Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/167

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ADE—ADE
151

1675) at Copenhagen, before the expedition set out. When in the Venetian service, Adelaar was known by the name of Curzio Suffrido Adelborst.

Adelaide, the capital of the British colony of South Australia and of the county of the same name, situated on the Torrens, seven miles from Port Adelaide, with which it is connected by railway. The river, which is spanned at this point by several bridges, divides the city into two parts—North Adelaide, the smaller of the two, but containing the chief private houses, occupying a gentle slope on the right bank; and South Adelaide, the commercial centre of the town, lying on a very level plain on the left. The streets of Adelaide are broad, and regularly laid out. Among its public buildings are the Government offices and the governor's house, the post office, the jail, five banks, the railway station, and a theatre. It is the seat of a Protestant Episcopal and also of a Roman Catholic bishop, and contains places of worship belonging to these bodies, as well as to the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Unitarians, the Baptists, and other denominations. Adelaide possesses a botanical garden, and is surrounded by extensive public grounds, known as the "Park Lands," containing over 1900 acres. It is lighted with gas, and is supplied with water from a reservoir some miles up the Torrens. The corporation consists of a mayor and eight councillors, two from each of the four wards; and there are also two auditors, a town clerk, and other officials. The chief manufactures are woollen, starch, soap, beer, flour, leather, earthenware, and iron goods. There is a good retail trade in European produce; and in the vicinity are iron and copper mines. Adelaide was founded in 1836, and incorporated in 1842. It received its name in honour of Queen Adelaide. Population, 27,208. lat. 34° 55' S., long. 138° 38' E.

Port Adelaide is situated in a low marshy position, on a small inlet of the Gulf of St Vincent. Its harbour is safe and commodious; but a bar at the mouth, where the depth of water varies with the tide from 8 to 16 feet, prevents large vessels from entering. It is a free port, and has good wharfs and warehouse accommodation. In 1867, 364 vessels of 119,654 tons arrived at, and 376 of 125,559 tons departed from, Port Adelaide. The chief imports were drapery, iron goods and machinery, beer, wine, spirits, and paper; and the exports, grain, copper and lead ores, wool, tallow, and other native products. Population, 2482.

Adelsberg, a market town of Austria, in the province of Carniola, 26 miles SW. of Laibach, and about the same distance E. of Trieste. About a mile from the town is the entrance to the famous stalactite cavern of Adelsberg, the largest and most magnificent in Europe. The cavern is divided into four grottoes, with two lateral ramifications which reach to the distance of about a mile and a half from the entrance. The river Poik enters the cavern 60 feet below its mouth, and is heard murmuring in its recesses. In the Kaiser-Ferdinand grotto, the third of the chain, a great ball is annually held on Whitmonday, when the chamber is brilliantly illuminated. The Franz-Joseph-Elisabeth grotto, the largest of the four, and the farthest from the entrance, is 665 feet in length, 640 feet in breadth, and more than 100 feet high. Besides the imposing proportions of its chambers, the cavern is remarkable for the variegated beauty of its stalactite formations, some resembling transparent drapery, others waterfalls, trees, animals, or human beings, the more grotesque being called by various fanciful appellations. These subterranean wonders were known in the Middle Ages, but the cavern remained undiscovered in modern times until 1816, and it is only in still more recent times that its vast extent has been fully ascertained and explored.

Adelung, Friedrich von, a distinguished philologist, nephew of John Christoph Adelung, was born at Stettin on the 25th February 1768. After studying philosophy and jurisprudence at Leipsic he accompanied a family to Italy, where he remained for several years. At Rome he obtained access to the Vatican library, a privilege which he utilised by collating and editing some valuable old German MSS. that had been taken from Heidelberg. On his return he became private secretary to Count Pahlen, whom he accompanied from Riga to St Petersburg. In 1803 he became instructor to the younger brothers of the Czar, the arch-dukes Nicholas and Michael, and gave such satisfaction to the empress-mother that she entrusted him with the care of her private library. In 1824 he became director of the Oriental Institute in connection with the foreign office, and in the year following president of the Academy of Sciences. He died on the 30th January 1843. Adelung's chief literary works were—a Biography of Baron Herberstein (St Petersburg, 1817), a Biography of Baron de Meyerberg (1827), a treatise on the Relations between the Sanscrit and the Russian Languages (1815), and an Essay on Sanscrit Literature (1830), a second edition of which appeared in 1837, under the title Bibliotheca Sanscrita.

Adelung, Johann Christoph, a very eminent German grammarian, philologist, and general scholar, was born at Spantekow, in Pomerania, on the 8th August 1732, and educated at the public schools of Anclam and Closterbergen, and the university of Halle. In the year 1759 he was appointed professor at the gymnasium of Erfurt, but relinquished this situation two years after, and went to reside in a private capacity at Leipsic, where he continued to devote himself for a long period to the cultivation of letters, and particularly to those extensive and laborious philological researches which proved so useful to the language and literature of his native country. In 1787 he received the appointment of principal librarian to the elector of Saxony at Dresden, with the honorary title of Aulic Counsellor. Here he continued to reside during the remainder of his life, discharging with diligence and integrity the duties of his situation, and prosecuting his laborious studies to the last with indefatigable industry and unabated zeal. Possessing a naturally robust constitution, he was able to devote, it has been said, fourteen hours daily to literary toil, down even to the period of his death. He died at Dresden on the 10th of September 1806. The life of a mere scholar is generally destitute of interest; and that of Adelung, which was spent entirely in literary seclusion, presents no variety of incident to the pen of the biographer. Of his private character and habits few memorials have been preserved, but in these few he is represented as the man of an amiable disposition. He was a lover of good cheer, and spared neither pains nor expense in procuring a variety of foreign wines, of which his cellar, which he facetiously denominated his Bibliotheca Selectissima, is said to have-contained no less than forty different kinds. His manners were easy and affable, and the habitual cheerfulness of his disposition rendered his society most acceptable to a numerous circle of friends. The writings of Adelung are very voluminous, and there is not one of them, perhaps, which does not exhibit some proofs of the genius, industry, and erudition of the author. But although his pen was usefully employed upon a variety of subjects in different departments of literature and science, it is to his philological labours that he is principally indebted for his great reputation; and no man ever devoted himself with more zeal and assiduity, or with greater success, to the improvement of his native language. In a country subdivided into so many distinct sovereign states, possessing no common political centre, and no national institution whose authority could command deference in matters of taste,—in a country whose indigenous literature was but of recent growth, and where the dialect