See Key, a ledge.
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Cayenne
Encyclopedia Britannica
CAYENNE, an island of South America. See Guiana....
CAYENNE, a seaport town, and the capital of French Guiana, on the north-west extremity of the island of Cayenne, and near the mouth of the river of that name, in 4° 56' 5'' N. 1at. and 52° 20' W. long. The town forms an almost perfect square, and has clean and well-macadamized streets. The houses, mostly of two stories, are of wood, strengthened on the first and ground floors by brickwork. In the old town, which contains the Governmenthouse and Jesuits’ College, the streets are not so regularly and well built as in the new. The Place d’Armes, a fine quadrangular space, lies between them. The streets are lighted with oil lamps, which burn for nearly twelve hours. Cayenne has a parish church, three Roman Catholic chapels, a nunnery, and two schools; also a bank and savings bank under Government supervision, military and civil hospitals, and a hospital for leprosy; but it has no hotel, theatre, club, reading-room, or any place of amusement. To the right of the governor’s house is Mount Cépéron, on which stand Fort St Michell, the marine barracks, the signal station, and the light-house. Here, too, are the capacious reservoirs for the water-supply of the town, the source of which is a lake to the south of the island. The harbour is shallow at its entrance, but sufficiently deep within to float vessels of 800 tons’ burthen; craft drawing much water are obliged to load and unload at a distance of seven or eight miles from the town. There is no dock for the repair of vessels; and the quay is small, though of sufficient size to meet requirements. The principal exports of Cayenne are native gold, raw sugar, arnotto, cocoa, coffee, limes (in brine), rum, molasses, isinglass, cotton, hides, woods, and spices. In 1873 the gold which paid export duty weighed 2206 ß> troy. The imports are French wines, spirits, and liqueurs; vinegar, silk and cotton stuffs, tobacco, hardware, glass, earthenware, clothing, preserved meat, fish, and vegetables, maize, flour, hay, bran, oils, and cattle. The value of the total exports in 1873 was £120,014, of the imports £282,808, —the import trade having increased and the export trade sensibly diminished during the preceding thirty-five years. In 1872 the vessels cleared were 90, tonnage 19,688; the vessels entered, 87, tonnage 18,530. There is a regular mail service between Cayenne, the West Indies, and Europe, once a month. The ports trading with Cayenne are Martinique, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Marseilles, and Salem in the United States. Cayenne is the seat of the Government of French Guiana, and a penal settlement for political offenders. It is provided with an efficient police force, and is well governed. Food as well as clothing is exorbitantly dear, the only cheap articles of consumption being bread and French wines. The temperature of Cayenne is between 76° and 88° Fahr, throughout the year; but the heat is tempered by easterly winds. Between December and March a north wind blows, unfavourable to weak constitutions. Yellow and other fevers often attack the inhabitants of the town, which, owing apparently to the vast swamp that flanks one side of it is far from healthy. The death-rate amongst the coolies is especially high. Population, about 7000.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 5, p. 280
[8 words — estimated reading time: 1 minute]
[8 words — estimated reading time: 1 minute]
Cayenne pepper
Encyclopedia Britannica
CAYENNE PEPPER, Guinea Pepper, Spanish Pepper, Chilly, a preparation from the dried fruit of various species of Capsicum, a genus of the Natural Order Solanaceoe, to which belong also the potato, tomato, and bittersweet. The true peppers are members of a totally distinct order, the Piperaceoe. The fruits of plants of the genus Capsicum have all a strong pungent flavour. The capsicums bear a greenish-white or violaceous flower, with a wheel-shaped corolla, five anthers (connivent and dehiscing lengthwise), and an obtuse stigma. The ovary becomes a pod, consisting of an envelope at first fleshy and afterwards leathery, within which are the spongy pulp and several seeds. The leaves are entire, and alternate, or in pairs near one another; the peduncles are extra-axillary. There are many kinds of capsicums, ranked by botanists either as distinct species or as varieties. Don, in his General System of Gardening and Botany, gives a list of thirty-three species. They are chiefly natives of Brazil, the West and East Indies, and China. They are now grown in various parts of the world, both for the sake of the fruit and for ornament. In England the annual sorts are sown from March to the middle of April, under a frame. They can be planted out when 2 or 3 inches high, and in June may be transferred to a light rich soil in the open garden. They flower in July or August, and produce pods from August till the end of September. The perennial and shrubby kinds may be wintered in a conservatory. Several species or varieties are used to make Cayenne pepper. The annual or common capsicum (C. annuum), the Guinea Pepper plant, was brought to Europe by the Spaniards, and was grown in England in 1548. It is indigenous to South America, but is now cultivated in India, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and ...Turkey, with the other species of capsicum. It is a hardy herbaceous plant, which attains a height of 2 or 3 feet, and bears a pod usually of an ovate shape, and yellow, red, or black in colour. The Spur or Goat Pepper (C. frutescens) has been an inmate of English gardens since 1656. It is a dwarf shrub, a native of the East Indies, which produces a small pod, having very pungent properties. C. tetragonurn, or Bonnet Pepper, is a species much esteemed in Jamaica; it bears very fleshy fruits. Other well-known kinds of capsicum are the Cherry Pepper (C. cerasiforme) ; Bell Pepper (C. grossum), which has thick and pulpy fruit, well adapted for pickling; and Berry or Bird Pepper (C γ . baccatum). The last mentioned has been grown in England since 1731; its fruit is globular, and about the size of a cherry. The West Indian stomachic Man-dram is prepared by mashing a few pods of bird pepper and mixing them with sliced cucumber and shallots, to which have been added a little lime-juice and Madeira wine. Chillies, the dried ripe or unripe fruit of capsicums, are used to make chilly-vinegar, as well as for pickles. Cayenne pepper is manufactured from the ripe fruits, which are dried, ground, mixed with wheat flour, and made into cakes with yeast; the cakes are baked till hard like biscuit, and then ground and sifted. The pepper is sometimes prepared by simply drying the pods and pounding them fine in a mortar. Cayenne pepper is occasionally adulterated with red lead, vermilion, ochre, salt, ground-rice, and turmeric. The taste of the pepper is impaired by exposure to damp and the heat of the sun. Chillies have been in use from time immemorial; they are eaten in great quantity by the people of Guiana and other warm countries, and in Europe are largely consumed both as a spice and as medicine. Their hot and biting taste is due to the presence of the alkaloid Capsicine, a reddish body, having a balsamic and extremely acrid and irritating odour. The Cayenne pepper plants, with the rest of the Solanaceae, have not the narcotic properties of the genera of the most nearly allied order Atropaceae, unless, as has been affirmed, these are resident in the pulp of certain species of capsicums. Medicinally, Cayenne pepper is used with cinchona in lethargic affections, also in atonic gout accompanied by flatulence, and in tympanites and paralysis. It is employed as a stimulant in those forms of dyspepsia which are due to faulty chymification and defective secretion of gastric juice. In malignant scarlatina it is used either in the form of a tincture or as a gargle. To make the tincture, a pint of vinegar is boiled with two tablespoonfuls of powdered chillies and a teaspoonful of salt, and then strained. Cayenne pepper taken in large quantities acts as an irritant poison. A dose of powdered capsicum is from 1 to 5 grs., and of the tincture from 5 to 15 drops.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 5, p. 280
[816 words — estimated reading time: 5 minutes]
[816 words — estimated reading time: 5 minutes]
Caylus
Encyclopedia Britannica
CAYLUS, Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, Comte de, Marquis d’Esternay, Baron de Bransac (1692- 1765), was born at Paris in October 1692. He was the eldest son of Lieutenant-General Count de Caylus, and while a young man he distinguished himself in the campaigns of the French army, from 1709 to 1714. After the peace of Rastadt, he spent some time in travelling in Italy, Greece, the East, England, and Germany, and devoted much attention to the study and collection of antiquities, publishing several works on the subject, among which are the Recueil des Antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines, et gauloises (Paris, 1752-5), Numismata Aurea Imperatorum Romanorum, and a description of the method of encaustic painting with wax mentioned by Pliny, which he had rediscovered. He was also an admirable engraver, and he copied many of the paintings of the great masters He did his best to assist the cause of art, by writing the lives of the most celebrated painters, by causing engravings to be made, at his own expense, of Bartoli’s copies from ancient pictures, and by publishing his Nouveaux sujets de peinture et de sculpture (1755) and Tableaux tirés de VIliade, de VOdysse, et de l'Enéide (1757). Caylus is besides known as the author of a number of romances, humorous pieces, and fairy tales. He was a man of singular simplicity, generosity, and kindliness.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 5, p. 281
[235 words — estimated reading time: 2 minutes]
[235 words — estimated reading time: 2 minutes]
A tribe of Indians formerly inhabiting western New-York, forming part of the confederacy called the Five Nations.
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