OSTIA, a city of ancient Latium, situated at the mouth of the Tiber, from which circumstance it obviously derived its name. Owing to this position it became from an early period the port of Rome, but its foundation as a regular colony of that city is ascribed by ancient authors to Ancus Marcius, who is said to have at the same time established there extensive salt works, which long continued to supply Rome and its neighbourhood with that necessary article. As the wealth and importance of Rome itself increased, the prosperity of Ostia naturally rose with it, and it continued throughout the period of the Roman republic to be at once the principal emporium of trade in this part of Italy and the permanent station of the Roman fleet. It was, however, at no period a really good port, and the natural disadvantages of its position were not merely felt the more keenly as its commercial importance increased, but they were continually aggravated by natural causes,—the alluvial matter continually brought down by the Tiber having filled up the port, and at the same time in great measure blocked the mouth of the river, so as to render it inaccessible to the larger class of vessels. Strabo gives a lively picture of the difficulties with which these bad to contend in his time, and which were only surmounted on account of the great pecuniary advantages arising from its proximity to the capital. The necessity of taking some steps to obviate these evils had indeed already presented itself to the dictator Caesar, who had proposed to construct an artificial port at Ostia, with all the appurtenances requisite for so extensive a trade, but no steps were taken towards the execution of this project till the reign of the emperor Claudius, who constructed an entirely new basin or artificial ...

OSTIAKS, or Ostyaks, a tribe of Finnish origin, who inhabit the basin of the Obi in western Siberia; a few hundreds also are nomads in the basin of the lower Yenisei. Plano Carpini and Marco Polo in the 13th century knew them on the flat lands of the Obi, and the best investigators (Castrén, Lerberg, A. Schrenck) consider the trans-Uralian Ostiaks and Samoyedes as identical with the Yugra of the Russian annals During the Russian conquest their abodes extended much farther south than now, and they had numerous settlements on the basin of the Obi, no less than forty one of their fortified places having been destroyed by the Cossacks in 1501, in the region of Obdorsk alone. Remains of these “towns” are still to be seen at the Kunovat river, on the Obi 20 miles below Obdorsk, and elsewhere. The total number of the Ostiaks may be estimated at a little over 27,000. Those on the Irtish are mostly settled, and have adopted the manner of life of Russians and Tartars. Those on the Obi are mostly nomads; along with 8000 Samoyedes in the districts of Beryozoff and Surgut, they own 93,600 reindeer. The Obi Ostiaks are Russified to a great extent. They live almost exclusively by fishing, buying from Russian merchants corn for bread, the use of which has become widely diffused....