Part 337 (2/2)
PALO ALTO, 33 m. SE. of San Francisco; is the seat of a remarkable university founded by Senator Stanford, and opened in 1891, to provide instruction, from the Kindergarten stage to the most advanced and varied, to students and pupils boarded on the premises; of these there were 1000 in 1897.
PALUDAN-MuLLER, FREDERICK, distinguished Danish poet, born in Funen; his greatest poem, ”Adam h.o.m.o,” a didactico-humorous composition; was an earnest man and a finished literary artist (1809-1876).
PAMELA, a novel of Richardson's, from the name of the heroine, a girl of low degree, who resists temptation and reclaims her would-be seducer.
PAMIRS, THE, or the ”Roof of the World,” a plateau traversed by mountain ridges and valleys, of the average height of 13,000 ft., NW. of the plateau of Thibet, connecting the mountain system of the Himalayas, Tian-Shan, and the Hindu Kush, and inhabited chiefly by nomad Kirghiz bands; territorial apportionments have for some time past been in the hands of Russian and British diplomatists.
PAMPAS, vast gra.s.sy, treeless, nearly level plains in South America, in the Argentine State; they stretch from the lower Parana to the S. of Buenos Ayres; afford rich pasture for large herds of wild horses and cattle, and are now in certain parts being brought under tillage.
PAMPELUNA or PAMPLONA (31), a fortified city of Northern Spain, is 80 m. due SE. of Bilbao. It has a Gothic cathedral and a surgical college, with manufactures of pottery and leather, and a trade in wine.
Formerly capital of Navarre, it has suffered much in war; has this century several times resisted the Carlists.
PAN, in the Greek mythology a goat-man, a personification of rude nature, and the protector of flocks and herds; originally an Arcadian deity, is represented as playing on a flute of reeds joined together of different lengths, called Pan's pipes; and dancing on his cloven hoofs over glades and mountains escorted by a bevy of nymphs side by side, and playing on his pipes. There is a remarkable tradition, that on the night of the Nativity at Bethlehem an astonished voyager heard a voice exclaiming as he pa.s.sed the promontory of Tarentum, ”The great Pan is dead.” The modern devil is invested with some of his attributes, such as cloven hoofs, &c.
PANAMA (15), a free port in the State of Colombia, on the Pacific coast of the isthmus of the same name, and an oppressively hot and humid place, is the terminus of the Panama railroad and the seat of a great transit trade. It has a Spanish cathedral. The population, of Indian and negro descent chiefly, is only half what it was when the ca.n.a.l works were in full operation.
PANAMA Ca.n.a.l Geographers were familiar with the idea of connecting the two oceans by a ca.n.a.l through Central America as early as the beginning of the 16th century, and Dutch plans are said to exist dating from the 17th century. The first practical steps were taken by Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1879; two years later work was begun; the cost was estimated at 24,000,000, but on January 1, 1889, the company was forced into liquidation after spending over 70,000,000, and accomplis.h.i.+ng but a fifth of the work. Extravagance and incapacity were alleged among the causes of failure; but the apparently insurmountable difficulties were marshes, quicksands, and the overflow of the Chagres River, the prevalence of earthquakes, the length of the rainy season, the cost of labour and living, and the extreme unhealthiness of the climate.
PANATHENaeA, a festival, or rather two festivals, the Lesser and the Greater, anciently celebrated at Athens in honour of Athena, the patron-G.o.ddess of the city.
PANCHATANTRA, an old collection of fables and stories originally in Sanskrit, and versions of which have pa.s.sed into all the languages of India, have appeared in different forms, and been a.s.sociated with different names.
PANCRAS, ST., a boy martyr of 16, who suffered under the Diocletian persecution about 304, and is variously represented in mediaeval legend as bearing a stone and sword, or a palm branch, and trampling a Saracen under foot, in allusion to his hatred of heathenism.
PANDECTS, the digest of civil law executed at the instance of the Emperor Justinian between the years 530 and 533.
PANDORA (i. e. the All-Gifted) in the Greek mythology a woman of surpa.s.sing beauty, fas.h.i.+oned by Hephaestos, and endowed with every gift and all graces by Athena, sent by Zeus to EPIMETHEUS (q. v.) to avenge the wrong done to the G.o.ds by his brother Prometheus, bearing with her a box full of all forms of evil, which Epimetheus, though cautioned by his brother, pried into when she left, to the escape of the contents all over the earth in winged flight, Hope alone remaining behind in the casket.
PANDOURS, a name given to a body of light-infantry at one time in the Austrian service, levied among the Slavs on the Turkish frontier, and now incorporated as a division of the regular army.
<script>