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 the wide basin enclosed on the right by the highlands of Old Castile and western Aragon, and on the left by the Pyrenees. The chief cities on its banks are Logroño, Calahorra, Tudela, Saragossa and Caspe. Near Mora in Catalonia it forces a way through the coastal mountains, and, passing Tortosa, falls into the Mediterranean about 80 m. south-west of Barcelona, after forming by its delta a conspicuous projection on the otherwise regular coast line. In its length, approximately 465 m., the Ebro is inferior to the Tagus, Guadiana and Douro; it drains an area of nearly 32,000 sq. m. Its principal tributaries are—from the right hand the Jalon with its affluent the Jiloca, the Huerva, Aguas, Martin, Guadalope and Matarraña; from the left the Ega, Aragon, Arba, Gallego, and the Segre with its intricate system of confluent rivers. The Ebro and its tributaries have been utilized for irrigation since the Moorish conquest; the main stream becomes navigable by small boats about Tudela; but its value as a means of communication is almost neutralized by the obstacles in its channel, and seafaring vessels cannot proceed farther up than Tortosa. The great Imperial Canal, begun under the emperor Charles V. (1500–1558), proceeds along the right bank of the river from a point about 3 m. below Tudela, to El Burgo de Ebro, 5 m. below Saragossa; the irrigation canal of Tauste skirts the opposite bank for a shorter distance; and the San Carlos or New Canal affords direct communication between Amposta at the head of the delta and the harbour of Los Alfaques. From Miranda to Mora the Bilbao-Tarragona railway follows the course of the Ebro along the right bank.

 EBROÏN (d. 681), Frankish “mayor of the palace,” was a Neustrian, and wished to impose the authority of Neustria over Burgundy and Austrasia. In 656, at the moment of his accession to power, Sigebert III., the king of Austrasia, had just died, and the Austrasian mayor of the palace, Grimoald, was attempting to usurp the authority. The great nobles, however, appealed to the king of Neustria, Clovis II., and unity was re-established. But in spite of a very firm policy Ebroïn was unable to maintain this unity, and while Clotaire III., son of Clovis II., reigned in Neustria and Burgundy, he was obliged in 660 to give the Austrasians a special king, Childeric II., brother of Clotaire III., and a special mayor of the palace, Wulfoald. He endeavoured to maintain at any rate the union of Neustria and Burgundy, but the great Burgundian nobles wished to remain independent, and rose under St Leger (Leodegar), bishop of Autun, defeated Ebroïn, and interned him in the monastery of Luxeuil (670). A proclamation was then issued to the effect that each kingdom should keep its own laws and customs, that there should be no further interchange of functionaries between the kingdoms, and that no one should again set up a tyranny like that of Ebroïn. Soon, however, Leger was defeated by Wulfoald and the Austrasians, and was himself confined at Luxeuil in 673. In the same year, taking advantage of the general anarchy, Ebroïn and Leger left the cloister and soon found themselves once more face to face. Each looked for support to a different Merovingian king, Ebroïn even proclaiming a false Merovingian as sovereign. In this struggle Leger was vanquished; he was besieged in Autun, was forced to surrender and had his eyes put out, and, on the 12th of October 678, he was put to death after undergoing prolonged tortures. The church honours him as a saint. After his death Ebroïn became sole and absolute ruler of the Franks, imposing his authority over Burgundy and subduing the Austrasians, whom he defeated in 678 at Bois-du-Fay, near Laon. His triumph, however, was short-lived; he was assassinated in 681, the victim of a combined attack of his numerous enemies. He was a man of great energy, but all his actions seem to have been dictated by no higher motives than ambition and lust of power.

 EBURĀCUM, or (probably a later variant), the Roman name of  (q.v.) in England. Established about 75–80 as fortress of the Ninth legion and garrisoned (after the annihilation of that legion about  118) by the Sixth legion, it developed outside its walls a town of civil life, which later obtained Roman municipal rank and in the 4th century was the seat of a Christian bishop. The fortress and town were separated by the Ouse. On the left bank, where the minster stands, was the fortress, of which the walls can still be partly traced, and one corner (the so-called Multangular Tower) survives. The municipality occupied the right bank near the present railway station. The place was important for its garrison and as an administrative centre, and the town itself was prosperous, though probably never very large. The name is preserved in the abbreviated form Ebor in the official name of the archbishop of York, but the philological connexion between Eboracum and the modern name York is doubtful and has probably been complicated by Danish influence.

 EÇA DE QUEIROZ, JOSÉ MARIA (1843–1900), Portuguese writer, was born at the northern fishing town of Povoa de Varzim, his father being a retired judge. He went through the university of Coimbra, and on taking his degree in law was appointed Administrador de Concelho at Leiria, but soon tired of the narrow mental atmosphere of the old cathedral town and left it. He accompanied the Conde de Rezende to Egypt, where he assisted at the opening of the Suez Canal, and to Palestine, and on his return settled down to journalism in Lisbon and began to evolve a style, at once magical and unique, which was to renovate his country’s prose. Though he spent much of his days with the philosopher sonneteer Anthero de Quental, and the critic Jayme Batalha Reis, afterwards consul-general in London, he did not restrict his intimacy to men of letters, but frequented all kinds of society, acquiring a complete acquaintance with contemporary Portuguese life and manners. Entering the consular service in 1872, he went to Havana, and, after a tour in the United States, was transferred two years later to Newcastle-on-Tyne and in 1876 to Bristol. In 1888 he became Portuguese consul-general in Paris, and there died in 1900.

Queiroz made his literary début in 1870 by a sensational story, The Mystery of the Cintra Road, written in collaboration with the art critic Ramalho Ortigão, but the first publication which brought him fame was The Farpas, a series of satirical and humorous sketches of various phases of social life, which, to quote the poet Guerra Junqueiro, contain “the epilepsy of talent.” These essays, the joint production of the same partners, criticized and ridiculed the faults and foibles of every class in turn, mainly by a comparison with the French, for the education of Queiroz had made him a Frenchman in ideas and sympathies. His Brazilian friend, Eduardo Prado, bears witness that at this period French literature, especially Hugo’s verse, and even French politics, interested Queiroz profoundly, while he altogether ignored the belles-lettres of his own country and its public affairs. This phase lasted for some years, and even when he travelled in the East he was inclined to see it with the eyes of Flaubert, though the publication of The Relic and that delightful prose poem Sweet Miracle afterwards showed that he had been directly impressed and deeply penetrated by its scenery, poetry and mysticism. The Franco-German War of 1870, however, by lowering the prestige of France, proved the herald of a national Portuguese revival, and had a great influence on Queiroz, as also had his friend (q.v.), the biographer of the patriot kings of the Aviz dynasty. He founded the Portuguese Realist-Naturalist school, of which he remained for the rest of his life the chief exponent, by a powerful romance, The Crime of Father Amaro, written in 1871 at Leiria but only issued in 1875. Its appearance then led to a baseless charge that he had plagiarized La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret, and ill-informed critics began to name Queiroz the Portuguese Zola, though he clearly occupied an altogether different plane in the domain of art. During his stay in England he produced two masterpieces, Cousin Basil and The Maias, but they show no traces of English influence, nor again are they French in tone, for, living near to France, his disillusionment progressed and was completed when he went to Paris and had to live under the régime of the Third