Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/302

Rh 284 M I D M I D cleared; and the Middletown district owned 83 sailing vessels and 22 steamers. Both the silver and the lead mines which were formerly worked in the vicinity have been abandoned, but cast-iron, britannia, and silver-plated goods, sewing-machines, pumps, webbing, and tape are among the local manufactures. The population of the city increased from 5182 in 1860 to 6850 in 1880. First settled in 1636, Middletown was incorporated as a town in 1654, and as a city in 1784. MIDDLETOWN, a manufacturing village of the United States, in Wallkill township, Orange county, New York, 55 miles N.N.W. of New York, at the junction of four railroads. It is a clean well-built place, in the midst of a fine dairy-farming and stock-raising district, manufactures saws, files, felt hats, blankets, agricultural implements, printers materials, &c., and is the seat of the State Homoeopathic Insane Asylum. The population was 6049 in 1870 and 8494 in 1880. MIDHURST, an ancient parliamentary borough and market-town of Sussex, is picturesquely situated on a gentle eminence above the south bank of the West Rother, on three railway lines, 50 miles south-west of London and 12 north from Chichester. The church of St Denis (re stored in 1881-83) is chiefly Perpendicular in style, but the lower part of the embattled tower is probably Norman. At the grammar school, founded in 1672, Richard Cobden and Sir Charles Lyell were educated. A new public hall was opened in 1882. The old castle of the De Bohuns stood on a mound above the river, now overgrown with trees. In ancient times a commandery of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem had jurisdiction over the district now forming the liberty of St John. The prosperity of the town depends chiefly on agriculture. A market is held weekly, and a fair three times a year. The population of the parliamentary borough, which has an area of 26,172 acres, was 6753 in 1871, and 7221 in 1881. Midhurst is not mentioned in Domesday, being included under Easebourne. In the reign of Henry I. it was held by the king as a minor barony. In the time of Edward I. it passed into the possession of the De Bohuns. From the time of Edward II. till 1832 it returned two members to parliament, but since then only one. MIDIAN was one of the peoples of North Arabia whom the Hebrews recognized as distant kinsmen, representing them as sons of Abraham s wife Keturah. The word Keturah means &quot; incense &quot;; thus the sons of Keturah are the &quot; incense-men,&quot; not indeed inhabitants of the far south incense-land, but presumably the tribes whose caravans brought the incense to Palestine and the Mediterranean ports. So the Midianites appear in connexion with the gold and incense trade from Yemen (Isa. Ix. 6), and with the trade between Egypt and Syria (Gen. xxxvii. 28, 36). At the time of the exodus the pastures of the Midianites, or of the branch of Midi an to which Moses s father-in-law (Jethro or Raguel, or Hobab) belonged, lay near Mount Horeb (Exod. iii. 1); and Num. x. 29 sq. implies that the tribe was at home in the desert of the wanderings. The Kenites, who, in spite of their connexion with Amalek (1 Sam. xv. 6), had friendly relations with Israel, and ulti mately coalesced with the tribe of Judah, are represented in Judg. i. 16, iv. 11 as the kin of Moses s father-in-law. The Kenites, however, can have been but one fraction of Midian which took a separate course from their early relations to Israel. 1 The main body appear in Judg. vi. as a powerful Bedouin confederation, invading Canaan from the eastern desert, and ravaging the land as similar tribes have done in all ages when Palestine lacked a strong 1 The admixture of Midianite elements in Judah and the other border tribes of Israel is confirmed by a comparison of the names of the Midianite clans in Gen. xxv. 4 with the Hebrew genealogies U Chroii. ii. 46, iv. 17, v 24; Oen. xlvi. 9). government. With their defeat by Gideon and another defeat by the Edomites in the field of Moab, probably about the same time (Gen. xxxvi. 35), the recorded history of Midian closes. A place Midian is mentioned 1 Kings xi. 18, and in later times the name lingered in the district east of the Gulf of Akaba, where Eusebius knows a city lladian in the country of the Saracens and Ptolemy places Modiana. Still later Madyan was a station on the pilgrim route from Egypt to Mecca, the second beyond Aila (Elath). Here in the Middle Ages was shown the well from which Moses watered the flocks of Sho aib (Jethro), and the place is still known as &quot;the caves of Sho aib.&quot; It has considerable ruins, which have been described by Ruppell (Reisen, 1829) and Burton (Land of Midian, 1879). MIDNAPUR, a district in the lieutenant-governorship of Bengal, India, between 21 37 and 22 57 N. lat., and between 86&quot; 35 45&quot; and 88 14 E. long., is bounded on the N. by Bankurd and Bard wan, on the E. by Hooghly and Howrah, on the S. by the Bay of Bengal, and on the W. by Singbhum and Manbhum, with an area of 5082 square miles. Its general appearance is that of a large open plain, of which the greater part is under cultivation. In the northern portion the soil is poor, and there is little wood. The country along the western boundary, known as the Jungle Mahals, is undulating and picturesque ; it is almost uninhabited. The eastern and south-eastern portions are swampy and richly cultivated. The chief rivers of the district are the Hooghly and its three tribu taries, the Rupnanlyan, the Haldi, and the Rasulpur. The Midnapur high-level canal runs almost due east and west from the town of Midnapur to Ulubaria on the Hooghly 1 6 miles below Calcutta, and affords a continuous navigable channel 53 miles in length. There is also a tidal canal for navigation, 26 miles in length, extend ing from the Rupnarayan river. The jungles in the west of the district yield lac, tasar silk, wax, resin, fire wood, charcoal, &c., and give shelter to large and small game. The census of 1872 returned the population of Midnapur at 2,540,963 (1,257,194 males and 1,283,769 females), including only 122 Europeans and 157,030 Mohammedans. The aboriginal tribes belong chiefly to the jungles and hills of Chutia Nagpur and Ban- kuru ; the most numerous of them are Santals (96,921) and Bhumijs (35,344). Of high-caste Hindus the returns show 136,500; and the number of Kayasths is given as 101,663. Amon&quot; the semi-Hindu ized aborigines, the most numerous are the Bagdis, a tribe of culti vators, fishermen, and day-labourers (76,825). Belonging to agri cultural castes there are 1,018,686. The four municipalities are Midnapur (31,491), Chandrakona (21,311), Ghatal (15,492), and Tamliik (5849). Rice is the staple crop. Irrigation is effected chiefly from the high-level canal. Rent rates vary from lO^d. an acre for the poorest quality of rice land to 18s. an acre for the best irrigable lands. The district suffers occasionally from drought : floods are common, and very disastrous in their results. The prin cipal exports are rice, silk, and sugar ; and the chief imports con sist of cotton cloth and twist. Salt, indigo, silk, mats, and brass and copper utensils are manufactured. Apart from the rivers, com munication is afforded by 482 miles of road. The total revenue in 1870-71 was 262,578, and the expenditure 53,777. The pre vailing diseases are fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, and cholera. The average mean temperature is 80 Fahr., and the average annual rainfall 66 inches. The early history of Midnapur centres round the ancient town of Tamluk, which in the beginning of the 5th century was an import ant Buddhist settlement and maritime harbour. The first con nexion of the English with the district dates from 1760, when Mir Kasi m ceded to the East India Company Midnapur, Chittagong, and Bardwan (then estimated to furnish one-third of the entire revenue of Bengal) as the price of his elevation to the throne of Bengal on the deposition of Mir Jafar. MIDNAPTJR, chief town and headquarters station of the above district, is situated on the north bank of the Kasdi river, with a population in 1872 of 31,491. The town has a large bazar, with commodious public offices. It is healthy, dry, and well supplied with water. An American mission maintains an excellent training school, together with a printing press, and has founded several village schools in