Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/430

Rh 402 E W N E W goods were brought across the plains to the New Mexican market, being the commencement of the overland traffic of the Sante Fe &quot;Trail,&quot; which increased yearly in importance until the railroads took the place of the &quot;prairie schooner.&quot; In 1820 Mexico became independent, and New Mexico began to be governed by political chiefs instead of Spanish &quot;Gobernadores.&quot; By a change in the constitution in 1835, governors were appointed instead of elected, and Albino Perez was sent from Mexico as the new ruler. This excited much discontent, which was increased by the enactment of a new tax law two years later. About August 1, 1837, a revolutionary movement commenced in the north of the Territory among both Mexicans and Pueblos, hav ing for its centre the town of Canada or Santa Cruz. Governor Perez marched to meet the insurgents, but was deserted by nearly all his troops and compelled to fly, and was soon after overtaken and killed near Agua Fria. A number of other prominent officials were also killed ; and on August 10 Jose Gonzalez, a Taos Indian, was installed as governor in the palace. General Manuel Armijo, who had held high positions before, raised troops at Albuquerque to suppress the revolt, and finally defeated the rebels at Canada. The Mexican Government confirmed his acts and appointed him governor, which office he held with some intermissions until the coming of an American army in 1846 under General Kearney, who marched from the Missouri and took possession of the Territory without bloodshed, General Armijo retiring southwards. A pro visional government was established by the Americans, and Charles Bent, an old resident, appointed governor, but he was killed in a revolt in January 1847. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made New Mexico a part of the United States, and by an Act of Congress of September 9, 1850, it was organized as a Territory with a regular government. Early in 1862 a Confederate army from Texas invaded the country and occupied Santa Fe, March 10; they were defeated, however, at Glorieta on March 28, and evacuated the capital April 8. The people of the Territory were commendably loyal, and supplied 6000 men to the Union army. The first rail was laid in New Mexico, November 30, 1878, by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, which reached Las Vegas July 1, 1879, Santa Fe February 9, 1880, and connected with the Southern Pacific at Deming March 18, 1881. This, and the con struction of the Denver and Eio Grande and the Atlantic and Pacific Railroads, have given a great impetus to the Territory. ( J. B. PR. ) NEW MILLS, a township of Derbyshire, is situated at the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Kinder, on the borders of Cheshire, 8 miles south-east of Stockport and 7 south-west of Glossop. Its ancient name was Bowden Middle Gale, and formerly it included seven hamlets, but about a century ago three of these were detached, and it now includes only those of Beard, Ollersett, Thornsett, and Whittle. The name New Mills was given to it from a corn-mill erected on the Kinder in the hamlet of Ollersett, and is now specially applied to the group of factories which have grown up round it. Formerly paper and cloth were the staple industries of the district, but now the inhabitants of the various hamlets are occupied chiefly in iron and brass foundries, cotton-mills, and print-works. A public hall was erected in 1871, to which a lofty tower was added in 1875. There are almshouses and other charities. The population of the urban sanitary district (5200 acres) in 1881 was 6552. NEW ORKNEY. See NEW SOUTH SHETLAND. NEW ORLEANS, a city of the United States, situated on the left bank of the Mississippi, 107 miles from its mouth, in that portion of the State of Louisiana which constitutes the river s larger delta. This peculiar region is an irregular expanse of densely-wooded swamps, wide prairies, and sea-marshes, interlaced by innumerable lakes, streams, and bays, formed by the periodic overflows of the river upon the alluvium of its own deposit, and by remnants of the sea which this natural process of land-making has not yet conquered. It embraces the whole coast of Louisiana on its southern border, and, narrowing rapidly northward, presents a total area of some 20,000 square miles of land and water. Through this region the Mississippi, as in its southward course it reaches the 30th parallel of latitude, turns and runs tortuously eastward a few miles south of and parallel with a chain of these delta lakes Lake Pontchartrain being the chief which marks the course of the same river in prehistoric, but not geologically remote, ages. At the 90th degree of longitude it bends abruptly southward, then as suddenly eastward again, then northward and again eastward, thus portioning off on the low, concave land, which is always highest at the river s margin, a shallow basin rudely square in shape and not unlike the palm of one s hand. This deep three- sided bend, some 9 miles in total length, is the harbour of New Orleans, and on the low tract walled in by the dyke or lev^e that lines its bank, and by a similar defence where Lake Pontchartrain, some 4 to 6 miles to the north ward, shuts in the fourth side, lies New Orleans, the principal seaport of the Mississippi valley, and a city of 216,000 inhabitants. The river at this point varies from 1500 to 3000 feet in width, and its broad channel often stretches almost from shore to shore, with a depth varying frequently at short intervals from 60 to more than 200 feet. Around the margins of this fine harbour a line of steamers and ship ping extends for 7 Environs of New Orleans. miles on either shore, moored, in the busy season, from two to five abreast, to the outer end of short, broad, unsheltered wooden wharves that rest on piles driven firmly into the tenaci ous clay of the river s bed. The speed of the current reaches, in times of high water, a rate of 5 miles an hour. Along the immediate front of the city s principal commercial quarter, this current, losing some of its force by change of direction, deposits its alluvium in such quantities as to produce a constant encroachment of the shore upon the harbour. At its widest this new land, or batture, with wharves, streets, and warehouses following eagerly after it, has advanced nearly 1500 feet beyond the water-line of a century and a half ago. New Orleans is emphatically a commercial city. It was its commercial value as the southern gateway of the immense valley behind it, and as the key to the free navigation of that vast natural system of waterways of which the Mississippi is the great main artery that, upon the achievement of American national autonomy, gave a small, poor, and remote Franco-Spanish-American port its political importance, and in 1803 led to its purchase by the United States, and the purchase with it of the entire province of Louisiana, of which it was the capital in embryo ; and it is almost solely as the dispenser of the products of this greatest agricultural valley in the world that New Orleans has grown from the wild and indolent little frontier town of 10,000 inhabitants it then was to the dimensions of a great city. Along its winding har bour front one sees, in the season that follows the harvests of the south and west, the energies and activities of an exporting movement not e-xcelled in volume or value on the American continent save by New York. The levde, the wharves, and the contiguous streets teem with strenuous life, and are gorged with the raw staples of the countries far and near that lie about the Mississippi and its greater and lesser tributaries, sugar, molasses, rice, tobacco, Indian corn, pork, staves, whisky, wheat, oats, flour in immense quantities, and, over and above all else, nearly one-fourth of the world s entire supply of cotton. All other movement is subsidiary or insignificant : the import trade is small ;