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 Marguerite de Valois, sister of Francis I., of Jeanne d’Albret, and of the second Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henry IV., who held a brilliant court there. Nérac, the inhabitants of which had adopted the Reformed religion, was seized by the Catholics in 1562. The conferences, held there at the end of 1578 between the Catholics and Protestants, ended in February 1579 in the peace of Nérac. In 1580 the town was used by Henry IV. as a base for attacks on the Agenais, Armagnac and Guienne. A Chambre de l’Edit for Guienne and a Chambre des Comptes were established there by Henry IV. In 1621, however, the town took part in the Protestant rising, was taken by the troops of Louis XIII. and its fortifications dismantled. Soon after it was deprived both of the Chambre de l’Edit and of the Chambre des Comptes, and its ruin was completed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

NERBUDDA, or, a river of India. It is traditionally regarded as the boundary between Hindustan proper and the Deccan. It rises on the summit of Amarkantak hill in Rewa state, and for the first 200 m. of its course winds among the Mandla hills, which form the head of the Satpura range; then at Jubbulpore, passing through the “Marble Rocks,” it enters its proper valley between the Vindhyan and Satpura ranges, and pursues a direct westerly course to the Gulf of Cambay. Its total course through the Central Provinces and Gujarat amounts to about 800 m., and it falls into the sea in the Bombay district of Broach. It receives the drainage of the northern slopes of the Satpuras, but not that of the Vindhyan tableland, the streams from which flow into the Ganges and Jumna. After leaving the Central Provinces, the river widens out in the fertile district of Broach, with an average breadth of m. to 1 m. Below Broach city it forms an estuary which is 13 m. broad where it enters the Gulf of Cambay. The Nerbudda is nowhere utilized for irrigation, and navigation is confined to the lower section. In the rainy season boats of considerable size sail about 60 m. above Broach city. Sea-going vessels of about 70 tons frequent the port of Broach, but they are entirely dependent on the tide. In sanctity the Nerbudda ranks only second to the Ganges among the rivers of India, and along its whole course are special places of pilgrimage. The most meritorious act that a pilgrim can perform is to walk from the sea to the source of the river and back along the opposite bank. This pilgrimage takes from one to two years to accomplish.

The Nerbudda has given its name to a division of the Central Provinces, comprising the five districts of Narsinghpur, Hoshangabad, Nimar, Betul and Chhindwara. Area, 18,382 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 1,785,008.

 NERCHINSK, a town of Eastern Siberia, in the government of Transbaikalia, 183 m. by rail E. of Chita, on the left bank of the Nercha, 2 m. above its confluence with the Shilka. Pop. (1897) 6713. It is badly built of wood, and its lower parts frequently suffer from inundations. It has a small museum. The inhabitants support themselves mainly by agriculture, tobacco-growing and cattle-breeding; a few merchants trade in furs and cattle, in brick-tea from China, and manufactured wares from Russia.

The fort of Nerchinsk dates from 1654, and the town was founded in 1658 by Pashkov, who in that year opened direct communication between the Russian settlements in Transbaikalia and those on the Amur which had been founded by Cossacks and fur-traders coming from the Yakutsk region. In 1689 was signed between Russia and China the treaty of Nerchinsk, which stopped for two centuries the farther advance of the Russians into the basin of the Amur. After that Nerchinsk became the chief centre for the trade with China. The opening of the western route through Mongolia, by Urga, and the establishment of a custom-house at Kiakhta in 1728 diverted this trade into a new channel. But Nerchinsk acquired fresh importance from the influx of immigrants, mostly exiles, into eastern Transbaikalia, the discovery of rich mines and the arrival of great numbers of convicts, and ultimately it became the chief town of Transbaikalia. In 1812 it was transferred from the banks of the Shilka to its present site, on account of the floods. Since the foundation, in 1851, of Chita, the present capital of Transbaikalia, Nerchinsk has been falling into decay.

 NERCHINSK (in full ), a town and silver mine of East Siberia, in the government of Transbaikalia, 150 m. E.S.E. of another (q.v.) (with which it is often confused), on a small affluent of the Argun. Pop. (1897) 3000. It lies in a narrow valley between barren mountains, and is much better built than any of the district towns of East Siberia. It has a chemical laboratory for mining purposes, and a meteorological observatory (51° 18′ N., 119° 37′ E., 2200 ft. above sea-level), where meteorological and magnetical observations have been made every hour since 1842. The average yearly temperature is 25·3° F., with extremes of 97·7° and −52·6°.

extends over an area of 29,450 sq. m., and includes all the silver-mines and gold-fields between the Shilka and the Argun, together with a few on the left bank of the Shilka. It is traversed by several parallel chains of mountains which rise to 4500 ft., and are intersected by a complicated system of deep, narrow valleys, densely wooded, with a few expansions along the larger rivers, where the inhabitants with difficulty raise some rye and wheat. The population (75,625 in 1897) consists of Russians, Buryats and Tunguses. Included in this number were some 2300 convicts. The mountains, so far as they have been geologically explored, consist of crystalline slates and limestones—probably Upper Silurian and Devonian—interspersed with granite, syenite and diorite; they contain rich ores of silver, lead, tin and iron, while the diluvial and alluvial valley formations contain productive auriferous sands.

NEREUS, in Greek mythology, the eldest son of Pontus and Gaea, and father of the fifty Nereïds. He is a beneficent and venerable old man of the sea, full of wisdom and skilled in prophecy, but, like Proteus, he will only reveal what he knows under compulsion. Thus Heracles seized him when asleep, and, although he attempted to escape by assuming various forms, compelled him to reveal the whereabouts of the apples of the Hesperides (Apollodorus ii. 5). His favourite dwelling-place is a cavern in the depths of the Aegean. The fifty daughters of Nereus, the Nereïds, are personifications of the smiling, quiet sea. Of these, Thetis and Amphitrite rule the sea according to the legend of different localities; Galatea is a Sicilian figure, who plays with and deludes her rustic lover of the shore, Polyphemus. Nereus is represented with the sceptre and trident; the Nereïds are depicted as graceful maidens, lightly clad or naked, riding on tritons and dolphins. The name has nothing to do with the modern Greek  (really , “fresh” [water]): it is probably a short form of .

 NERGAL, the name of a solar deity in Babylonia, the main seat of whose cult was at Kutha or Cuthah, represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim. The importance of Kutha as a religious and at one time also as a political centre led to his surviving the tendency to concentrate the various sun-cults of Babylonia in (q.v.). He becomes, however, the representative of a certain phase only of the sun and not of the sun as a whole. Portrayed in hymns and myths as a god of war and pestilence, there can be little doubt that Nergal represents the sun of noontime and of the summer solstice which brings destruction to mankind. It is a logical consequence that Nergal is pictured also as the deity who presides over the nether-world, and stands at the head of the special pantheon assigned to the government of the dead, who are supposed to be gathered in a large subterranean cave known as Arâlu or Irkalla. In this capacity there is associated with him a goddess Allatu, though there are indications that at one time Allatu was regarded as the sole mistress of Arâlu, ruling