immediately to the west and south of its port, which disputes with Bordeaux the rank of third in importance in France. The populous suburbs of Rosendaël and St Pol-sur-Mer lie respectively to the east and west of the town; to the north-east is the bathing resort of Malo-les-Bains. The streets of Dunkirk are wide and well paved, the chief of them converging to the square named after Jean Bart (born at Dunkirk in 1651), whose statue by David d’Angers stands at its centre. Close to the Place Jean Bart rises the belfry (290 ft. high) which contains a fine peal of bells and also serves as a signalling tower. It was once the western tower of the church of St Eloi, from which it is now separated by a street. St Eloi, erected about 1560 in the Gothic style, was deprived of its first two bays in the 18th century; the present façade dates from 1889. The chapel of Notre-Dame des Dunes possesses a small image, which is the object of a well-known pilgrimage. The chief civil buildings are a large Chamber of Commerce, including the customs and port services, and a fine modern town hall. Dunkirk is the seat of a sub-prefect; its public institutions include tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, an exchange, a branch of the Bank of France and a communal college; and it has a school of drawing, architecture and music, a library and a rich museum of paintings. Dunkirk forms with Bergues, Bourbourg and Gravelines a group of fortresses enclosed by inundations and canals. A chain of forts to the eastward is designed to facilitate the deployment of an army, concentrated within the fortified region, towards the Belgian frontier.
The harbour of Dunkirk (see Dock) is approached by a fine natural roadstead entered on the east and west, and protected on the north by sand-banks. From the roadstead, entrance is by a channel into the outer harbour, which communicates with seven floating basins about 115 acres in area and is accessible to the largest vessels. The port is provided with four dry docks and a gridiron, and its quays exceed 5 m. in length. Its commerce is much facilitated by the system of canals which bring it into communication with Belgium, the coal-basins of Nord and Pas-de-Calais, the rich agricultural regions of Flanders and Artois, and the industrial towns of Lille, Armentières, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Valenciennes, &c. The roadstead is indicated by lightships and the entrance channel to the port by a lighthouse which, at an altitude of 193 ft., is visible at a distance of 19 m.
Dunkirk annually despatches a fleet to the Icelandic cod-fisheries, and takes part in the herring and other fisheries. It imports great quantities of wool from the Argentine and Australia, and is in regular communication with New York, London and the chief ports of the United Kingdom, Brazil and the far East. Besides wool, leading imports are jute, cotton, flax, timber, petroleum, coal, pitch, wine, cereals, oil-seeds and oil-cake, nitrate of soda and other chemical products, and metals. The principal exports are sugar, coal, cereals, wool, forage, cement, chalk, phosphates, iron and steel, tools and metal-goods, thread and vegetables. The average annual value of the imports for the years 1901–1905 was £23,926,000 (£22,287,000 for 1896–1900), of exports £6,369,000 (£4,481,000 for 1896–1900). The industries include the spinning of jute, flax, hemp and cotton, iron-founding, brewing, and the manufacture of machinery, fishing-nets, sailcloth, sacks, casks, and soap. There are also saw- and flour-mills, petroleum refineries and oil-works. Ship-building is carried on, and the preparation of fish and cod-liver oil occupies many hands.
Dunkirk is said to have originated in a chapel founded by St Eloi in the 7th century, round which a small village speedily sprang up. In the 10th century it was fortified by Baldwin III., count of Flanders; together with that province it passed successively to Burgundy, Austria and Spain. In the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries its possession was disputed by French and Spaniards. In 1658 Turenne’s victory of the Dunes (q.v.) gave it into the hands of the French and it was ceded to England. After the Restoration, Charles II., being in money difficulties, sold it to the French king Louis XIV., who fortified it. By the terms of the peace of Utrecht (1713) the fortifications were demolished and its harbour filled up, a sacrifice demanded by England owing to the damage inflicted on her shipping by Jean Bart and other corsairs of the port. In 1793 it was besieged by the English under Frederick Augustus, duke of York, who was compelled to retire after the defeat of Hondschoote.
See A. de St Leger, La Flandre maritime et Dunkerque (Paris, 1900).
DUNKIRK, a city and a port of entry of Chautauqua county, New York, U.S.A., on the S. shore of Lake Erie, 40 m. S.W. of Buffalo. Pop. (1890) 9416; (1900) 11,616, of whom 3338 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 17,221. The city is served by the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the New York, Chicago & St Louis, and the Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley & Pittsburg railways, by the electric line of the Buffalo & Lake Erie Traction Co., and by several lines of freight and passenger steamships. Dunkirk is attractively situated high above the lake, and has several parks, including Point Gratiot and Washington; in the city are the Dunkirk free library, the Brooks Memorial hospital (1891), and St Mary’s academy. The city lies in an agricultural and grape-growing region, and has a fine harbour and an extensive lake trade; the manufactures include locomotives, radiators, lumber, springs, shirts, axes, wagons, steel, silk gloves and concrete blocks. The value of factory products increased from $5,225,996 in 1900 to $9,909,260 in 1905, or 89·6%. Large numbers of food-fish are caught in the lake. The municipality owns and operates the water works and the electric lighting plant. Dunkirk was first settled about 1805. It was incorporated as a village in 1837, and was chartered as a city in 1880.
DUNLOP, JOHN COLIN (1785–1842), Scottish man of letters, was born on the 30th of December 1785. In 1816 he became sheriff of Renfrewshire, and retained this office until his death at Edinburgh, on the 26th of January (according to others, in February) 1842. The work by which he is best known, and which will always hold an honourable place in English literature, is his History of Fiction (1814; new edition, 1888, with notes by H. Wilson, in Bohn’s “Standard Library”). In spite of the somewhat contemptuous notices in Blackwood’s Magazine (September 1824) and the Quarterly Review (July 1815), it may be pronounced the best book on the subject in English. F. Liebrecht, by whom it was translated into German (1851) with valuable notes, describes it as the only work of its kind. Dunlop was also the author of A History of Roman Literature (1823–1828), and of Memoirs of Spain during the Reigns of Philip IV. and Charles II. (1834).
DUNMORE, a borough of Lackawanna county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., adjoining Scranton on the N.E. and about 20 m. N.E. of Wilkesbarre. Pop. (1890) 8315; (1900) 12,583, of whom 3103 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 17,615. It is served by the Erie, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, and the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley (electric) railways. Its chief industry is the mining of anthracite coal; the principal establishments are railway repair shops, which in 1905 gave employment to 48·9% of all wage-earners engaged in manufacturing. Among the borough’s manufactures are stoves and furnaces, malt liquors and silk. Dunmore is the seat of the state oral school for the deaf. The town was first settled in 1783 and was incorporated in 1862. Its growth was accelerated by the establishment here, in 1863, of the shops of the railway from Pittston to Hawley built in 1849–1850 by the Pennsylvania Coal Company. Dunmore became a station of the Scranton post office in 1902.
DUNMOW (properly Great Dunmow), a market town in the Epping (W.) parliamentary division of Essex, England, on the river Chelmer, 40 m. N.E. by N. from London on a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2704. The church of St Mary is Decorated and Perpendicular. The town was corporate from the 16th century until 1886. Roman remains have been discovered. Two miles E. is the village of Little Dunmow, formerly the seat of a priory, remarkable for the custom of presenting a flitch of bacon to any couple who could give proof that they had spent the first year of married life in perfect harmony, and had never at any moment wished they had tarried. In place of the monastic judicature a jury of six bachelors and six maidens appear in the 16th century. A
