and Daniel Brent, Biographical Sketch of the Most Rev. John Carroll, First Archbishop of Baltimore, with Select Portions of His Writings, edited by John Carroll Brent (Baltimore, 1843).
CARRONADE, a piece of ordnance invented, by the application of an old principle of gun construction, to serve as a ship’s gun. The inventor was the antiquary General Robert Melville (1728–1809). He designed the piece in 1759, and called it the “smasher,” but it was not adopted in the British navy till 1779, and was then known as the “carronade,” from the Carron works on the Carron river in Stirlingshire, Scotland, where it was first cast by Mr Gascoigne. The carronade had a powder chamber like many of the earliest guns known, and was similar to a mortar. It was short, light, had a limited range, but was destructive at close quarters. Carronades were added to the existing armaments of guns proper or long guns. A 38-gun frigate carried ten carronades, and was therefore armed with 48 pieces of ordnance. As the official classifications were not changed, they were misleading guides to the real strength of British ships, which always carried more pieces than they were described as carrying. The same remark applies to French and American ships when the use of the carronade extended from the British to other navies.
CARROT. Wild carrot, Daucus carota, a member of the natural order Umbelliferae, grows wild in fields and on roadsides and sea-shores in Britain and the north temperate zone generally of the Old World. It is an annual and resembles the cultivated carrot, except in the root, which is thin and woody. It is the origin of the cultivated carrot, which can be developed from it in a few generations. M. Vilmorin succeeded in producing forms with thick fleshy roots and the biennial habit in four generations. In the cultivated carrot, during the first season of growth, the stem remains short and bears a rosette of graceful, long-stalked, branched leaves with deeply cut divisions and small, narrow ultimate segments. During this period the plant devotes its energies to storing food, chiefly sugar, in the so-called root, which consists of the upper part of the true root and the short portion of the stem between the root and the lowest leaves. A transverse section of the root shows a central core, generally yellow in colour, and an outer red or scarlet rind. The core represents the wood of an ordinary stem and the outer ring the soft outer tissue (bast and cortex). In the second season the terminal bud in the centre of the leaf-rosette grows at the expense of the stored nourishment and lengthens to form a furrowed, rather rough, branched stem, 2 or 3 ft. high, and bearing the flowers in a compound umbel. The umbel is characterized by the fact that the small leaves (bracts) which surround it, resemble the foliage leaves on a much reduced scale, and ultimately curve inwards, the whole inflorescence forming a nest-like structure. The flowers are small, the outer white, the central ones often pink or purplish. The fruit consists of two one-seeded portions, each portion bearing four rows of stiff spinous projections, which cause the fruits when dropped to cling together, and in a natural condition help to spread the seed by clinging to the fur of animals. On account of these projections the seeds cannot be sown evenly without previous rubbing with sand or dry ashes to separate them. As usual in the members of the order Umbelliferae, the wall of the fruit is penetrated lengthwise by canals containing a characteristic oil.
Carrots vary considerably in the length, shape and colour of their roots, and in the proportion of rind to core. The White Belgian, which gives the largest crops, has a very thick root which is white, becoming pale green above, where it projects above ground. For nutritive purposes it is inferior to the red varieties. The carrot delights in a deep sandy soil, which should be well drained and deeply trenched. The ground should be prepared and manured in autumn or winter. For the long-rooted sorts the soil should be at least 3 ft. deep, but the Short Horn varieties may be grown in about 6 in. of good compost laid on the top of a less suitable soil. Peat earth may be usefully employed in lightening the soil. Good carrots of the larger sorts may be grown in unfavourable soils by making large holes 18 in. deep with a crowbar, and filling them up with sandy compost in which the seeds are to be sown. The main crop is sown at the end of March or beginning of April. After sowing, it is only necessary to thin the plants, and keep them clear of weeds. The roots are taken up in autumn and stored during winter in a cool shed or cellar.
CARRYING OVER, or Continuation, a stock exchange term for the operation by which the settlement of a bargain transacted for money or for a given account, may for a consideration (called either a “contango” or a “backwardation”) be postponed from one settling day to another. Such a continuation is equivalent to a sale “for the day” and a repurchase for the succeeding account, or to a purchase “for the day” and a resale for the succeeding account. The price at which such transactions are adjusted is the “making-up” price of the day. (See
Account and Stock Exchange.)
CARSIOLI (mod. Carsoli), an ancient city of Italy, on the Via Valeria, 42 m. E. by N. of Rome. It was founded in the country of the Aequi between 302 and 298 B.C., just after the establishment of Alba Fucens, no doubt as a stronghold to guard the road to the latter. It is mentioned in 211 B.C. as one of the twelve out of thirty Latin colonies which protested their inability to furnish more men or money for the war against Hannibal. We find it used in 168 B.C. like Alba Fucens as a place of confinement for political prisoners. It was sacked in the Social War, but probably became a municipium after it, though we hear but little of it. The modern town of Carsoli first appears in a diploma of
A.D. 866, but the old site does not seem to have been abandoned until the 13th century. It is now occupied only by vineyards, and lies about 2100 ft. above sea-level, in a plain surrounded by mountains, now called Piano del Cavaliere. The line of the city walls (originally in tufa, and reconstructed in limestone), built of rectangular blocks, can be traced, and so can the scanty remains of several buildings, including the podium or base, of a temple, and also the ancient branch road from the Via Valeria (which itself keeps just south-east of Carsioli), traversing the site from north to south. The forty-third milestone of the Via Valeria still lies at or near its original site; it was set up by Nerva in A.D. 97. One mile to the north-west of Carsioli are the remains of an ancient aqueduct consisting of a buttressed wall of concrete crossing a valley.
See G. J. Pfeiffer and T. Ashby in Supplementary Papers of the American School in Rome, i. (1905), 108 seq. (T. As.)
CARSON, CHRISTOPHER [“Kit”] (1809–1868), American hunter and scout, was born in Madison county, Kentucky, on the 24th of December 1809. When he was a year old his parents removed to Howard county, Missouri, then a frontier settlement, and the boy was early trained in the hardships and requirements of pioneer life. He served for a while as a saddler’s apprentice, and after 1826 devoted himself to the life of a professional guide and hunter. He was hunter for the garrison at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas river in what is now Bent county, Colorado, from 1832 to 1840, and accompanied John C. Frémont on his exploring expeditions of 1842 and 1843–1844, and on his California expedition in 1845–1846. Carson took part in the Mexican War, and, after the rush to the Pacific Coast began, engaged as a guide to convoy emigrants and drovers across the plains and mountains. In 1854 he became Indian agent at Taos, New Mexico, in which position, through his knowledge of the Indian traits and language, he was able to exercise for many years a restraining influence over the warlike Apaches and other tribes. During the Civil War he rendered invaluable services to the Federal cause in the south-west as chief scout in charge of the various bodies of irregular scouts and rangers participating in the constant border warfare that characterized the conflict in that part of the Union. In March 1865 he was breveted brigadier-general of volunteers for gallantry in the battle of Valverde (on the 21st of February 1862) and for distinguished services in New Mexico, and after the war resumed his position as Indian agent, which he held until his death at Fort Lyon, Colorado, on the 23rd of May 1868. “Kit” Carson occupies in the latter period of American pioneer history a position somewhat similar to that held by Daniel Boone and David Crockett at an earlier period, as the typical frontier
