguished as the Karachai, Abadsikh, Khakuchy, Shapsugh, have greatly altered their mode of life since the pacification of the Caucasus, still, however, maintaining Mahommedanism, speaking their vernacular, and strictly observing the customs of their ancestors. Exports include wheat, tobacco, leather, wool, petroleum, timber, fish, salt and live cattle; imports, dry goods, grocery and hardware. Local industry is limited to a few tanneries, petroleum refineries and spirit distilleries.

(P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

KUBELIK, JAN (1880- ), Bohemian violinist, was born near Prague, of humble parentage. He learnt the violin from childhood, and appeared in public at Prague in 1888, subsequently being trained at the Conservatorium by the famous teacher Ottakar Sevčik. From him he learnt an extraordinary technique, and from 1898 onwards his genius was acclaimed at concerts throughout Europe. He first appeared in London in 1900, and in America in 1901, creating a furore everywhere. In 1903 he married the Countess Czaky Szell.

KUBERA (or Kuvera), in Hindu mythology, the god of wealth. Originally he appears as king of the powers of evil, a kind of Pluto. His home is Alaka in Mount Kailasa, and his garden, the world’s treasure-house, is Chaitraratha, on Mount Mandara. Kubera is half-brother to the demon Ravana, and was driven from Ceylon by the latter.

KUBLAI KHAN (or Ḳaan, as the supreme ruler descended from Jenghiz was usually distinctively termed in the 13th century) (1216-1294), the most eminent of the successors of Jenghiz (Chinghiz), and the founder of the Mongol dynasty in China. He was the second son of Tulē, youngest of the four sons of Jenghiz by his favourite wife. Jenghiz was succeeded in the khanship by his third son Okkodai, or Ogdai (1229), he by his son Kuyuk (1246), and Kuyuk by Mangu, eldest son of Tulē (1252). Kublai was born in 1216, and, young as he was, took part with his younger brother Hulagu (afterwards conqueror of the caliph and founder of the Mongol dynasty in Persia) in the last campaign of Jenghiz (1226-27). The Mongol poetical chronicler, Sanang Setzen, records a tradition that Jenghiz himself on his death-bed discerned young Kublai’s promise and predicted his distinction.

Northern China, Cathay as it was called, had been partially conquered by Jenghiz himself, and the conquest had been followed up till the Kin or “golden” dynasty of Tatars, reigning at K’ai-fēng Fu on the Yellow River, were completely subjugated (1234). But China south of the Yangtsze-kiang remained many years later subject to the native dynasty of Sung, reigning at the great city of Lingan, or Kinsai (King-sz’, “capital”), now known as Hang-chow Fu. Operations to subdue this region had commenced in 1235, but languished till Mangu’s accession. Kublai was then named his brother’s lieutenant in Cathay, and operations were resumed. By what seems a vast and risky strategy, of which the motives are not quite clear, the first campaign of Kublai was directed to the subjugation of the remote western province of Yunnan. After the capture of Tali Fu (well known in recent years as the capital of a Mahommedan insurgent sultan), Kublai returned north, leaving the war in Yunnan to a trusted general. Some years later (1257) the khan Mangu himself entered on a campaign in west China, and died there, before Ho-chow in Sze-ch’uen (1259).

Kublai assumed the succession, but it was disputed by his brother Arikbugha and by his cousin Kaidu, and wars with these retarded the prosecution of the southern conquest. Doubtless, however, this was constantly before Kublai as a great task to be accomplished, and its fulfilment was in his mind when he selected as the future capital of his empire the Chinese city that we now know as Peking. Here, in 1264, to the north-east of the old city, which under the name of Yenking had been an occasional residence of the Kin sovereigns, he founded his new capital, a great rectangular plot of 18 m. in circuit. The (so-called) “Tatar city” of modern Peking is the city of Kublai, with about one-third at the north cut off, but Kublai’s walls are also on this retrenched portion still traceable.

The new city, officially termed T’ai-tu (“great court”), but known among the Mongols and western people as Kaan-baligh (“city of the khan”) was finished in 1267. The next year war against the Sung Empire was resumed, but was long retarded by the strenuous defence of the twin cities of Siang-yang and Fan-chēng, on opposite sides of the river Han, and commanding two great lines of approach to the basin of the Yangtsze-kiang. The siege occupied nearly five years. After this Bayan, Kublai’s best lieutenant, a man of high military genius and noble character, took command. It was not, however, till 1276 that the Sung capital surrendered, and Bayan rode into the city (then probably the greatest in the world) as its conqueror. The young emperor, with his mother, was sent prisoner to Kaan-baligh; but two younger princes had been despatched to the south before the fall of the city, and these successively were proclaimed emperor by the adherents of the native throne. An attempt to maintain their cause was made in Fu-kien, and afterwards in the province of Kwang-tung; but in 1279 these efforts were finally extinguished, and the faithful minister who had inspired them terminated the struggle by jumping with his young lord into the sea.

Even under the degenerate Sung dynasty the conquest of southern China had occupied the Mongols during half a century of intermittent campaigns. But at last Kublai was ruler of all China, and probably the sovereign (at least nominally) of a greater population than had ever acknowledged one man’s supremacy. For, though his rule was disputed by the princes of his house in Turkestan, it was acknowledged by those on the Volga, whose rule reached to the frontier of Poland, and by the family of his brother Hulagu, whose dominion extended from the Oxus to the Arabian desert. For the first time in history the name and character of an emperor of China were familiar as far west as the Black Sea and not unknown in Europe. The Chinese seals which Kublai conferred on his kinsmen reigning at Tabriz are stamped upon their letters to the kings of France, and survive in the archives of Paris. Adventurers from Turkestan, Persia, Armenia, Byzantium, even from Venice, served him as ministers, generals, governors, envoys, astronomers or physicians; soldiers from all Asia to the Caucasus fought his battles in the south of China. Once in his old age (1287) Kublai was compelled to take the field in person against a serious revolt, raised by Nayan, a prince of his family, who held a vast domain on the borders of Manchuria. Nayan was taken and executed. The revolt had been stirred up by Kaidu, who survived his imperial rival, and died in 1301. Kublai himself died in 1294, at the age of seventy-eight.

Though a great figure in Asiatic history, and far from deserving a niche in the long gallery of Asiatic tyrants, Kublai misses a record in the short list of the good rulers. His historical locus was a happy one, for, whilst he was the first of his race to rise above the innate barbarism of the Mongols, he retained the force and warlike character of his ancestors, which vanished utterly in the effeminacy of those who came after him. He had great intelligence and a keen desire for knowledge, with apparently a good deal of natural benevolence and magnanimity. But his love of splendour, and his fruitless expeditions beyond sea, created enormous demands for money, and he shut his eyes to the character and methods of those whom he employed to raise it. A remarkable narrative of the oppressions of one of these, Ahmed of Fenāket, and of the revolt which they provoked, is given by Marco Polo, in substantial accordance with the Chinese annals.

Kublai patronized Chinese literature and culture generally. The great astronomical instruments which he caused to be made were long preserved at Peking, but were carried off to Berlin in 1900. Though he put hardly any Chinese into the first ranks of his administration, he attached many to his confidence, and was personally popular among them. Had his endeavour to procure European priests for the instruction of his people, of which we know through Marco Polo, prospered, the Roman Catholic church, which gained some ground under his successors, might have taken stronger root in China. Failing this momentary effort, Kublai probably saw in the organized force of Tibetan Buddhism the readiest instrument in the civilization of his countrymen, and that system received his special countenance. An early act of his reign had been to constitute a young lama of intelligence and learning the head of the Lamaite Church, and eventually also prince of Tibet, an act which may be regarded as a precursory form of the rule of the “grand lamas” of Lassa. The same ecclesiastic, Mati Dhwaja, was employed by Kublai to devise a special alphabet for use with the Mongol language. It was chiefly based on Tibetan forms of Nagari; some coins and inscriptions in it are extant; but it had no great vogue, and soon perished. Of the splendour of his court and entertainments, of his palaces, summer and winter, of his great hunting expeditions, of his revenues and extraordinary paper currency, of his elaborate system of posts and much else, an account is given in the book of Marco Polo, who passed many years in Kublai’s service.