Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/334

Rh 320 N E G N E L Quartcroon, Quinteroon, Octoroon : Negro and white half -breeds, with fresh infusion of white blood each successive generation. Thus : Quarteroon has one-fourth, Quinteroon one-eighth, Octoroon one-sixteenth black blood only, the last being scarcely distinguish able from a white. Before the suppression of the slave trade, during the first half of the present century, from 60,000 to 70,000 Negroes were annually shipped to America, where their descendants of all shades now number altogether upwards of twelve millions as under : Coloured Element. Proportion to the Whole Population. United States 6,580,000 13 per cent. 60,000 i 50,000 1 West Indies 3,700,000 83 2,000,000 20 In Hayti the Africans have established their political autonomy, here forming two independent states, with total population 820,000. ElseAvhere slavery has been everywhere abolished, except in Brazil, where it is rapidly becoming extinct. Hence the whole of the coloured population now practically constitutes a class of freed- men, in some places apparently dying out (Central America, Argentine States), in some remaining stationary (Mexico, Peru), but in others increasing rapidly. This is especially the case in the United States, as shown by the subjoined returns for the whole of the present century : Coloured Element. Proportion to the Whole Population. 1SOO 1.002,000 19 per cent. 1820 1,772,000 19 1840 2,874,000 17 1860 4,442,000 14 1870 4,880,000 13 1880 6,581,000 13 It is obvious from this table that the Negroes, without any further importations from Africa, are increasing far more rapidly than the native whites, and that they would ultimately become the predominant element in the Southern States but for the con stant stream of migration flowing from Europe to North America. Owing to this migration they decreased relatively to the rest of the population from 1820 to 1860. But since then they have main tained their relative proportion in spite of this migration. Recently they have themselves begun to move westwards at the rate of about 50,000 annually. Should the movement continue, an equilibrium may be established, because the rate of mortality gains on the birth-rate according as they move farther from the hot Southern States, where alone the race can expect to establish itself in the republic. Bibliography. Praner Bey, Memoirs sur les N egres, Paris, 1861 ; Winwood Reade, Savage Africa; Karl Vogt, Vorles/tngen iiber den Menschen; Filippo Manetta, La Razza Negra nel suo stato selvaggio e nella sua duplice condizione di emancipate* e di schiava, Turin, 1864; John Campbell, Negromania, Philadelphia, 1851; J. F. Blumenbach, De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa, Gottingen, 1775; Lawrence, Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man, 1819 ; Dr Paul Broca, &quot;Memoirs&quot; in Bulletins de la Soc. d Anthropologie, 1860-78 ; Dr VanEvrie, On Negroes and Negro Slavery; Brehm, Reise-Skizzen aus Nordost-Africa; Col. Hamilton Smith, Natural History of the Human Species, Edinburgh, 1848 ; Hutchinson, Wanderings in West Africa; George MacHenry, The Cotton Trade and Negro Slavery, London, 1863 ; S. G. 5Iorton, Crania ^gyptiaca ; Peter A. Browne, Classification of Mankind by the flair and Wool of their Heads; Nott and GlMdon, Indigenous Races of the Earth, Philadelphia, 1857 ; Wilson, Ethnographic View of West Africa, New York, 1856; Prichard, Natural History of Man, London, 1855; Latham, Varieties of Man, London, 1850; E. B. Tylor, Anthropo logy, London, 1881; Pickering, Races of Man, London, 1850; R. N. Cust, A Sketch of the Modern Languages of Africa, London, 1883; F. L. James, The Wild Tribes of the Sudan, London, 1883. The writings of the travellers Leo Af ricanus, Bruce, Mungo Park, Denham, Clapperton, Lander, Burckhardt, Earth, Richard son, Nachtigal, Schweinfurth, Baker, Junker, Beltrami, for Soudan and Nile basin; of Krapf, Du Chaillu, Burton, Speke and Grant, Livingstone, Magyar, Cameron, Fritsche, Bleek, Lentz, Pogge and Wissmann, Schuver, Holub, Mohr, Buclmer, Gussfeldt, for equatorial and south Africa. (A. H. K.) NEGROPONT. See ETJBCEA. NEHEMIAH ( n ^PD?), governor of Judaea under Artax- erxes Longimanus; see ISRAEL, vol. xiii. p. 418. The book of Nehemiah is really part of the same work with the book of EZRA (q.v.), though it embodies certain memoirs of Nehemiah in which he writes in the first person. Apart from what is related in this book, we possess no trustworthy information about Nehemiah. Even the legend in 2 Mac. ii. 13 that he founded a library containing ancient docu ments, which is often taken as authentic and as marking an important step in the history of the Old Testament canon (see vol. v. p. 2), is discredited by standing in an epistle of which the manifest aim was to give currency to certain spurious books. NEISSE, a well-built town and fortress of the first rank in the district of Oppeln, Prussian Silesia, lies at the junc tion of the Neisse and the Biela, and consists of the town proper on the right bank of the former river and the Friedrichstadt on the left. Of its nine churches the most interesting is the parish church of St James (Jakobikirche), dating mainly from the 12th century, but finished in 1430. The chief secular buildings are the old episcopal residence, the new town-house, the old rathsthurm, 205 feet in height (1499), and the theatre. There are also several schools, convents, and hospitals. The manufactures are unimportant, but a considerable trade is carried on in agricultural products. In 1880 the town contained 20,507 inhabitants, of whom 15,825 were Roman Catholics. The garrison forms about a fourth of the population. Neisse, one of the oldest towns in Silesia, is said to have been founded in the 10th century, and afterwards became the capital of a principality of its own name, which was incorporated with the bishopric of Breslau about the year 1200. Its first walls were erected in 1350, and enabled it to repel an attack of the Hussites in 1428. It was thrice besieged during the Thirty Years War. The end of the first Silesian w r ar left Neisse in the hands of Frederick the Great, who laid the foundations of its modern fortifications. The town was taken by the French in 1807. In addition to its forts, ramparts, and bastions, Neisse can, at the will of the garrison, be protected by a system of inundation. NELEUS, a hero of Greek mythology, was son of Poseidon by Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, to whom the god appeared under the form of the Thessalian river-god Enipeus. The legends connected with him are exceedingly difficult to classify, the events are so unconnected and the scene shifts so rapidly from country to country. Born in Thessaly, where his brother Pelias is king of lolcus, Neleus becomes king of Pylus in Messenia and the ancestor of a royal family called the Neleidae, who are historically trace able as the old ruling family in some of the Ionic states in Asia Minor. Tradition uniformly derives the Ionic colonies from the Attic coast, and the presence of the Neleidse is explained by the legend that when the Dorians conquered the Peloponnesus the Neleidae were driven out and took refuge in Attica, where they at once became kings of the land, and led colonies to the eastern shores of the ^Egean. This tangle of legends seems to have as its historical basis the fortunes of an energetic yet wandering race which has left its mark indelibly on the history of every country which it touched. This race was obviously a maritime one, for there is no path except the sea between the widely separate shores where it can be traced, and its divine ancestor is Poseidon. Neleus was father by Chloris of Nestor, Pero, and other children. Through the contest for the hand of Pero he is connected with the legends of the prophetic race of the Melampodidse, who founded the mysteries and expiatory rites and the orgies of Bacchus in Argolis. NELLORE, a district in Madras presidency, India, lying between 13 25 and 15 55 N. lat., and between 79 9 and 80 14 E. long., bounded on the N. by Kistna district, E. by the Bay of Bengal, S. by North Arcot and Chingleput, and W. by the Eastern Ghats, separating it from Karnul and Cuddapah. The area is 8739 square miles. The district comprises a tract of low-lying land extending from the base of the Eastern Ghdts to the sea. Its general aspect is forbidding : the coast-line is a fringe of blown sand through which the waves occasionally break, spreading a salt sterility over the fields. Farther inland the country begins to rise, but the soil is not naturally fertile, nor are means of irrigation readily at hand. Less than one-third of the total area is cultivated ; the rest is either rocky waste or is covered with low scrub jungle. The chief rivers are the Pennair, Suvarnamukhi, and Gundlakamma. They are not navigable, but are utilized for irrigation purposes, the chief irrigation work being the