Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/134

 white-washed. But few of the public buildings are imposing in appearance, though good taste in style and decoration are often shown.

The city occupies an area of about 2 ✕ 1 m. It has street cars, electric light and telephones. Short lines of railway connect it with Facatativa (24 m.) on the road to Honda, and with Zipaquira, where extensive salt mines are worked. A line of railway was also under construction in 1906 to Jirardot, at the head of navigation on the upper Magdalena. Bogotá is an archiepiscopal see, founded in 1561, and is one of the strongholds of medieval clericalism in South America. It has a cathedral, rebuilt in 1814, and some 30 other churches, together with many old conventual buildings now used for secular purposes, their religious communities having been dissolved by Mosquera and their revenues devoted in great measure to education. The capitol, which is occupied by the executive and legislative departments, is an elegant and spacious building, erected since 1875. The interest which Bogotá has always taken in education, and because of which she has been called the “Athens of South America,” is shown in the number and character of her institutions of learning—a university, three endowed colleges, a school of chemistry and mineralogy, a national academy, a military school, a public library with some 50,000 volumes, a national observatory, a natural history museum and a botanic garden. The city also possesses a well-equipped mint, little used in recent years. The plain surrounding the city is very fertile, and pastures cattle and produces cereals, vegetables and fruit in abundance. It was the centre of Chibcha civilization before the Spanish conquest and sustained a large population. The climate is mild and temperate, the average annual temperature being about 58° and the rainfall about 43 in. The geographical location of the city is unfavourable to any great development in commerce and manufactures beyond local needs.

Bogotá was founded in 1538 by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and was named Santa Fé de Bogotá after his birthplace Santa Fé, and after the southern capital of the Chibchas, Bacatá (or Funza). It was made the capital of the viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, and soon became one of the centres of Spanish colonial power and civilization on the South American continent. In 1811 its citizens revolted against Spanish rule and set up a government of their own, but in 1816 the city was occupied by Pablo Morillo (1777–1838), the Spanish general, who subjected it to a ruthless military government until 1819, when Bolivar’s victory at Boyacá compelled its evacuation. On the creation of the republic of Colombia, Bogotá became its capital, and when that republic was dissolved into its three constituent parts it remained the capital of Nueva Granada. It has been the scene of many important events in the chequered history of Colombia.

 BOGRA, or, a town and district of British India, in the Rajshahi division of eastern Bengal and Assam. The town is situated on the right bank of the river Karatoya. Pop. (1901) 7094. The, which was first formed in 1821, lies west of the main channel of the Brahmaputra. It contains an area of 1359 sq. m. In 1901 the population (on a reduced area) was 854,533, showing an increase of 11% in the decade. The district stretches out in a level plain, intersected by numerous streams and dotted with patches of jungle. The Karatoya river flows from north to south, dividing it into two portions, possessing very distinct characteristics. The eastern tract consists of rich alluvial soil, well watered, and subject to fertilizing inundations, yielding heavy crops of coarse rice, oil-seeds and jute. The western portion of the district is high-lying and produces the finer qualities of rice. The principal rivers are formed by the different channels of the Brahmaputra, which river here bears the local names of the Konai, the Daokoba and the Jamuna, the last forming a portion of the eastern boundary of the district. Its bed is studded with alluvial islands. The Brahmaputra and its channels, together with three minor streams, the Bangali, Karatoya and Atrai, afford admirable facilities for commerce, and render every part of the district accessible to native cargo boats of large burden. The rivers swarm with fish. The former production of indigo is extinct, and the industry of silk-spinning is decaying. There is no town with as many as 10,000 inhabitants, trade being conducted at riverside marts. Nor are there any metalled roads. Several lines of railway (the Eastern Bengal, &c.), however, serve the district.

 BOGUE, DAVID (1750–1825), British nonconformist divine, was born in the parish of Coldingham, Berwickshire. After a course of study in Edinburgh, he was licensed to preach by the Church of Scotland, but made his way to London (1721), where he taught in schools at Edmonton, Hampstead and Camberwell. He then settled as minister of the Congregational church at Gosport in Hampshire (1777), and to his pastoral duties added the charge of an institution for preparing men for the ministry. It was the age of the new-born missionary enterprise, and Bogue’s academy was in a very large measure the seed from which the London Missionary Society took its growth. Bogue himself would have gone to India in 1796 but for the opposition of the East India Company. He also had much to do with founding the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society, and in conjunction with James Bennet, minister at Romsey, wrote a well-known History of Dissenters (3 vols., 1809). Another of his writings was an Essay on the Divine Authority of the New Testament. He died at Brighton on the 25th of October 1825.

 BOGUS (of uncertain origin, possibly connected with the Fr. bagasse, sugar-cane refuse), a slang word, originally used in America of the apparatus employed in counterfeiting coins, and now generally of any sham or spurious transaction.

 BOHEA (a word derived from the Wu-i hills in the Fuhkien province of China, b being substituted for W or V), a kind of (q.v.), or, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, tea generally, as in Pope’s line, “So past her time ’twixt reading and bohea.” Later the name “bohea” has been applied to an inferior quality of tea grown late in the season.

 BOHEMIA (Ger. Böhmen, Czech Čechy, Lat. Bohemia), a kingdom and crownland of Austria, bounded N.E. by Prussian Silesia, S.E. by Moravia and Lower Austria, S. by Upper Austria, S.W. by Bavaria and N.W. by Saxony. It has an area of 20,060 sq. m., or about two-thirds the size of Scotland, and forms the principal province of the Austrian empire. Situated in the geographical centre of the European continent, at about equal distance from all the European seas, enclosed by high mountains, and nevertheless easily accessible through Moravia from the Danubian plain and opened by the valley of the Elbe to the German plain, Bohemia was bound to play a leading part in the cultural development of Europe. It became early the scene of important historical events, the avenue and junction of the migration of peoples; and it forms the borderland between the German and Slavonic worlds.

Geography.—Bohemia has the form of an irregular rhomb, of which the northernmost place, Buchberg, just above Hainspach, is at the same time the farthest north in the whole Austro-Hungarian monarchy. From an orographic point of view, Bohemia constitutes amongst the Austrian provinces a separate massif, bordered on three sides by mountain ranges: on the S.W. by the Böhmerwald or Bohemian Forest; on the N.W. by the Erzgebirge or Ore Mountains; and on the N.E. by the Riesengebirge or Giant Mountains and other ranges of the Sudetes. The Böhmerwald, which, like its parallel range, the