Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/80

 70 T T T W hairs. These are. however, removed when the skin is dressed for commercial purposes. Sea-otters are only found upon the rocky shores of certain parts of the North Pacific Ocean, especially the Aleutian Island.* and Alaska, extending as far south on the American The Sea-Otter (Enhydra hitris). From Wolf in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1865, pi. vii. coast as Oregon ; but, owing to the unremitting persecution to which they are subjected for the sake of their skins, which rank among the most valuable known to the furrier, their numbers are greatly diminishing, and, unless some restric tion can be placed upon their destruction, such as that which protects the fur seals of the Pribyloff Islands, the species is threatened with extermination, or, at all events, excessive scarcity. When this occurs, the occupation of five thousand of the half-civilized natives of Alaska, who are dependent upon sea-otter hunting as a means for obtaining their living, will be gone. The principal hunting grounds at present are the little rocky islets and reefs around the island of Saanach and the Chernobours, where they are captured by spearing, clubbing, or nets, and recently by the more destructive rifle bullet. They do not feed on fish, like the true otters, but on clams, mussels, sea-urchins, and crabs, and the female brings forth but a single young one at a time, apparently at no particular season of the year. They are excessively shy and wary, and all attempts to rear the young ones in captivity have hitherto failed. See Elliott Coues, Monograph of North American Fur-bearing Animals, 1877. (W. H. F.) OTTOMAN EMPIRE. See TURKEY. OTTUMWA, a city of the United States, capital of Wapello county, Iowa, lies on the Des Moines river (here spanned by a bridge), 75 miles north-west of Burlington by the main line of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Rail road. An important railway junction, in the heart of the coal-region of Iowa, and in possession of good water-power, Ottumwa, whose existence as a city dates from 1856, is growing in commercial and industrial activity. There is a large pork-packing establishment, killing 100,000 hogs annually. Among the manufactures are waggons and carriages, ploughs, sewing machine attachments, table- cutlery, corn-starch, linseed oil, harness, and furniture. The population was 1632 in 1860, 5214 in 1870, and 9004 in 1880. OTWAY, THOMAS (1651-1685), the best English tragic poet of the classical school, was the son of the Rev. Humphrey Otway, rector of Woolbeding, near Midhurst in Sussex, and was born at the adjoining village of Trotton, March 3, 1651. He acknowledges his obligations to the care and education of his parents. He went to school at Wickham, near Winchester, and in 1669 pro ceeded to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1671 he appeared at the Duke s Theatre, Lincoln s Inn Fields, in the Forced Marriage, a new play by Aphra Behn, but failed ignomini- ously. Declining to take orders, he quitted the university in 1674, and obtained a cornetcy in a troop of horse. Within a twelvemonth he sold his commission, and came to London as a literary adventurer. In 1675 his Alcibiades, a poor play, was performed with indifferent success at the Duke s Theatre. In the following year Don Carlos, a vigorous rhymed tragedy, puerile in conception and show ing little knowledge of human nature, but full of declama tory energy, took the town fairly by storm. He followed it up with translations of Racine s Berenice and Moliere s Fourberies de Scapin, and with a very dull and indecent comedy of his own, Friendship in Fashion. He next went as a volunteer to the wars in Flanders, an unfortunate expedition which pointed the merciless lampoons of Rochester, to whom Berenice had been dedicated, but with whom he had now quarrelled. It also prompted his mediocre but not uninteresting play, The Soldier s Fortune (1679), in which he has turned his military experience to account. Next year he produced The Orphan, founded upon a novel called English Adventures, one of the two plays which have placed him in the first rank of English tragic poets; and Caitts Marius, a wholesale but acknowledged plagiarism from Romeo and Juliet. In i682 appeared his masterpiece, Venice Preserved, the plot of which is taken from Saint Real s Histoire de la Conjuration du Marquis &amp;lt;h Bedemar. Its success was decisive, but it brought little pecuniary advantage to the author, who was already sink ing into abject poverty, and, as appears by some letters attributed by Mr Gosse to this date, was further tormented by a hopeless passion for the beautiful Mrs Barry, the principal female performer in his plays. Some of his letters to her were first published with Rochester s works, and subsequently included in his own. Desponding arid broken-hearted, he seems to have given himself up to dissi pation, and produced but one more insignificant play, The Atheist, a second part of the Soldier s Fortune (1684). On April 14, 1685, he died on Tower Hill, under most melan choly circumstances if the tradition can be believed that he was choked by a piece of bread begged from a passer by. There is no absolute confirmation of this sad story, or of a later account which attributes his death to a fever caught by over-exertion in pursuing a robber. Whatever the exact manner of his decease, he certainly expired in obscurity and want. A tragedy called Heroic Friendship was published under his name in 1719. It has generally been regarded as wholly spurious ; but Mr Gosse, his most sympathetic critic, recognizes some traces of his hand. Otway s strong point is pathos. In this respect, though in no other, he is the Euripides of the English stage. When he would excite compassion he is irresistible. Unlike Shakespeare s, however, his pathos springs entirely out of the situation. His characters in themselves are not interesting, but the circumstances in which they are placed afford scope for the most moving appeals, and merit and demerit are altogether lost sight of in the contemplation of human suffering. The love scenes between Jaffier and Belvidera cannot be surpassed; and no plot more skilfully calculated to move the emotions than that of Venice Pre served was ever contrived by dramatist. It is to be regretted that modern fastidiousness has banished from the stage The Orphan, in which Johnson saw no harm. In everything but pathos Otway is mediocre : he has no deep insight into the human heart ; his ideas are circum scribed and commonplace ; and his attempted eloquence is frequently mere rant. Even the affecting madness of Belvidera verges dangerously on burlesque, and is no