He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1886, and subsequently to the Irish bar, though he never practised. He was a clerk in the vote office of the House of Commons before he entered parliament in 1881 as member for New Ross. From 1885 to 1891 he represented North Wexford. As party whip he rendered great service to the Irish members by his thorough grasp of the procedure of the House. At the time of the rupture of the Irish party consequent on the Parnell scandals, Redmond was the most eloquent member of the minority who continued to recognize his leadership, and in 1891 he became the accredited leader of the Parnellites. In 1900 the two Nationalist parties were amalgamated under his leadership. He contested Cork unsuccessfully in 1891, but was elected for Waterford, where he was re-elected in 1906. (For the political events under his leadership of the Irish parliamentary party up to 1910, see Ireland: History; English History and allied articles.)
REDON, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of, Ille-et-Vilaine, 45 m. S.S.W. of
Rennes by rail. Pop. (1906) 5170. Redon is situated on the
right bank of the Vilaine, above the confluence of the Oust and
on the canal from Nantes to Brest. The Church of St Sauveur,
formerly belonging to an abbey, has a Romanesque central
tower, square in form but with rounded angles. A fine tower
of the 14th century with a stone spire stands isolated from the
church, from which it was separated owing to the destruction
of part of the nave by fire in 1782. The choir, with ambulatory
and radiating chapels, forms one of the most remarkable
examples of 13th-century architecture in Brittany. The abbey
has been converted into an ecclesiastical college. Some 16th-century
timbered houses have interesting carvings. The
industries include the manufacture of emery and polish, agricultural
implements and boat-building, tanning, brewing and
flour-milling. The port is accessible at high tides for vessels
of 600 to 700 tons. Redon grew up round a monastery founded
in the first half of the 9th century. In the 14th century Jean
de Tréal, one of the abbots, surrounded the town with walls,
of which a remnant is still to be seen.
REDONDA, an island in the British West Indies. It is a dependency of Antigua, and lies 25 m. S.W. of it, in 25° 6' N.
and 61° 35' W. Pop. (1901) 120. It is a rocky mountain,
rising abruptly from the sea to a height of 1000 ft., and
has an area of ½ sq. m. It is valuable for its phosphate of
alumina (discovered in 1865), of which 7000 tons are exported
every year to the United States.
REDONDELA, a town of north-western Spain, in the province of Pontevedra; 7 m. N.E. of Vigo, in a bend of the Vigo
estuary, and at the junction of the Tuy-Vigo and Vigo-Pontevedra
railways. Pop. (1900) 10,843. The river is only accessible
for small coasting vessels; it is the headquarters of a
prosperous fishing industry. In the neighbourhood are ruins
of several medieval castles, and the fine hall of the Marquess
Vega de Armijo.
REDOUBT (Fr. redoute, from Med. Lat. reductus, a place of retreat, refuge, reducere, lead back, retire; the intrusive b is
due to the O. Fr. redoubter, to fear, Lat. dubitare, to doubt), a
term in fortification for a small closed work of plain trace,
generally used in conjunction with lines of infantry trenches
(see Fortification and Siegecraft). The term “ reduit "
(Fr. réduit), often confused with “ redoubt,” is only used for a
keep or interior refuge for the garrison of a larger work, corresponding,
on a small scale, to the citadel of a fortress.
RED RIVER, the name of two American rivers, one emptying into the Mississippi near its mouth, and the other emptying into Lake Winnipeg.
1. The Red river, sometimes called the Red River of Louisiana, is the southernmost of the large tributaries of the Mississippi. It rises in northern Texas, in the northern part of the Staked Plains, or Llano Estacado, flows E. by S. in Texas, between Texas and Oklahoma, and to Fulton, in south-western Arkansas, there turns S.E. and continues in a general southeasterly direction through Louisiana to the bank of the Mississippi, where it discharges partly into the Mississippi and partly into the Atchafalaya. Its length is estimated at 1200 m. or more; its drainage basin has an area of at least 90,000 sq. m.; and its discharge ranges from 3500 cub. ft. to 180,000 cub. ft. per second. It is somewhat saline in its upper course, and in its middle and lower course is laden with a reddish silt from which it takes its name. From an elevation on the Staked Plains of about 2450 ft., the river plunges into a canyon which is about 60 m. long and has nearly perpendicular walls of sandstone and gypsum formation 500 to 800 ft. high. Immediately below the canyon the river spreads out over a broad and sandy bed and flows for about 500 m. through a semi-arid plain. It narrows on entering the alluvial bottom lands, through which it pursues a sluggish and meandering course for the last 600 m. At high stages, from December to June, it is continually shifting its channel in this part of its course, by eroding one bank and making deposits on the other, and as the upper portion is densely wooded the falling trees, unless removed, become an obstruction to navigation. In 1828 the trees which the river had felled formed the great “ Red River raft” extending from Loggy Bayou, 65 m. below Shreveport, Louisiana, to Hurricane Bluffs, 27 m. above Shreveport. Congress began in that year to make appropriations for the removal of the raft, and by 1841 Henry M. Shreve had opened a channel. The river was neglected from 1857 to 1872 and another raft, 32 m. in length, formed above Shreveport. A channel was opened through this in 1872–73, and the complete removal of the obstruction a few years later so improved the drainage that a large tract of waste land was reclaimed. In its course through Louisiana the river has built up a flood-plain with silt deposits more rapidly than its tributaries, with the result that numerous lakes and bayous have been formed on either side, and Cypress Bayou was so flooded that boats plied between Shreveport, Louisiana and Jefferson, Texas, 45 m. apart; but with the improvement of the river these lakes have become shallow or dry. For the improvement of navigation here not only the removal of snags is necessary, but there must be dredging, closure of outlets, building of levees to narrow and deepen the channel, and revetment works to protect the banks. The cost of these works has been great (up to July 1909 more than $2,360,000 below Fulton, Arkansas, and more than $215,000 above Fulton), but they have rendered the river navigable, except at very low stages, by vessels drawing 3 ft. of water from its mouth to Fulton, Arkansas, a distance of 508.6 m., and at the highest stages,[1] in March and April, it is navigable to Denison, Texas, 292 m. farther up. The Ouachita and Black (one river), which is the principal tributary of the Red, joins it near its mouth and is navigable at high stages to Arkadelphia, Arkansas; and in 1910 a system of nine locks with movable dams was under construction by the Federal government for the purpose of securing a channel 6½ ft. deep at all stages to a point 10 m. above Camden, Arkansas, a distance of 360 m.
During the Civil War, in March and April 1864, Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks conducted a combined military and naval expedition up the Red river in an attempt to open a Federal highway to Texas, but on the 8th of April the vanguard of his army was repulsed with heavy loss at Sabine Cross-Roads by the Confederates under Lieutenant-General Richard Taylor and the expedition was abandoned; the gunboats commanded by D. D. Porter were held above Alexandria by the lowness of the river, but it was flooded by a hurriedly built dam, and they escaped.
See R. B. Marcy and G. B. McClellan, Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana (Washington, 1853), and the annual Reports of the Chief of Engineers of the U.S. Army.
2. The Red river, commonly called the Red River of the North, rises in the lake region of western Minnesota, not far from the headwaters of the Mississippi, flows north between Minnesota and North Dakota, continues northward through the Canadian province of Manitoba, and discharges into Lake Winnipeg.
It has cut a gorge 20-50 ft. deep through clay deposits through-
- ↑ The range between low water and high water at Fulton is 35–65 ft.
