Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/224

Rh the truth of the recital it contains. An English translation of the letters, edited by Francis A. MacNutt, was published in 1908. The conquests of Cortes have been described with pompous elegance by Antonio de Solis in his Historia de la conquista de Mejico (1684), and with more truth and simplicity by Bernardo Diaz del Castillo in his work under the same title (1632). See also Sir Arthur Helps’s Life of Hernando Cortes (2 vols., London, 1871), F. A. MacNutt’s Fernando Cortes (“Heroes of the Nations” Series, 1909), and the bibliography to.

CORTES, a Spanish term literally signifying the “courts,” and applied to the states, or assembly of the states, of the kingdom. (See and .)

 CORTI, LODOVICO, (1823–1888), Italian diplomatist, was born at Gambarano on the 28th of October 1823. Early involved with Benedetto Cairoli in anti-Austrian conspiracies, he was exiled to Turin, where he entered the Piedmontese foreign office. After serving as artillery officer through the campaign of 1848, he was in 1850 appointed secretary of legation in London, whence he was promoted minister to various capitals, and in 1875 ambassador to Constantinople. Called by Cairoli to the direction of foreign affairs in 1878, he took part in the congress of Berlin, but unwisely declined Lord Derby’s offer for an Anglo-Italian agreement in defence of common interests. At Berlin he sustained the cause of Greek independence, but in all other respects remained isolated, and excited the wrath of his countrymen by returning to Italy with “clean hands.” For a time he withdrew from public life, but in 1881 was again sent to Constantinople by Cairoli, where he presided over the futile conference of ambassadors upon the Egyptian question. In 1886 he was transferred to the London embassy, but was recalled by Crispi in the following year through a misunderstanding. He died in Rome on the 9th of April 1888.

CORTLAND, a city and the county-seat of Cortland county, New York, U.S.A., in the central part of the state, on Tioughnioga river, at the junction of its E. and W. branches. Pop. (1890) 8590; (1900) 9014, of whom 682 were foreign born; (1905) 11,272;(1910) 11,504. It is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and the Lehigh Valley railways. The Franklin Hatch library and a state normal and training school (opened in 1869) are in Cortland. The city has important manufactories of wire, and wire-cloth and netting (one of the largest in America), cabs, carriages and waggons, iron and steel, wall-paper, dairy supplies, corundum wheels, and clothing. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $3,063,828 in 1900 to $4,574,191 in 1905 or 49.3%. The town of Cortlandville, which formed a part of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, was first settled in 1792, and until 1829 was a part of the town of Homer; from which in the latter year it was separated, and made the county-seat. In 1900 the village of Cortland in the town of Cortlandville was chartered as a city.

See H. C. Goodwin, Cortland County and the Border Wars of New York (New York, 1859).

 CORTONA, a town and episcopal see of Italy, in the province of Arezzo, 18 m. S. by E. from the town of Arezzo by rail. The ancient and modern names are identical. Pop. (1901) of town, 3579; commune, 29,296. The highest point of Cortona, a medieval castle (Fortezza), is situated 2130 ft. above sea-level on a hill commanding a splendid view, and is approached by a winding road. It is surrounded by its ancient Etruscan walls, which for the greater part of the circuit are fairly well preserved. They are constructed of parallelepipedal blocks of limestone, finely jointed (though the jointing has often been spoilt by weathering), and arranged in regular courses which vary in size in different parts of the enceinte. Near the N.W. angle some of the blocks are 7 to 8½ ft. long and 2½ ft. high, while on the W. side they are a good deal smaller—sometimes only 1 ft. high (see F. Noack in Römische Mitteilungen, 1897, 184). Within the town are two subterranean vaulted buildings in good masonry, of uncertain nature, some other remains under modern buildings, and a concrete ruin known as the “Bagni di Bacco.” The museum of the Accademia Etrusca, a learned body founded by Ridolfino Venuti in 1726, is situated in the Palazzo Pretorio; it contains some Etruscan objects, among which may be specially noted a magnificent bronze lamp with 16 lights, of remarkably fine workmanship, found in 1740, at the foot of the hill, two votive hands and a few other bronzes, and a little gold jewellery. The library has a good MS. of Dante. The cathedral, originally a Tuscan Romanesque building of the 11th-12th centuries, is now a fine Renaissance basilica restored in the 18th century, containing some paintings by Luca Signorelli, a native of the place. Opposite is the baptistery, with three fine pictures by Fra Angelico. S. Margherita, just below the Fortezza, is an ugly modern building occupying the site of a Gothic church of 1294, and containing a fine original rose window and reliefs from the tomb of the saint by Angelo e Francesco di maestro Pietro d’Assisi. Other works by Signorelli are to be seen elsewhere in the town, especially in S. Domenico; Pietro Berettini (Pietro da Cortona, 1596–1669) is hardly represented here at all. Below the town is the massive tomb chamber (originally subterranean, but now lacking the mound of the earth which covered it) known as the Grotta di Pitagora (grotto of Pythagoras). To the E. is the church of S. Maria del Calcinaio, a fine early Renaissance building by Francesco di Giorgio Martini of Siena, with fine stained glass windows.

The foundation of Cortona belongs to the legendary period of Italy. It appears in history as one of the strongholds of the Etruscan power; but in Roman times it is hardly mentioned. Dionysius’s statement that it was a colony (i. 26) is probably due to confusion.

See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (London, 1883), ii. 394 seq.; A. Della Cella, Cortona Antica (Cortona, 1900).

 CORUMBÁ, a town and river port of Brazil on the W. bank of the Paraguay river, 1986 m. above Buenos Aires and 486 m. above the Paraguayan frontier. Pop. (1890) 8414. Corumbá is a fortified military post, has the large Ladario naval arsenal, where small river boats are built and repaired, and is the commercial entrepôt of the state of Matto Grosso. It is near the Bolivian frontier and is strongly garrisoned. Although the climate is extremely hot, the neighbouring country has many large cattle farms. Corumbá is one of the most important places in the interior of Brazil.

 CORUNDUM, a mineral composed of native alumina (Al2O3). remarkable for its hardness, and forming in its finer varieties a valuable gem-stone. Specimens were sent from India to England in the 18th century, and were described in 1798 by the Hon. C. Greville under the name of corundum—a word which he believed to be the native name of the stone (Hindi, kurund; Tamil, kurundam; Sanskrit, kuruvinda, “ruby”). The finely coloured, transparent varieties include such gem-stones as the ruby and sapphire, whilst the impure granular and massive forms are known as emery. The term corundum is often restricted to the remaining kinds, i.e. those crystallized and crystalline varieties which are not sufficiently transparent and brilliant for ornamental purposes, and which were known to the older mineralogists as “imperfect corundum.” Such varieties were termed by J. Black, in consequence of their hardness, adamantine spar, but this name is now usually restricted to a hair-brown corundum, remarkable for a pearly sheen on the basal plane.

Corundum crystallizes in the hexagonal system. In fig. 1, which is a form of ruby, the prism a is combined with a hexagonal pyramid n, a rhombohedron R, and the basal pinacoid C. In fig. 2, which represents a typical crystal of sapphire, the prism s is associated with the acute pyramids b, r, and a rhombohedron a. Other crystals show a tabular habit, consisting usually of the basal pinacoid with a rhombohedron, and it is notable that this habit is said to be characteristic of corundum which has consolidated from a fused magma. Corundum has no true