Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/795

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
772
BULDANA—BULGARIA
  

west. Those going east and west are called avenues and are numbered, those running north and south are called streets and are named. Through the centre of Market Square runs Rhodes Street. There are many handsome public and private buildings. In front of the stock exchange is a monument in memory of the 257 settlers killed in the Matabele rebellion of 1896, and at the junction of two of the principal streets is a colossal bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes. East of the town is a large park and botanical gardens, beyond which is a residential suburb. The railway station and water and electric supply works are in the south-west quarter. An avenue 130 ft. broad and nearly 11/2 m. long, planted throughout its length with trees, leads from the town to Government House, which is built on the site of Lobengula’s royal kraal. The tree under which that chieftain sat when giving judgment has been preserved. A number of gold reefs intersect the surrounding district and in some of the reefs gold is mined. South-south-east of the town are the Matoppo Hills. In a grave in one of these hills, 33 m. from Bulawayo, Rhodes is buried.

The “Place of Slaughter,” as the Zulu word Bulawayo is interpreted, was founded about 1838 by Lobengula’s father, Mosilikatze, some distance south of the present town, and continued to be the royal residence till its occupation by the British South Africa Company’s forces in November 1893, when a new town was founded. Four years later the railway connecting it with Cape Town was completed (see Rhodesia).

BULDANA, a town and district of India, in Berar. The town had a population in 1901 of 4137. The district has an area of 3662 sq. m. The southern part forms a portion of Berar Balaghat or Berar—above the Ghats. Here the general contour of the country may be described as a succession of small plateaus decreasing in elevation to the extreme south. Towards the eastern side of the district the country assumes more the character of undulating high lands, favoured with soil of a good quality. A succession of plateaus descends from the highest ridges on the north to the south, where a series of small ghats march with the nizam’s territory. The small fertile valleys between the plateaus are watered by streams during the greater portion of the year, while wells of particularly good and pure water are numerous. These valleys are favourite village sites. The north portion of the district occupies the rich valley of the Purna. The district is rich in agricultural produce; in a seasonable year a many-coloured sheet of cultivation, almost without a break, covers the valley of the Purna. In the Balaghat also the crops are very fine. Situated as the district is in the neighbourhood of the great cotton market of Khamgaon, and nearer to Bombay than the other Berar districts, markets for its agricultural produce on favourable terms are easily found. In 1901 the population was 423,616, showing a decrease of 12% in the decade due to the effects of famine. The district was reconstituted, and given an additional area of 853 sq. m. in 1905; the population on the enlarged area in 1901 was 613,756. The only manufacture is cotton cloth. Cotton, wheat and oil-seeds are largely exported. The Nagpur line of the Great Indian Peninsula railway runs through the north of the district. The most important place of trade is Malkapur—pop. (1901) 13,112—with several factories for ginning and pressing cotton.

BULDUR, or Burdur, chief town of a sanjak of the Konia vilayet in Asia Minor. It is called by the Christians Polydorion. Its altitude is 3150 ft. and it is situated in the midst of gardens, about 2 m. from the brackish lake, Buldur Geul (anc. Ascania Limne). Linen-weaving and leather-tanning are the principal industries. There is a good carriage road to Dineir, by which much grain is sent from the Buldur plain, and a railway connects it with Dineir and Egirdir. Pop. 12,000.

BULFINCH, CHARLES (1763–1844), American architect, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 8th of August 1763, the son of Thomas Bulfinch, a prominent and wealthy physician. He was educated at the Boston Latin school and at Harvard, where he graduated in 1781, and after several years of travel and study in Europe, settled in 1787 in Boston, where he was the first to practise as a professional architect. Among his early works were the old Federal Street theatre (1793), the first play-house in New England, and the “new” State House (1798). For more than twenty-five years he was the most active architect in Boston, and at the same time took a leading part in the public life of the city. As chairman of the board of selectmen for twenty-one years (1797–1818), an important position which made him practically chief magistrate, he exerted a strong influence in modernizing Boston, in providing for new systems of drainage and street-lighting, in reorganizing the police and fire departments, and in straightening and widening the streets. He was one of the promoters in 1787 of the voyage of the ship “Columbia,” which under command of Captain Robert Gray (1755–1806) was the first to carry the American flag round the world. In 1818 Bulfinch succeeded B. H. Latrobe (1764–1820) as architect of the National Capitol at Washington. He completed the unfinished wings and central portion, constructing the rotunda from plans of his own after suggestions of his predecessor, and designed the new western approach and portico. In 1830 he returned to Boston, where he died on the 15th of April 1844. Bulfinch’s work was marked by sincerity, simplicity, refinement of taste and an entire freedom from affectation, and it greatly influenced American architecture in the early formative period. His son, Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch (1809–1870), was a well-known Unitarian clergyman and author.

See The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch (Boston, 1896), edited by his grand-daughter, and “The Architects of the American Capitol,” by James Q. Howard, in The International Review, vol. i. (New York, 1874).

BULGARIA, a kingdom of south-eastern Europe, situated in the north-east of the Balkan Peninsula, and on the Black Sea. From 1878 until the 5th of October 1908, Bulgaria was an autonomous and tributary principality, under the suzerainty of the sultan of Turkey. The area of the kingdom amounts to 37,240 sq. m., and comprises the territories between the Balkan chain and the river Danube; the province of Eastern Rumelia, lying south of the Balkans; and the western highlands of Kiustendil, Samakov, Sofia and Trn. Bulgaria is bounded on the N. by the Danube, from its confluence with the Timok to the eastern suburbs of Silistria whence a line, forming the Rumanian frontier, is drawn to a point on the Black Sea coast 10 m. S. of Mangalia. On the E. it is washed by the Black Sea; on the S. the Turkish frontier, starting from a point on the coast about 12 m. S. of Sozopolis, runs in a south-westerly direction, crossing the river Maritza at Mustafa Pasha, and reaching the Arda at Adakali. The line laid down by the Berlin Treaty (1878) ascended the Arda to Ishiklar, thence following the crest of Rhodope to the westwards, but the cantons of Krjali and Rupchus included in this boundary were restored to Turkey in 1886. The present frontier, passing to the north of these districts, reaches the watershed of Rhodope a little north of the Dospat valley, and then follows the crest of the Rilska Planina to the summit of Tchrni Vrkh, where the Servian, Turkish and Bulgarian territories meet. From this point the western or Servian frontier passes northwards, leaving Trn to the east and Pirot to the west, reaching the Timok near Kula, and following the course of that river to its junction with the Danube. The Berlin Treaty boundary was far from corresponding with the ethnological limits of the Bulgarian race, which were more accurately defined by the abrogated treaty of San Stefano (see below, under History). A considerable portion of Macedonia, the districts of Pirot and Vranya belonging to Servia, the northern half of the vilayet of Adrianople, and large tracts of the Dobrudja, are, according to the best and most impartial authorities, mainly inhabited by a Bulgarian population.

Physical Features.—The most striking physical features are two mountain-chains; the Balkans, which run east and west through the heart of the country; and Rhodope, which, for a considerable distance, forms its southern boundary. The Balkans constitute the southern half of the great semicircular range known as the anti-Dacian system, of which the Carpathians form the northern portion. This great chain is sundered at the Iron Gates by the passage of the Danube; its two component parts present many points of resemblance in their aspect and outline, geological formation and flora. The Balkans (ancient Haemus) run almost parallel to the Danube,