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OREGON CITY, a city and the county-seat of Clackamas county, Oregon, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Willamette river, and S. of the mouth of the Clackamas river, about 15 m. S. by E. of Portland. Pop. (1890) 3062; (1900) 3494 (535 being foreign-born); (1910) 4287. It is served by the Southern Pacific railway, by an electric line to Portland, by other electric lines, and by small river steamboats. The principal business streets are Main Street, on level ground along the river, and Seventh Street, on a bluff which rises abruptly 100 ft. above the river and is reached by four stairways elevated above the tracks of the Southern Pacific. The residences are for the most part on this bluff, which commands views of the peaks of the Cascade Mountains. The river here makes a picturesque plunge of about 40 ft. over a basalt ridge extending across the valley, and then flows between nearly vertical walls of solid rock 20-50 ft. high; it is spanned by a suspension bridge nearly 100 ft. above the water. A lock canal enables vessels to pass the falls. The water-power works woollen-mills, flour-mills, paper-mills, and an electric power plant (of the Portland Railway, Light and Power Company), which lights the city of Portland and transmits power to that city for street railways and factories. The municipality owns the waterworks. Next to Astoria, Oregon City is the oldest settlement in the state. In 1829 Dr John McLoughlin (1784–1857), chief agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company, established a claim to the water-power at the Falls of the Willamette and to land where Oregon City now stands, and began the erection of a mill and several houses. After 1840, in which year McLoughlin laid out a town here and named it Oregon City, a Methodist Mission disputed his claim. He aided many destitute American immigrants, left the service of the company, and removed to Oregon City. In 1850 Congress gave a great part of his claim at Oregon City for the endowment of a university, and in 1862 the legislature of Oregon reconveyed the land to McLoughlin’s heirs on condition that they should give $1000 to the university fund; but the questionable title between 1840 and 1862 hindered the growth of the place, which was chartered as a city in 1850. O’REILLY, JOHN BOYLE (1844–1890), Irish-American politician and journalist, was born near Drogheda on the 28th of June 1844, the son of a schoolmaster. After some years of newspaper experience, first as compositor, then as reporter, during which he became an ardent revolutionist and joined the Fenian organization known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, he enlisted in a British cavalry regiment with the purpose of winning over the troops to the revolutionary cause (1863). At this period wholesale corruption of the army, in which there was a very large percentage of Irishmen, was a strong feature in the Fenian programme, and O’Reilly, who soon became a great favourite, was successful in disseminating disaffection in his regiment. In 1866 the extent of the sedition in the regiments in Ireland was discovered by the authorities. O’Reilly was arrested at Dublin, where his regiment was then quartered, tried by court-martial for concealing his knowledge of an impending mutiny, and sentenced to be shot, but the sentence was subsequently commuted to twenty years’ penal servitude. After confinement in various English prisons, he was transported in 1867 to Bunbury, Western Australia. In 1869 he escaped to the United States, and settled in Boston, where he became editor of The Pilot, a Roman Catholic newspaper. He subsequently organized the expedition which rescued all the Irish military political prisoners from the Western Australia convict establishments (1876), and he aided and abetted the American propaganda in favour of Irish nationalism. O’Reilly died in Hull, Mass., on the 10th of August 1890. His reputation in America naturally differed very much from what it was in England, towards whom he was uniformly mischievous. He was the author of several volumes of poetry of considerable merit, and of a novel of convict life, Moondyne, which achieved a great success. He was also selected to write occasional odes in commemoration of many American celebrations.

OREL,, a government of central Russia, bounded by the governments of Smolensk, Kaluga and Tula on the N., and by Voronezh and Kursk on the S., with an area of 18,036 sq. m. The surface is an undulating plateau sloping gently towards the west; the highest hills barely exceed 900 ft., and none of the valleys is less than 450 ft. above the sea. The principal rivers are the Don, which forms part of the eastern boundary, and its tributary the Sosna; the Oka, which rises in the district of Orel and receives the navigable Zusha; and the Desna, with the Bolva, draining the marshy lowlands in the west. Geologically Orel consists principally of Lower Devonian limestones, marls and sandstones, covered with Jurassic clays, the last appearing at the surface, however, only as isolated islands, or in the valleys, being concealed for the most part under thick beds of Cretaceous chalk, marls and sands. The Carboniferous limestones and clays (of the so-called Moscow basin) show in the north-west only at a great depth. The Jurassic clays and marls are overlain at several places with a stratum of clay containing good iron-ore, while the Devonian sandstones and limestones are worked for building purposes. The whole is buried under a bed, 30 to 40 ft. thick, of boulder-clay and loess, the last covering extensive areas as well as the valleys. The soil—a mixture of “black earth” with clay—is fertile, except in the Desna region in the west, where sands and tenacious clays predominate. On the Oka, Zusha, Desna and Bolva there is a brisk traffic in corn, oil, hemp, timber, metal, glass, china, paper and building-stone. Marshes occupy large areas in the basin of the Desna, as also in several parts of that of the Oka; they are mostly covered with forests, which run up to 50 to 65% of the area in the districts of Bryansk, Trubchevsk and Karachev, while towards the east, in the basin of the Don, wood is so scarce that straw is used for fuel. The climate is moderate, the average yearly temperature at Orel being 41·2° (14·8° in January and 67·0° in July).

The estimated population in 1906 was 2,365,700. It consists almost exclusively of Great Russians, belonging to the Orthodox Greek Church; the Nonconformists are reckoned at about 12,000, the Roman Catholics at 3000 and the Jews at 1000. The chief occupation is agriculture, which is most productive in the east and towards the centre of the government. The principal crops are rye, oats, barley, wheat, hemp, potatoes, hops, vegetables, tobacco and fruit. Of the grain not used in the distilleries a large proportion is exported to the Baltic. Hemp and hemp-seed oil are extensively exported from the west to Riga, Libau and St Petersburg. Tobacco is cultivated with profit. Cattle and horse-breeding flourishes better than in the