1. ouns. [Latin uncia, the twelfth part of any thing; Gr; but the Greek is from Latin. Inch is from the same root, being the twelfth part of a foot.]
2. A weight, the twelfth part of a pound troy, and the sixteenth of a pound avoirdupois. In troy weight, the ounce is 20 pennyweights, each of 24 grains.
4. A felinequadruped (Felis irbis, / uncia) resembling the leopard in size, and somewhat in color, but it has longer and thicker fur, which forms a short mane on the back. The ounce is pale yellowish gray, with irregular dark spots on the neck and limbs, and dark rings on the body. It inhabits the lofty mountain ranges of Asia. Called also once.
0UR0 PRETO, a city of Brazil, the chief town of the extensive province of Minas Geraes, lies 170 miles north by west of Rio de Janeiro, in the upper part of the Rio Sào Francisco basin, at a height of 3757 feet above the sea. A steep hill to the north of the peak of Itacolumi (5740) is broken up by ravines into a number of distinct plateaus; and it is round these plateaus, generally crowned by a church, that most of the houses of Ouro Preto cluster in irregular and almost independent groups. The streets run up and down hill in such a way as to make riding on horsebackhazardous and the use ol carriages impossible. The stream which passes through the town and was formerly the scene of the most extensive gold washing operations, the Ribeirào de Ouro Preto or Do Carmo, is a subtributary of the Säo Francisco. Besides the churches, the prominent buildings are the president’s palace, the town-house, and the prison, all fronting the principal square, the treasury, the theatre (the oldest in Brazil, and restored in 1861-62), and the hospital. The botanical garden, dating from 1825, used to distribute specimens of different kinds of tea, but is now practically defunct. A public library has been in existence since before 1865. At present the importance of Ouro Preto is almost entirely administrative; formerly it was one of the great mining centres of Brazil. Its population is about 8000....
The first “prospectors,” finding the hills full of a gold ore which, from the presence of silver alloy, turned black on exposure to the air, called them Serra do Ouro Preto, and the village, built in 1701 by AntonioDias of Taubate, bore at first the same name (meaning Black Gold). In 1711 the settlement was formally constituted as the city of Villa Rica, and for sixty or seventy years it continued to deserve its new title,—the population amounting to 25,000 or 30,000, and 12,000 slaves being employed in its gold mines. When in 1720 Minas Geraes was separate» from the captaincy of S. Paulo, Vüla Rica was made the capital of the new province. In 1788 it was the centre of the disastrous attempt made by Tiradentes, the poet Gonzaga, &c. , to found an independent republic in Brazil with Sâo Joâo d’el Rei as its capital and Villa Rica as its university town (see Gonzaga) ; and in 1821 it took a vigorous part in the successful revolution. A comarca of Ouro Preto was created in 1823, and Villa Rica received back its original name.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 18, p. 74 [450 words — estimated reading time: 3 minutes]
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