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Rh statue of the bishop of that name; the Praça da Independencia, surrounded by government buildings and having an elaborate monument to General Gurjão; the Praça Visconde do Rio Branço, with a statue of José da Gama Melchior; the Praça de Baptista Campos, with artificial cascades, lake, island and winding paths; the Praça da Republica, with a monument representing the Republic; and the Praça de Prudente Moraes, named in honour of the first civilian president of Brazil. Another public outdoor resort is the Bosque, a tract of forest on the outskirts of the city. The public buildings and institutions are in great part relics of an older régime. The great cruciform cathedral, on the Praça Caetano Brandão, dates from the middle of the 18th century. In the vicinity, facing on the Praça da Independencia, are the government and municipal palaces—built by order of Pombal (c. 1766), when Portugal contemplated the creation of a great empire on the Amazon. The bishop’s palace and episcopal seminary, near the cathedral, were once the Jesuits’ college, and the custom-house on the water-front was once the convent and church of the Mercenarios. One of the most notable buildings of the city is the Theatro da Paz (Peace Theatre), which faces upon the Praça da Republica and was built by the government during the second empire. Other noteworthy buildings are the Caridade hospital, the Misericordia hospital (known as the “Santa Casa”), the military barracks occupyinganother old convent, and the Castello fort, a relic of colonial days. Pará has a number of schools and colleges, public and private, of secondary grade, such as the Atenco Paranense, Institute Lauro Sodré and Lyceu Benjamin Constant. There is an exceptionally fine museum (Museu Goeldi), with important collections in anthropology, ethnology, zoology and botany, drawn from the Amazon valley. The private dwellings are chiefly of the Portuguese one-storey type, with red tile roofs and thick walls of broken stone and mortar, generally plastered outside but sometimes covered with blue and white Lisbon tiles.

Pará is the entrepôt for the Amazon valley and the principal commercial city of northern Brazil. It is the headquarters of the Amazon Navigation Company, which owns a fleet of 40 river steamers, of 500 to 900 tons, and sends them up the Amazon to the Peruvian frontier, and up all the large tributaries where trading settlements have been established. Two or three coastwise companies also make regular calls at this port, and several transatlantic lines afford regular communication with Lisbon, Liverpool, Hamburg and New York. The port is accessible to large steamers, but those of light draft only can lie alongside the quays, the larger being obliged to anchor some distance out. Extensive port improvements have been undertaken. The exports of Pará include rubber, cacao, Brazil nuts and a large number of minor products, such as isinglass, palm fibre, fine woods, tonka beans, deerskins, balsam copaiba, annatto, and other forest products.

Pará was founded in 1615 by Francisco Caldeira de Castello-Branco, who commanded a small expedition from Maranhão sent thither to secure possession of the country for Portugal and drive out the Dutch and English traders. The settlement, which he named Nossa Senhora de Belem (Our Lady of Bethlehem), grew to be one of the most turbulent and ungovernable towns of Brazil. Rivalry with Maranhão, the capital of the Amazon dependencies, slave-hunting, and bitter controversies with the Jesuits who sought to protect the Indians from this traffic, combined to cause agitation. In 1641 it had a population of only 400, but it had four monasteries and was already largely interested in the Indian slave traffic. In 1652 the Pará territory was made a separate capitania, with the town of Pará as the capital, but it was reannexed to Maranhão in 1654. The final separation occurred in 1772, and Pará again became the capital, continuing as such through all the political changes that have since occurred. The bishopric of Pará dates from 1723. The popular movement in Portugal in 1820 in favour of a constitution and parliament (Cortes) had its echo in Pará, where in 1821 the populace and garrison joined in creating a government of their own and in sending a deputation to Lisbon. The declaration of Brazilian independence of 1822 and creation of an empire under Dom Pedro I. was not accepted by Pará, partly because of its influential Portuguese population, and partly through jealousy of Rio de Janeiro as the centre of political power. In 1823 a naval expedition under Lord Cochrane, then in the service of Brazil, took possession of Maranhão, from which place the small brig “Dom Miguel” under the command of Captain John Grenfell was sent to Pará. This officer conveyed the impression that the whole fleet was behind him, and on the 15th of August the junta governativa organized in the preceding year surrendered its authority and Pará became part of the newly created Brazilian empire. An uprising against the new government soon occurred, which resulted in the arrest of the insurgents, the execution of their leaders, and the incarceration of 253 prisoners in the hold of a small vessel, where all but four died from suffocation before morning. Conspiracies and revolts followed, and in 1835 an outbreak of the worse elements, made up chiefly of Indians and half-breeds, occurred, known as the “Revolução da Cabanagem,” which was chiefly directed against the Portuguese, and then against the Freemasons. All whites were compelled to leave the city and take refuge on neighbouring islands. The Indians and half-breeds obtained the mastery, under the leadership of Antonio and Francisco Vinagres and Eduardo Angelim, and plunged the city and neighbouring towns into a state of anarchy, the population being reduced from 25,000 to 15,000. The revolt was overcome in 1836, but the city did not recover from its effects until 1848. But the opening of the Amazon to foreign trade in 1867 greatly increased the importance of the city, and its growth has gone forward steadily since that event.

PARABLE (Gr., a comparison or similitude), originally the name given by Greek rhetoricians to a literary illustration avowedly introduced as such. In late Greek it came to mean a fictitious narrative or allegory (something that might naturally occur) by which moral or spiritual relations are set forth, as in the New Testament. The parable differs from the apologue in the inherent probability of the story itself, and in excluding animals or inanimate creatures from passing out of their natural sphere and assuming the powers of man, but it resembles it in the essential qualities of brevity and definiteness, and also in its Eastern origin. There are many beautiful examples of the parable in the Old Testament, that of Nathan, for instance, in 2 Sam. xii. 1–9, that of the woman of Tekoah in 2 Sam. xiv. 1–13, and others in the Prophets.

PARABOLA, a plane curve of the second degree. It may be defined as a section of a right circular cone by a plane parallel to a tangent plane to the cone, or as the locus of a point which moves so that its distances from a fixed point and a fixed line are equal. It is therefore a conic section having its eccentricity equal to unity. The parabola is the curve described by a projectile which moves in a non-resisting medium under the influence of gravity (see ). The general relations between the parabola, ellipse and hyperbola are treated in the articles 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geometry, and ; and various projective properties are demonstrated in the article 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geometry. Here only the specific properties of the parabola will be given.

The form of the curve is shown in fig. 1, where P is a point on the curve equidistant from the fixed line AB, known as the directrix, and the fixed point F known as the focus. The line CD passing through the focus and perpendicular to the directrix is the axis or principal diameter, and meets the curve in the vertex G. The line FL perpendicular to the axis, and passing through the focus, is the semilatus rectum, the latus rectum being the focal chord parallel to the directrix. Any line parallel to the axis is a diameter, and the parameter of any diameter is measured by the focal chord drawn parallel to the tangent at the vertex of the diameter and is equal