Page:EB1911 - Volume 03.djvu/869

 in a low stage, the few articles produced being all destined for home consumption. These consist of coarse blankets and cotton cloths made by the villagers inhabiting the southern tract. Leather, from the hide of the buffalo, imperfectly tanned, furnishes the soles of snow boots. Circular bowls are neatly turned from various woods. A small quantity of paper is made from a plant described as the Daphne papyrifera. Swords, iron spears and arrow-heads, and a few copper caldrons, fabricated from the metal obtained in the country, complete the list of manufactures.

Trade connections are rather with Tibet than with India. In 1901–1902 the value of the import and export trade with British India amounted only to £57,000. The military resources of the country are on an insignificant scale. Beyond the guards for the defence of the various castles, there is nothing like a standing army. The total military force was estimated by the British envoy in 1864 at 6000. The climate of Bhutan varies according to the difference of elevation. At the time when the inhabitants of Punākha (the winter residence of the rajas) are afraid of exposing themselves to the blazing sun, those of Ghasa experience all the rigour of winter, and are chilled by perpetual snows. Yet these places are within sight of each other. The rains descend in floods upon the heights; but in the vicinity of Tasisudon, the capital, they are moderate; there are frequent showers, but nothing that can be compared to the tropical rains of Bengal. Owing to the great elevation and steepness of the mountains, dreadful storms arise among the hollows, often attended with fatal results.

History.—Bhutan formerly belonged to a tribe called by the Bhutias Tephu, generally believed to have been the people of Kuch Behar. About 1670 some Tibetan soldiers subjugated the Tephus, took possession of the country and settled down in it. The relations of the British with Bhutan commenced in 1772, when the Bhutias invaded the principality of Kuch Behar, a dependency of Bengal. The Kuch Behar Raja applied for aid, and a force under Captain James was despatched to his assistance; the invaders were expelled and pursued into their own territories. Upon the intercession of Teshu Lama, then regent of Tibet, a treaty of peace was concluded in 1774 between the East India Company and the ruler of Bhutan. In 1783 Captain S. Turner was deputed to Bhutan, with a view of promoting commercial intercourse, but his mission proved unsuccessful. From this period little intercourse took place with Bhutan, until the occupation of Assam by the British in 1826. It was then discovered that the Bhutias had usurped several tracts of low land lying at the foot of the mountains, called the Dwars or passes, and for these they agreed to pay a small tribute. They failed to pay, however, and availed themselves of the command of the passes to commit depredations within the British territory. Captain R. B. Pemberton was accordingly deputed to Bhutan to adjust the points of difference. But his negotiations yielded no definite result; and every other means of obtaining redress and security proving unsuccessful, the Assam Dwars were wrested from the Bhutias, and the British government consented to pay to Bhutan a sum of £1000 per annum as compensation for the resumption of their tenure, during the good behaviour of the Bhutias. Continued outrages and aggressions were, however, committed by the Bhutias on British subjects in the Dwars. Notwithstanding repeated remonstrances and threats, scarcely a year passed without the occurrence of several raids in British territory headed by Bhutia officials, in which they plundered the inhabitants, massacred them, or carried them away as slaves. In 1863 Sir Ashley Eden was sent as an envoy to Bhutan to demand reparation for these outrages. He did not succeed in his mission; he was subjected to the grossest insults; and under compulsion signed a treaty giving over the disputed territory to Bhutan, and making other concessions which the Bhutan government demanded. On Sir A. Eden’s return the viceroy at once disavowed his treaty, sternly stopped the former allowance for the Assam Dwars, and demanded the immediate restoration of all British subjects kidnapped during the last five years. The Bhutias not complying with this demand, the governor-general issued a proclamation, dated the 12th of November 1864, by which the eleven Western or Bengal Dwars were forthwith incorporated with the queen’s Indian dominions. No resistance was at first offered to the annexation; but, suddenly, in January 1865, the Bhutias surprised the English garrison at Dewangiri, and the post was abandoned with the loss of two mountain guns. This disaster was soon retrieved by General Sir Henry Tombs, and the Bhutias were compelled to sue for peace, which was concluded on the 11th of November 1865. The Bhutan government formally ceded all the eighteen Dwars of Bengal and Assam, with the rest of the territory taken from them, and agreed to liberate all kidnapped British subjects. As the revenues of Bhutan mainly depended on these Dwars, the British government, in return for these concessions, undertook to pay the Deb and Dharm rajas annually, subject to the condition of their continued good behaviour, an allowance beginning at £2500 and rising gradually to the present figure. Since that time the annexed territories have settled down into peaceful and prosperous British districts. The recent relations between the Indian government and Bhutan have been satisfactory; and during the troubles with Tibet in 1904 the attitude of the Bhutias was perfectly correct and friendly.

 BIANCHINI, FRANCESCO (1662–1729), Italian astronomer and antiquary, was born of a noble family at Verona on the 13th of December 1662. In 1684 he went to Rome, and became librarian to Cardinal Ottoboni, who, as Pope Alexander VIII. (1689), raised him to the offices of papal chamberlain and canon of Santa Maria Maggiore. Clement XI. sent him on a mission to Paris in 1712, and employed him to form a museum of Christian antiquities. He died at Rome on the 2nd of March 1729. A paper by him on G. D. Cassini’s new method of parallaxes was inserted in the Acta Eruditorum of Leipzig in 1685. He published separately:—Istoria Universale (Roma, 1697), only one volume of which appeared; De Calendario et Cyclo Caesaris (1703); Hesperi et Phosphori nova Phaenomena (1729), in which he asserted Venus to rotate in 24 days; and (posthumously) Astronomicae et Geographicae Observationes Selectae (1737) and Opuscula Varia (1754).

 BIARRITZ, a watering-place of south-western France, in the department of Basses-Pyrénées, on the sea-coast about 5 m. W.S.W. of Bayonne. Pop. (1906) 13,629. From a mere fishing village, with a few hundred inhabitants in the beginning of the 19th century, Biarritz rose rapidly into a place of importance under the patronage of the emperor Napoleon III. and the empress Eugénie, with whom it was a favourite resort. The town is situated on a promontory jutting north-west into the Bay of Biscay and on the coast which extends on each side of it. The beach to the north-east is known as the Grande Plage, that to the south-west as the Côte des Basques. The Grande Plage is more than half a mile long and stretches to the Cap St Martin, on which stands a lighthouse. It is divided into two parts by a small headland once the site of the villa of the empress Eugénie, between which and the main promontory are the two casinos, the principal baths and many luxurious villas and fine hotels. Towards the north-east the promontory of Biarritz ends in a projection known as the Atalaye, crowned by the ruins of a castle and surrounded by rocky islets. Some of these are united to the mainland and to each other by jetties which curve round so as to form the Port de Refuge, a haven available only in fair weather. South-west of the Atalaye lies the Port-Vieux, a sheltered cove now used only as a bathing-place. The Port des Pêcheurs, the principal of the three harbours, is on the south-east side of the Atalaye and is that most used by the fishermen of the town. Apart from unimportant manufactures of pottery, chocolate, &c., fishing is the only industry; Biarritz depends for its prosperity on the visitors who are attracted by its mild climate and the