The Kamakhya hills near the bank of the Brahmaputra, are about 1500 ft. high. On the summit of the highest peak is a celebrated temple of Kamakhya, the local goddess of love, where three annual festivals are held. The staple crop is rice. Tea cultivation and manufacture are carried on by European capital and under European supervision, though the soil and climate are not so favourable as in Upper Assam. The population in 1901 was 261,160, showing a decrease of 24·8% in the decade, due to the extreme unhealthiness of the climate. In the previous ten years the number of deaths recorded from fever and kala azar was 93,824. The section of the Assam-Bengal railway from Gauhati to the hills passes through part of the district, but not very near Nowgong town; and feeder roads to the stations lead from the main road that runs parallel to the Kalang river.
See Nowgong District Gazetteer (Calcutta, 1905).
NOWSHERA, or Nowshahra, a town and cantonment in Peshawar district of the North-West Frontier Province of India, situated on the right bank of the Kabul river 27 m. E. of Peshawar. Pop. (1901) 9518. It is the headquarters of a brigade in the 1st division of the northern army, and also the junction for the frontier railway that runs to the station of Mardan and continues to Dargai and Malakand on the route to Chitral.
NOY, WILLIAM (1577–1634), English jurist, was born on the family estate of Pendrea in Buryan, Cornwall, in 1577, his father belonging to a family whose pedigree is included in the visitation of Cornwall in 1620. He went to Exeter College, Oxford, but left without taking a degree. He entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1594. From 1603 until his death he was elected, with one exception, to each parliament, sitting invariably for a constituency of his native county. For several years his sympathies were in antagonism to the court party. Every commission that was appointed numbered Noy among its members, and even those who were opposed to him in politics acknowledged his learning. A few years before his death he was drawn over to the side of the court, and in October 1631 he was created attorney-general, but was never knighted. It was through his advice that the impost of ship-money was levied. Noy had long suffered from stone, and died in great agony on the 9th of August 1634; two days later he was buried at New Brentford church. His principal works are On the Grounds and Maxims of the Laws of this Kingdom (1641) and The Compleat Lawyer (1661).
NOYON, a city of N. France, in the department of Oise, 67 m. N.N.E. of Paris by the railway to Brussels. Pop. (1906) 5968. Noyon is built at the foot and on the slopes of a hill, and traversed by a small stream, the Verse, which joins the Oise 1 m. farther down. The old cathedral of Notre-Dame, constructed on the site of a church burned in 1131, is a fine example of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture. In plan it is a Latin cross, with a total length from E. to W. of about 340 ft.; the height of the nave vaulting is 75 ft. The west front has a porch, added in the 14th century, and two unfinished towers, their upper portions dating from the 13th century; its decorations have been greatly mutilated. The nave consists of eleven bays, including those of the W. front, which, in the interior, forms a kind of transept. In the windows of the aisles, the arches of the triforium, and the windows of the clerestory the round type is maintained; but double pointed arches appear in the lower gallery; and the vaults of the roof, originally six-ribbed, were rebuilt after a fire in 1293 in the prevailing Pointed style. The transepts have apsidal terminations. Side chapels were added in the N. aisle in the 14th century and in the S. aisle in the 15th and the 16th, one of the latter (15th) is especially rich in decorations. The flying buttresses of the building were restored in the 19th century in the style of the 12th century. From the N.W. corner of the nave runs the western gallery of a fine cloister erected in 1230; and next to the cloister is the chapter-house of the same date, with its entrance adorned with statues of the bishops and other sculpture. The bishops’ tombs within the cathedral were destroyed during the Revolution. The chapel of the bishops’ palace is an example of the Early Pointed style; the canons’ library was built of wood early in the 16th century; and the town-hall (Gothic and Renaissance) dates from 1485–1523. Among the town manuscripts is the Red Book or communal charter of Noyon. Remains of the Roman walls may be traced. There is a statue to Jacques Sarrazin, the painter (1592–1660), a native of the town. Noyon has good trade in grain and live-stock, and contains chemical and artificial manure works, tanneries and ironfoundries and carries on sawmilling and sugar manufacture.
Noyon, the ancient Noviomagus Veromanduorum, was Christianized by St Quentin at the close of the 3rd century; and about 530 St Medard, bishop of the district of Vermandois, transferred his see thither from St Quentin. The episcopate of St Eligius towards the middle of the 7th century, the burial of Chilperic I., the coronation of Pippin the Short in 752, and on the same occasion the coronation of his infant son Carloman with the title of king of Noyon, the coronation of Charlemagne in 768 and the election of Hugh Capet in 987, the plunder of the town by the Normans in 859 are the chief events in the history of Noyon down to the 10th century. Till the Revolution the bishopric was one of the ecclesiastical peerages of the kingdom. At the beginning of the 12th century Noyon easily obtained a communal charter through the favour of its bishops. The extent of the bishopric was considerably curtailed towards the middle of the 12th century by the breaking off of the diocese of Tournai. Noyon was ravaged by the English and the Burgundians during the Hundred Years’ War. In 1516 a truce was signed there by Francis I. and Charles V. The city was captured by the Spaniards in 1552, and afterwards by the Leaguers, who were expelled in 1594 by Henry IV. John Calvin was born at Noyon in 1509.
See A. Lefranc, Histoire de Noyon jusqu’à la fin du XIIIᵉ siècle (Paris, 1887).
NOZU, MICHITSURA, Marquess (1840–1908), Japanese field-marshal, was born in Satsuma. He fought against the Satsuma rebels in 1877, became a general in 1894 and led the Hiroshima division at the battle of Pingyang (1894). He succeeded Yamagata in the command-in-chief of the Manchurian army, and fought in that capacity throughout the China-Japan War, being raised to the rank of viscount (1895). He commanded the fourth army in the Russo-Japanese War, and received a marquessate at its close. He died in 1908.
NUBAR PASHA (1825–1899), Egyptian statesman, was born at Smyrna in January 1825, the son of an Armenian merchant named Moghreditch, who had married a relative of Boghos Bey, an influential minister of Mehemet Ali. Boghos had promised to interest himself in the future of his young relative, and at his suggestion he was sent first to Vevey, and then to Toulouse, to be educated by the Jesuits, from whom he acquired a very perfect knowledge of French, and perhaps that singular suppleness and subtlety of character by which he was mainly distinguished. Before he was eighteen he went to Egypt, and after some eighteen months' training as secretary to Boghos, who was then minister of both commerce and foreign affairs, he was made second secretary to Mehemet Ali. In 1845 he became first secretary to Ibrahim Pasha, the heir apparent, and accompanied him on a special mission to Europe. Abbas Pasha, who succeeded Ibrahim in 1848, maintained Nubar in the same capacity, and sent him in 1850 to London as his representative to resist the pretensions of the sultan, who was seeking to evade the conditions of the treaty under which Egypt was secured to the family of Mehemet Ali. Here he was so completely successful that he was made a bey; in 1853 he was sent to Vienna on a similar mission, and remained there until the death of Abbas in July 1854. The new viceroy, Said, at once dismissed him from office, but two years afterwards appointed him his chief secretary, and later gave him charge of the important transport service through Egypt to India. Here Nubar was mainly instrumental in the completion of railway communication between Cairo and Suez, and exhibited strong organising ability combined with readiness of resource. After a second time falling a victim to Said’s caprice and being dismissed, he was again sent to Vienna, and returned as
