Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/419

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GALGĀCUS—GALICIA
401

and machinery. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,217,772, being 52.9% more than in 1900. Galesburg was named in honour of the Rev. George Washington Gale (1789–1862), a prominent Presbyterian preacher, who in 1827–1834 had founded the Oneida Manual Labor Institute at Whitestown, Oneida county, New York. Desiring to establish a college in the Mississippi Valley to supply “an evangelical and able ministry” to “spread the Gospel throughout the world,” and also wishing to counteract the influence of pro-slavery men in Illinois, he interested a number of people in the project, formed a society for colonization, and in 1836 led the first settlers to Galesburg, the “Mesopotamia in the West.” Knox College was founded to fulfil his educational purpose. Galesburg was an important “station” of the Underground Railroad, one of the conditions of membership in the “Presbyterian Church of Galesburg” (the name of Mr Gale’s society) being opposition to slavery; and in 1855 this caused the church to withdraw from the Presbytery. Galesburg was chartered as a city in 1857. On the 7th of October 1858 one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates was held in the grounds of Knox College.


GALGĀCUS, or perhaps rather Calgācus, a Caledonian chief who led the tribes of North Britain against the invading Roman army under Cn. Julius Agricola about A.D. 85 and was defeated at the battle of Mons Graupius (Tac. Agric. 29). The name recurs much later, in Adamnan’s Life of Columba, in the name of a wood near Londonderry, Daire-Calgaich or Roboretum Calgachi, “the wood of Calgacus”: it may be Celtic and denote “the man with the sword.”


GALIANI, FERDINANDO (1728–1787), Italian economist, was born at Chieti on the 2nd of December 1728. He was carefully educated by his uncle Monsignor C. Galiani at Naples and Rome with a view to entering the Church. Galiani gave early promise of distinction as an economist, and even more as a wit. At the age of twenty-two, after he had taken orders, he had produced two works by which his name became widely known far beyond the bounds of his own Naples. The one, his Trattato della moneta, in which he shows himself a strong supporter of the mercantile school, deals with many aspects of the question of exchange, but always with a special reference to the state of confusion then presented by the whole monetary system of the Neapolitan government. The other, Raccolta in Morte del Boia, established his fame as a humorist, and was highly popular in Italian literary circles at the end of the 18th century. In this volume Galiani parodied with exquisite felicity, in a series of discourses on the death of the public hangman, the styles of the most pompous and pedantic Neapolitan writers of the day. Galiani’s political knowledge and social qualities now pointed him out to the discriminating eye of King Charles, afterwards Charles III. of Spain, and his liberal minister Tanucci, and he was appointed in 1759 secretary to the Neapolitan embassy at Paris. This post he held for ten years, when he returned to Naples and was made a councillor of the tribunal of commerce, and in 1777, minister of the royal domains. His economic reputation was made by a book written in French and published in Paris, namely, his Dialogues sur le commerce des blés. This work, by its light and pleasing style, and the vivacious wit with which it abounded, delighted Voltaire, who spoke of it as a book in the production of which Plato and Molière might have been combined! The author, says Pecchio, treated his arid subject as Fontenelle did the vortices of Descartes, or Algarotti the Newtonian system of the world. The question at issue was that of the freedom of the corn trade, then much agitated, and, in particular, the policy of the royal edict of 1764, which permitted the exportation of grain so long as the price had not arrived at a certain height. The general principle he maintains is that the best system in regard to this trade is to have no system—countries differently circumstanced requiring, according to him, different modes of treatment. He fell, however, into some of the most serious errors of the mercantilists—holding, as indeed did also Voltaire and even Verri, that one country cannot gain without another losing, and in his earlier treatise going so far as to defend the action of governments in debasing the currency. Until his death at Naples on the 30th of October 1787, Galiani kept up with his old Parisian friends a correspondence, which was published in 1818.

See L’Abate Galiani, by Alberto Marghieri (1878), and his correspondence with Tanucci in Viesseux’s L’Archivio storico (Florence, 1878).


GALICIA (Ger. Galizien; Pol. Halicz), a crownland of Austria, bounded E. and N. by Russia, S. by Bukovina and Hungary, and W. by Austrian and Prussian Silesia. It has an area of 30,299 sq. m., and is the largest Austrian province. It comprises the old kingdoms of Galicia and Lodomeria, the duchies of Auschwitz and Zator, and the grand duchy of Cracow.

Galicia lies on the northern slopes of the Carpathians, which with their offshoots cover about a third of the whole area of the country. The surface gradually sinks down by undulating terraces to the valleys of the Vistula and Dniester. To the N. and E. of these rivers Galicia forms a continuation of the great plains of Russia, intersected only by a few hills, which descend from the plateaus of Poland and Podolia, and which attain in some places an altitude of 1300 to 1500 ft. The Carpathians, which, extending in the form of an arc, form the boundary between Galicia and Hungary, are divided into the West and the East Beskides, which are separated by the northern ramifications of the massif of the Tatra. The highest peaks are the Babia Góra (5650 ft.), the Wolowiec (6773 ft.) and the Cserna Góra (6505 ft.). The principal passes are those of Zdjar over the Tatra, and of Dukla, Vereczke Körösmezö or Delatyn in the East Beskides. The river Vistula, which becomes navigable at Cracow, and forms afterwards the north-western frontier of Galicia, receives the Sola, the Skawa, the Raba, the Dunajec with its affluents the Poprad and the Biala, the Wisloka, the San and the Bug. The Dniester, which rises in the Carpathians, within the territory of Galicia, becomes navigable at Sambor, and receives on the right the Stryj, the Swica, the Lomnica and the Bystrzyca, and on the left the Lipa, the Strypa, the Sereth and the Zbrucz, the boundary river towards Russia. The Pruth, which also rises in the Carpathians, within the territory of Galicia, traverses its south-eastern corner and receives the Czeremosz, the boundary river towards Bukovina. There are few lakes in the country except mountain tarns; but considerable morasses exist about the Upper Dneister, the Vistula and the San, while the ponds or dams in the Podolian valleys are estimated to cover an area of over 200 sq. m. The most frequented mineral springs are the alkaline springs at Szczawnica and Krynica, the sulphur springs at Krzesowice, Szklo and Lubian, and the iodine springs at Iwonicz.

Exposed to the cold northern and north-eastern winds, and shut out by the Carpathians from the warm southerly winds, Galicia has the severest climate in Austria. It has long winters, with an abundant snowfall, short and wet springs, hot summers and long and steady autumns. The mean annual temperature at Lemberg is 46.2° F., and at Tarnopol only 43° F.

Of the total area 48.45% is occupied by arable land, 11.16% by meadows, 9.19% by pastures, 1.39% by gardens and 25.76% by forests. The soil is generally fertile, but agriculture is still backward. The principal products are barley, oats, rye, wheat, maize and leguminous plants. Galicia has the largest area under potatoes and legumes in the whole of Austria, and hemp, flax, tobacco and hops are of considerable importance. The principal mineral products are salt, coal and petroleum. Salt is extracted at Wieliczka, Bochnia, Bolechow, Dolina, Kalusz and Kosow. Coals are found in the Cracow district at Jaworzno, at Siersza near Trzebinia and at Dabrowa. Some of the richest petroleum fields in Europe are spread in the region of the Carpathians, and are worked at Boryslaw and Schodnica near Drohobycz, Bobrka and Potok near Krosno, Sloboda-Rungurska near Kolomea, &c. Great quantities of ozocerite are also extracted in the petroliferous region of the Carpathians. Other mineral products are zinc, extracted at Trzebionka and Wodna in the Cracow region, amounting to 40% of the total zinc production in Austria, iron ore, marble and various stones for construction. The sulphur mines of Swoszowice near Cracow, which had been worked since 1598, were abandoned in 1884.