The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Abbeville

ABBEVILLE, France, ab-vēl (“abbey-town,” of St. Riquier's), capital of Abbeville arrondissement, dept. Somme; 28 miles north-west of Amiens on both banks of the Somme and an island in it, 12 miles from its mouth and head of navigation (at high tide vessels of 150 to 200 tons can reach it) connected by canals with Amiens (25 miles distant), Lille, Paris, and Belgium; on the Northern Ry. It is an old, narrow-streeted, picturesque town, with strong fortifications on Vauban's system; has a wonderfully fine church of the flamboyant order, St. Wolfran's, begun under Louis XII (1462–1515), a very interesting city hall built in 1209, and a library of 1690 now containing 45,000 volumes. It manufactures jewelry, soaps, glassware, and various fabrics, as velvets, cottons, linens, etc. But its chief interest to the foreign world is for the relics and implements of primitive man (the cave-dweller) and the fossils of extinct animals found in its neighborhood. Pop. (1914) 20,373.