Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/435

 AMROHA — AMUR of assessment being It. 1 : 5 :0 per acre ; the cultivated area was 772,721 acres, of which 543,068 were irrigated, including 247,465 from government canals; the number of police was 852; the number of schools in 1896-97 was 395, attended by 15,376 boys, being 17'4 per cent, of the boys of school-going age; the death-rate in 1891 was 28 per thousand. The principal crops are wheat, pulse, maize, millet, with some cotton and sugar-cane. There are two factories for ginning and pressing cotton.

389

about 100,000 of whom are Homan Catholics and about 50,000 Jews. See Ter Gouw. Amstelodamiana. Amsterdam, 1873-/4. Sequeira. Amsterdam, Guide descriptive, historique et topogravhique. Amsterdam, 1877.—Ter Gouw. Geschiedems van Amsterdam. Amsterdam, 1886.—Kalff. Oud en Nieuw cAmsterdam. Amsterdam, 1880. ( * Amsterdam, a city of Montgomery county, New York, U.S.A., situated in 42° 57' N. lat. and 74° 11' Y. long., on the north bank of Mohawk river, at an altitude of 277 feet. Its site is hilly and the plan is irregular. It is divided into seven wards. Two railways enter it, the New York Central and Hudson River, and the West Shore. It has an excellent water supply and good drainage. The population in 1880 was 9466, in 1890 it was 17,336, and in 1900 it was 20,929. Amu-daria, a great river of Central Asia, tributary of Lake Aral (see Oxus), and also the name of a separate administrative division (Amu-dariinsJciy Otdyel) of the Syr-daria province of Russian Turkestan. (See Turkestan, Syr-daria, and Aral-Caspian Region.)

Amroha, a town of British India, in the Moradabad district of the North-west Provinces, is situated m 28° 54' N. lat/ and 78° 31' E. long. It contains the tomb of Shaikh Saddu, and has been for many centuries a Mahommedan centre. It has a high school. In 1897-98 the municipal income was Rs.25,687. Population (1891), 35,230. Amsterdam, the capital and one of the two chief commercial centres of the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland, on the Y inlet of the Zuyder Zee; connected by the Ymuiden Canal with the North Sea. The money market is of importance, and is the headquarters Amur, an extensive province of Siberia, Russia of companies formed to promote the cultivation of colonial produce. A central station has been erected (1888), a in Asia, on the left bank of the Amur river, which was new theatre (1894), a new post office (1898), a music hall, conceded to Russia by China by the treaties of 1857 and a new exchange (1901), and an abattoir. To scientific 1858. It includes the basins of the Oldoi, Zeya, and Bureya, and artistic institutions have been added a school of left bank tributaries of the Amur, and has the provinces navigation (1879), a school of engineering (1879), a school of Transbaikalia in the W., Yakutsk in the N., Maritime in for teachers (1878), a school of industrial art; the the E., and Manchuria in the S.W. and S. . Area, 172,848 “ Quellinus ” (1880), a university (1877), which took the sq. miles. Immense districts are quite uninhabited. All place of the Athenaeum, a free university (1883), the State its north-western part is occupied by the High plateau, Museum (Ryksmuseum, 1876-85), in which are collected, bordered by the Great Khingan border range, whose exact from various other museums, pictures, drawings, prints, position in the region is not yet definitely settled.. Next sculpture, and casts, and the Museum Suesso Lopez, tor comes a belt of fertile high plains, inhabited mainly by modern paintings (1895). The progress of navigation Nonconformist emigrants from Russia, and limited on the and commerce has been promoted by the construction of east by the Little Khingan, or Dousse-alin, a picturesque a canal to the North Sea (1876), with a depth of 30 to 33 well-wooded range, which stretches in a north-easterly feet; the Commercial or Handels dock; the railway, wood, direction from Kirin across Manchuria, is pierced by the and petroleum (1880-90) docks; the Merwede Canal, Amur, and continues on its left bank, separating the connecting the town with the great rivers (1893), and the Bureya from Amgun. To the east of it stretches in the new Entrepot dock (1900). The tonnage of ships enter- same direction a belt of marshy lowlands, which includes ing and clearing the port in 18/0 was 808,042 tons also farther south the lower course of the Sungari. Fre(metric), which in 1899 had risen to 4,310,000 tons (16‘6 quent inundations, resulting from torrential rains occaby the monsoons, present great difficulties to the per cent, of that of the whole kingdom). In 1899, 9988 sioned development of the belt. In the ranges which rise abo e ships of 15,680,000 tons passed through the North Sea surface of the high plateau in the north-west, in the Canal. In 1899, 2029 vessels entered with the following the vicinity of the Stanovoi watershed, gold-mines of great imports:—163 ship loads of timber, 142 of ore, 177 of richness are worked. Gold was also found in the fabulously coal and coke, 312 of piece goods, 34 of rice and other rich mines of the Zheltuga (Manchuria) where a sort of grain, 25 of petroleum, 4 of linseed, and the remaining free republic of Russian and Chinese miners was formed 1172 of ballast and miscellaneous goods. Of late years 1880-82. Coal of inferior quality is known to exist Sumatra tobacco has ranked first among the exports of in on the Oldoi, Zeya, and Bureya. The Russians are reprecolonial produce; but tea, cocoa, and Peruvian bark sented by the Amur Cossacks, whose villages are situ(cinchona) are also important. The supply o tea oi ated at about 17 to 20 miles from each other along the the Amsterdam market, which in 1888 amounted to whole course of the river (Albazin, Kumara, Ekatenno5,002,000 lb, had risen in 1897 to 10,738,-^5 to; the Nikolskaya, and Mikhailo-Semenoyskaya are the chief supply of cinchona in 1889, 171,207 ft, had risen m 1897 ones); by peasant immigrants, chiefly Nonconformists, to 580 722 lb. The value of Sumatra tobacco imported who are the wealthiest part of the population ; and by in 1865 was £3333; in 1896, £2,687,500. Since 18/4 a floating population of workers in the mines. Some railways have been constructed connecting Amsterdam Chinese have remained in the province, and consider with Belgium (via Utrecht, Bois-le-Duc, and Maestricht) themselves under Chinese rule; Tungus (Orochons), and with Prussia (vid Hilversum and Zutphen). Regular Manegres, and Golds lead a nomadic life along the riveis, steamers maintain communication with sixty-one places yi living by hunting and fishing. Steamers ply regularly the Netherlands. The tonnage of this inland naviga- along the Amur for 6-| months, from Khabarovsk. to tion, carried in 80,000 vessels, amounted in ° Sryetensk, on the Shilka (terminus of the Trans-Siberian 4,310,000 cubic metres (the register ton is equal to -'• •• Railway) ; but only light steamers having from 2 to cubic metres). To the industries have been added of fate 3 feet draught can navigate the upper Amur and years shipbuilding and the manufacture of machinery and Shilka. In the winter the frozen river is the usual highstearine candles. The population in 18/ v as ~ o,, way. Rough roads and bridle-paths only are found in the in 1890, 408,061 ; in 1900, increased by that of Neuwer interior. The great engineering difficulties in building a Amstel (annexed in 1896 ; population, 2o,000), 523,557,