Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/616

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CAZIN—CEARÁ
591

the 18th of October that year, but left behind him a valuable journal. In 1802 two native traders or pombeiros, Pedro João Baptista and Amaro José, were sent by the Portuguese on a visit to the Cazembe; and in 1831 a more extensive mission was despatched by the Portuguese governor of Sena. It consisted of Major José Monteiro and Antonio Gamitto, with an escort of 20 soldiers and 120 negro slaves as porters; but its reception by the Cazembe was not altogether satisfactory. In 1868 David Livingstone visited the Cazembe, whose capital at that time numbered no more than 1000 souls. Since 1894, when the country was divided between Britain and the Congo State, it has been thoroughly explored. An important copper mining industry is carried on in the Congo division of the territory.

See The Lands of the Cazembe, published by the Royal Geographical Society in 1873, containing translations of Lacerda and Baptista’s journals, and a résumé of Gamitto’s O Muata Cazembe (Lisbon, 1854); also Livingstone’s Last Journals (London, 1874).


CAZIN, JEAN CHARLES (1840–1901), French landscape-painter, son of a well-known doctor, F. J. Cazin (1788–1864), was born at Samer, Pas-de-Calais. After studying in France, he went to England, where he was strongly influenced by the pre-Raphaelite movement. His chief earlier pictures have a religious interest, shown in such examples as “The Flight into Egypt” (1877), or “Hagar and Ishmael” (1880, Luxembourg); and afterwards his combination of luminous landscape with figure-subjects (“Souvenir de fête,” 1881; “Journée faite,” 1888) gave him a wide repute, and made him the leader of a new school of idealistic subject-painting in France. He was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1889. His charming and poetical treatment of landscape is the feature in his painting which in later years has given them an increasing value among connoisseurs. His wife, Marie Cazin, who was his pupil and exhibited her first picture at the Salon in 1876, the same year in which Cazin himself made his début there, was also a well-known artist and sculptor.


CAZOTTE, JACQUES (1719–1792), French author, was born at Dijon, on the 17th of October 1719. He was educated by the Jesuits, and at twenty-seven he obtained a public office at Martinique, but it was not till his return to Paris in 1760 with the rank of commissioner-general that he made a public appearance as an author. His first attempts, a mock romance, and a coarse song, gained so much popularity, both in the Court and among the people, that he was encouraged to essay something more ambitious. He accordingly produced his romance, Les Prouesses inimitables d’Ollivier, marquis d’Édesse. He also wrote a number of fantastic oriental tales, such as his Mille et une fadaises, Contes à dormir debout (1742). His first success was with a “poem” in twelve cantos, and in prose intermixed with verse, entitled Ollivier (2 vols., 1762), followed in 1771 by another romance, the Lord Impromptu. But the most popular of his works was the Diable amoureux (1772), a fantastic tale in which the hero raises the devil. The value of the story lies in the picturesque setting, and the skill with which its details are carried out. Cazotte possessed extreme facility and is said to have turned off a seventh canto of Voltaire’s Guerre civile de Genève in a single night. About 1775 Cazotte embraced the views of the Illuminati, declaring himself possessed of the power of prophecy. It was upon this fact that La Harpe based his famous jeu d’esprit, in which he represents Cazotte as prophesying the most minute events of the Revolution. On the discovery of some of his letters in August 1792, Cazotte was arrested; and though he escaped for a time through the love and courage of his daughter, he was executed on the 25th of the following month.

The only complete edition is the Œuvres badines et morales, historiques et philosophiques de Jacques Cazotte (4 vols., 1816–1817), though more than one collection appeared during his lifetime. An édition de luxe of the Diable amoureux was edited (1878) by A. J. Pons, and a selection of Cazotte’s Contes, edited (1880) by Octave Uzanne, is included in the series of Petits Conteurs du XVIIIᵉ siècle. The best notice of Cazotte is in the Illuminés (1852) of Gérard de Nerval.


CEANOTHUS, in botany, a genus of the natural order Rhamnaceae, containing about forty species of shrubs or small trees, natives of North America. They are very attractive from their dense panicles of white or blue flowers, and several species are known as garden plants. The leaves of one of these, C. americanus, New Jersey tea, or red-root, are used instead of the true tea; the root, which contains a red colouring matter, has long been employed by the Indians as a febrifuge.


CEARÁ, a northern maritime state of Brazil, bounded N. by the Atlantic, E. by the Atlantic and the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Parahyba, S. by Pernambuco, and W. by Piauhy; and having an area of 40,253 sq. m. It lies partly upon the north-east slope of the great Brazilian plateau, and partly upon the sandy coastal plain. Its surface is a succession of great terraces, facing north and north-east, formed by the denudation of the ancient sandstone plateau which once covered this part of the continent; the terraces are seamed by watercourses, and their valleys are broken by hills and ranges of highlands. The latter are usually described as mountain ranges, but they are, in fact, only the remains of the ancient plateau, capped with horizontal strata of sandstone, and having a remarkably uniform altitude of 2000 to 2400 ft. The flat top of such a range is called a chapada or taboleira, and its width in places is from 32 to 56 m. The boundary line with Piauhy follows one of these ranges, the Serra de Ibiapaba, which unites with another range on the southern boundary of the state, known as the Serra do Araripe. Another range, or escarpment, crosses the state from east to west, but is broken into two principal divisions, each having several local names. These ranges are not continuous, the breaking down of the ancient plateau having been irregular and uneven. The higher ranges intercept considerable moisture from the prevailing trade winds, and their flanks and valleys are covered with forest, but the plateaus are either thinly wooded or open campo. These upland forests are of a scrubby character and are called catingas.

The sandy, coastal plain, with a width of 12 to 18 m., is nearly bare of vegetation. The rivers of the state are small and, with one or two exceptions, become completely dry in the dry season. The largest is the Jaguaribe, which flows entirely across the state in a north-east direction with an estimated length of 210 to 465 m. The year is divided into a rainy and dry season, the rains beginning in January to March and lasting until June. The dry season, July to December, is sometimes broken by slight showers in September and October, but these are of very slight importance. The soil is thin and porous and does not retain moisture, consequently the long, dry season turns the country into a barren desert, relieved only by vegetation along the river courses and mountain ranges, and by the hardy, widely-distributed carnahuba palm (Copernicia cerifera), which in places forms groves of considerable extent. Sometimes the rains fail altogether, and then a drought (sêcca) ensues, causing famine and pestilence throughout the entire region. The most destructive droughts recorded are those of 1711, 1723, 1777–1778, 1790, 1825, 1844–1845, and 1877–1878, the last-mentioned destroying nearly all the live-stock in the state, and causing the death through starvation and pestilence of nearly half-a-million people, or over half the population. The climate, which is generally described as healthful, is hot and humid on the coast, tempered by the cool trade winds; but in the more elevated regions it is very hot and dry, although the nights are cool. The sandy zone along the coast is nearly barren, but behind this is a more elevated region with broken surfaces and sandy soil which is amenable to cultivation and produces fruit and most tropical products when conditions are favourable.

The higher plateau is devoted almost exclusively to cattle-raising, once the principal industry of the state, though recurring sêccas have been an insuperable obstacle to its profitable development. There is still a considerable export of cattle, hides and skins, but no effort is made to develop the production of jerked beef on a large scale. Horses are raised to a limited extent; also goats, sheep and swine. The principal agricultural products are cotton, coffee, sugar, mandioca and tropical fruits. The production of cotton has increased largely since the development of cotton manufactures in Brazil. The natural vegetable productions are important, and include maniçoba or Ceará rubber, carnahuba wax and fibre, cajú wine and ipecacuanha.