Page:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu/1011

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
958
ANDANTE—ANDERSEN
  

the government transferred the colony to the N.E. part of Great Andaman, where a naval arsenal was to be established. With the colony the name also of Port Cornwallis was transferred to this new locality. The scheme did ill; and in 1796 the government put an end to it, owing to the great mortality and the embarrassments of maintenance. The settlers were finally removed in May 1796. In 1824 Port Cornwallis was the rendezvous of the fleet carrying the army to the first Burmese war. In 1839, Dr Helfer, a German savant employed by the Indian government, having landed in the islands, was attacked and killed. In 1844 the troop-ships “Briton” and “Runnymede” were driven ashore here, almost close together. The natives showed their usual hostility, killing all stragglers. Outrages on shipwrecked crews continued so rife that the question of occupation had to be taken up again; and in 1855 a project was formed for such a settlement, embracing a convict establishment. This was interrupted by the Indian Mutiny of 1857, but as soon as the neck of that revolt was broken, it became more urgent than ever to provide such a resource, on account of the great number of prisoners falling into British hands. Lord Canning, therefore, in November 1857, sent a commission, headed by Dr F. Mouat, to examine and report. The commission reported favourably, selecting as a site Blair’s original Port Cornwallis, but pointing out and avoiding the vicinity of a salt swamp which seemed to have been pernicious to the old colony. To avoid confusion, the name of Port Blair was given to the new settlement, which was established in the beginning of 1858. For some time sickness and mortality were excessively large, but the reclamation of swamp and clearance of jungle on an extensive scale by Colonel Henry Man when in charge (1868–1870), had a most beneficial effect, and the health of the settlement has since been notable. The Andaman colony obtained a tragical notoriety from the murder of the viceroy, the earl of Mayo, by a Mahommedan convict, when on a visit to the settlement on the 8th of February 1872. In the same year the two groups, Andaman and Nicobar, the occupation of the latter also having been forced on the British government (in 1869) by the continuance of outrage upon vessels, were united under a chief commissioner residing at Port Blair.

See Sir Richard Temple, The Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Indian Census, 1901); C. B. Kloss, In the Andamans and Nicobars (1903); E. H. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (1883); M. V. Portman, Record of the Andamanese (11 volumes MS. in India Office, London, and Home Department, Calcutta), 1893–1898, Andamanese Manual (1887), Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes (1898), and History of our Relations with the Andamanese (1899); S. Kurz, Vegetation of the Andamans (1867); G. S. Miller, Mammals of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (vol. xxiv. of the Proceedings of the National Museum, U.S.A.); A. L. Butler, “Birds of the Andamans and Nicobars” (Proc. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., vols. xii. and xiii.); and A. Alcock, A Naturalist in Indian Seas (1902).

ANDANTE (Ital. for “moving slowly,” from andare, to go), a musical term to indicate pace, coming between adagio and allegro; it is also used of an independent piece of music or of the slow movement in a sonata, symphony, &c.

ANDERIDA, an ancient Roman fort at Pevensey, near Eastbourne in Sussex (England), built about A.D. 300 as part of a scheme of land-defence against the Saxon pirates; repaired, probably by the great Stilicho, about A.D. 400; and after the Norman Conquest utilized by William the Conqueror for a Norman castle. Its massive Roman enceinte still stands but little damaged.

ANDERNACH, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the left bank of the Rhine, 10 m. N.W. of Coblenz by the main line to Cologne. Pop. (1900) 7889. Viewed from the river it makes a somewhat gloomy, though picturesque, impression, with its parish church (a basilica dating from the 12th century, with four towers), the round watch-tower on the Rhine, old walls in places 15 ft. thick, and a famous crane (erected 1554) for lading merchandise. Among other buildings are a Gothic Minorite church (now Protestant), a town hall, and a prison, formerly the castle of the archbishops of Cologne. Andernach has considerable industries, brewing and manufactures of chemicals and perfumes, and has also a trade in corn and wine. But its most notable article of commerce is that of mill-stones, made of lava and tufa-stone, a product much used by the Dutch in the construction of their dykes.

Andernach (Antunnacum) is the old Roman Castellum ante Nacum, founded by Drusus and fortified in the 3rd century A.D. In 1109 Andernach received civic rights, passed in 1167 to the electors of Cologne, in 1253 joined the confederation of the Rhine cities and was the most southern member of the Hanseatic league. Here in 1474 a treaty was signed between the emperor Frederick III., the four electors of the Rhine and France. In 1794 Andernach passed to France, but in 1815 was ceded, together with the left bank of the Rhine, to Prussia.

ANDERSEN, HANS CHRISTIAN (1805–1875), Danish poet and fabulist, was born at Odense, in Fünen, on the 2nd of April 1805. He was the son of a sickly young shoemaker of twenty-two, and his still younger wife: the whole family lived and slept in one little room. Andersen very early showed signs of imaginative temperament, which was fostered by the indulgence and superstition of his parents. In 1816 the shoemaker died and the child was left entirely to his own devices. He ceased to go to school; he built himself a little toy-theatre and sat at home making clothes for his puppets, and reading all the plays that he could borrow; among them were those of Holberg and Shakespeare. At Easter 1819 he was confirmed at the church of St Kund, Odense, and began to turn his thoughts to the future. It was thought that he was best fitted to be a tailor; but as nothing was settled, and as Andersen wished to be an opera-singer, he took matters into his own hand and started for Copenhagen in September 1819. There he was taken for a lunatic, snubbed at the theatres, and nearly reduced to starvation, but he was befriended by the musicians Christoph Weyse and Siboni, and afterwards by the poet Frederik Hoëgh Guldberg (1771–1852). His voice failed, but he was admitted as a dancing pupil at the Royal Theatre. He grew idle, and lost the favour of Guldberg, but a new patron appeared in the person of Jonas Collin, the director of the Royal Theatre, who became Andersen’s life-long friend. King Frederick VI. was interested in the strange boy and sent him for some years, free of charge, to the great grammar-school at Slagelse. Before he started for school he published his first volume, The Ghost at Palnatoke’s Grave (1822). Andersen, a very backward and unwilling pupil, actually remained at Slagelse and at another school in Elsinore until 1827; these years, he says, were the darkest and bitterest in his life. Collin at length consented to consider him educated, and Andersen came to Copenhagen. In 1829 he made a considerable success with a fantastic volume entitled A Journey on Foot from Holman’s Canal to the East Point of Amager, and he published in the same season a farce and a book of poems. He thus suddenly came into request at the moment when his friends had decided that no good thing would ever come out of his early eccentricity and vivacity. He made little further progress, however, until 1833, when he received a small travelling stipend from the king, and made the first of his long European journeys. At Le Locle, in the Jura, he wrote Agnate and the Merman; and in October 1834 he arrived in Rome. Early in 1835 Andersen’s novel, The Improvisatore, appeared, and achieved a real success; the poet’s troubles were at an end at last. In the same year, 1835, the earliest instalment of Andersen’s immortal Fairy Tales (Eventyr) was published in Copenhagen. Other parts, completing the first volume, appeared in 1836 and 1837. The value of these stories was not at first perceived, and they sold slowly. Andersen was more successful for the time being with a novel, O.T., and a volume of sketches, In Sweden; in 1837 he produced the best of his romances, Only a Fiddler. He now turned his attention, with but ephemeral success, to the theatre, but was recalled to his true genius in the charming miscellanies of 1840 and 1842, the Picture-Book without Pictures, and A Poet’s Bazaar. Meanwhile the fame of his Fairy Tales had been steadily rising; a second series began in 1838, a third in 1845. Andersen was now celebrated throughout Europe, although in Denmark itself there was still some resistance to his pretensions. In June 1847 he paid his first visit to England, and enjoyed a