Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/316

 298 L A P L A P recognition in China between 65 and 70 A.D., though at least a couple of centuries passed before it could be said to have free course in the country. Even still, with the form of a religion, Taoism is in reality a conglomeration of base and dangerous superstitions. Alchemy, geomancy, and spiritualism have dwelt and dwell under its shadow. Each of its &quot; three Holy Ones &quot; has the title of Thien Tsun, &quot; the Heavenly and Honoured,&quot; taken from Buddhism, and also of Shang Ti or God, taken from the old religion of the country. The most popular deity, however, is not one of them, but has the title of T u Wang Shang Ti, &quot;God, the Perfect King.&quot; But it would take long to tell of all its &quot;celestial gods,&quot; &quot;great gods,&quot; &quot;divine rulers,&quot; and others. It has been doubted, we have said, whether Lao-tsze acknowledged the existence of God at all, but the Taoism of the present day is a system of the wildest polytheism. The science and religion of the West will meet from it a most determined opposition. The &quot;Venerable Philosopher&quot; himself would not have welcomed them. The shrieking of our steam-engines, the bustle of our commerce, and the onward march of our various enterprises would have nearly driven him mad ; but he ought not to bear the obloquy of being the founder of the Taoist religion. (J. LE. ) LA PAZ, officially since 1825 LA. PAZ DE AYACUCHO, in memory of the battle of Bolivian independence, is the capital of Bolivia, at the head of a department of its own name. It lies in 16 30 S. lat. and 68 W. long., at the height of 11,970 feet above the sea, in the valley of the Chuquiapo or Rio de la Paz, at the base of the Cordillera Real, which rises with imposing cliffs another thousand feet above it. About 40 miles to the east of Lake Titicaca, La Paz has regular coach and steamer communication with Puno, and so with Mollendo on the Pacific. Commercially the town is of very considerable importance as the centre of the Bolivian trade in cuca and cinchona. Among the public buildings are the cathedral founded by Pope Paul V. in 1605, and ranking as one of the finest in South America, the church of San Francisco erected by the Jesuits, the university (San Andres), and the president s palace. The population, which consists largely of Aymaras, is estimated at between 70,000 and 80,000. The city dates from 1548, and the name Pueblo Nuevo de N. Sefiora de la Paz was given by its founder, Alonzo de Mendozo in honour of the reconciliation between Pizarro and Almagro. In 1605 it was made a bishopric. LA PEitOUSE, JEAN-FfiANgois GALATJP DE (1741- c. 1788), a French navigator, was born Yiear Albi, August 22, 1741. His family name was Galaup, and La Perouse or La Peyrouse was an addition adopted by himself from a small family estate. As a lad of eighteen, he was wounded and made prisoner on board the &quot; Formidable &quot; when it was captured by Admiral Hawke in 1759; and during the war with England between 1778 and 1783 he served with distinction in various parts of the world, more particularly on the eastern coasts of Canada. His celebrity, however, is rather due to the expedition fitted out by the French Government in 1785 for the discovery of the North-West Passage, and the verification of various matters left doubt ful by previous circumnavigators. La Perouse was placed in command of the &quot; Boussole,&quot; and his chief assistant De Langle in command of the &quot; Astrolabe.&quot; They sailed from Brest, August 1, 1785, and reached Mount St Elias, on the coast of Alaska, June 23, 1786. From the search for the North-West Passage they were deterred by the same storms which had proved too much for earlier adventurers; and, though they visited the Sandwich Islands, Macao, and the Philippines, it was not till they reached the coasts of north-western Asia that they really broke new ground. There the discovery of Sangar Strait and La Perouse Strait showed that Saghalien and Yezo were each an independent island. The explorers were well received by the Russian authorities in Kamchatka, and M. Lesseps was sent home overland with the records of the expedition. In December 1787, De Langle, Lamonon the naturalist, and ten of the crew of the &quot;Astrolabe&quot; were massacred on one of the Navigator Islands ; and, after reaching Botany Bay in safety, the rest of the expedition was not again heard of. It was not till 1825 that Captain Dillon found the wreck age of what must have been the &quot; Boussole &quot; and the &quot; Astrolabe &quot; on the reefs of Vanikoro, an island to the north of the New Hebrides. See Milet Mureau, Voyage de la Perouse autour du Monde, Paris, 1797, 4 vols. ; Peter Dillon, Narrative. ... of a Voyage in the South Seas, London, 1829. LAPIDARY (lapidamus, from lapis, a stone), one who cuts, grinds, polishes, and engraves small pieces of stone, especially gems. The prehistoric stone implements found in cave deposits, peat-mosses, river-gravels, &c., may be regarded as the earliest examples of the chipping and grinding of stone. Small cylinders of serpentine and other soft stones, on which figures and inscriptions were engraved, were fabricated in very early times by the Assyrians. Similar cylinders were afterwards made in rock-crystal, chalcedony, haematite, &c., and these harder substances were engraved by means of drills charged with the powder of still harder minerals. The use of such drills is said to date as far back as the year 730 B.C. These cylinders were perforated by round holes, and were strung as necklaces. The stone scarabei and other amulets of the Egyptians were carved or chiselled, and, according to King (Handbook of Engraved Gems, 1866), these people do not appear to have followed the Ninevites and Babylonians in the use of the drill. This tool was, however, largely employed by the Etruscan lapidaries, who also used a diamond point in finishing their work. Signets were used by the Greeks as early as 600 B.C. and in the time of Alexander gems of all kinds were cut and engraved, with the exception of the diamond. The art of cutting diamonds was probably known to the Hindus and the Chinese in very early times, but it was unknown in Europe until nearly the close of the 15th century, the diamond cut and polished for Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1475 being the first recorded example, The diamond point was extensively used in engraving the gems of the 16th, 17th, and early part of the 18th centuries, when skilful imitations of the antique gems were fabricated, and the employment of this tool is already spoken of by Pliny (77. N., xxxviii. 15) and Solinus, c. 52. The drills used by the ancients were worked either by hand or with a bow. Holes are now drilled in stone by means of an iron or copper tube, fed with diamond dust and oil (fig. 1). The small tools used for ii! engraving stones are set in a horizontal position, and are worked by vertical driving Fi S- 1- gear (fig. 2). They are of various forms, some of which are shown in fig. 3, and are made of soft iron and charged with diamond dust and oil. Any substance finely pul verized, and of greater hardness than the material operated upon, may be used for cutting and grinding stone, but diamond dust is preferred as it can be used sparingly by the employment of very thin slitting disks, into the edges of which it is imbedded by the application of an agate or glass roller, the dust being previously worked into a paste with oil. Oil of brick or soft soap is used freely as a lubricant during the process of cutting. The diamond powder is procured by finely pulverizing imperfect stones, usually the coarse variety termed bort or carbonado, in a steel mortar ; or it is ground between flat iron slabs with oil of brick. The iron slicing disk in common use is 8 or 9 inches in f