Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/110

Rh 98 P U C P U E PliCKLEK-MUSKAU, HERMANN LUDWIG HEINRICH, PRINCE OF (1785-1871), a German author, was born at Muskau in Lusatia on 30th October 1785. He served for some time in the body-guard at Dresden, and afterwards travelled in France and Italy. In 1811, after the death of his father, he inherited the barony of Muskau and a considerable fortune. As an officer under the duke of Saxe -Weimar he distinguished himself in the war of liberation and was made military and civil governor of Bruges. After the war he retired from tlie army and visited England, where he remained about a year. In 1822, in compensation for certain privileges which he re- signed, he was raised to the rank of prince by the king of Prussia. Some years earlier he had married the countess of Pappenheim, daughter of Prince Hardenberg ; but he separated from her in 1826. He again visited England and travelled in America and Asia Minor, living after his return at Muskau, which he spent much time in cultivating and adorning. In 1845 he sold this estate, and, although he afterwards lived from time to time at various places in Germany and Italy, his principal residence was the castle of Branitz in the district of Kottbus, where he formed splendid gardens as he had already done at Muskau. In 1863 he was made an hereditary member of the Prussian Herrenhaus, and in 1866 he attended the Prussian general staff in the war with Austria. He died at Branitz on 4th February 1871, and, in accordance with instructions in his will, his body was burned. As a writer of books of travel he held a high position, his power of observation being keen and his style lucid and animated. His first work was Brief e eines Verstorbenen (1830-31), in which he ex- pressed many independent judgments about England and other countries he had visited and about prominent persons whom he had met. Among his later books of travel were Semilasso's vorletzter Weltgang (1835), Semilasso in Afrika (1836), Aus Mehemed-Ali's Reich (1844), and Die Ruck- kehr (1846-48). He was also the author of Andeutungen uber Landschaftsgartnerei (1834). See Piickler - Muskau's Briefwechsel und Tagcbucher ; Ludmilla Assing, Fiirst Hermann von Piickler- Muskau ; and Petzold, Filrst Hermann von Piickler -Muskau in seiner JBedeutungfiir die bildende Gartenkunst, PUDSEY, a township of the West Hiding of Yorkshire, is situated on an acclivity rising above the valley of the Aire and on the Great Northern Kailway, 4 miles east of Bradford and 6 south-west of Leeds. The principal build- ings are the church of St Lawrence in the Gothic style, erected in 1821 and lately improved, and the mechanics' institute, a fine building, comprising class-rooms, a library, a public hall, and a lecture hall. The town has an import- ant woollen trade and possesses dyeing and fulling mills. Pudsey appears in Domesday as " Podechesaie." It was sold by Edward II. to the Calverley family, from whom it passed to an ancestor of the Milners. By the Bradford Water and Improvement Act of 1881 part (37 acres) of the urban sanitary district of Pudsey was amalgamated with that of Bradford. The population of the diminished district (2409 acres) in 1871 was 12,173, and in 1881 it was 12,314. PUEBLA, or in full LA PUEBLA DE LOS ANGELES, a city of Mexico, formerly capital of the province of Tlaxcala, now of the state of Puebla, lies 76 miles south-east of Mexico, in 19 N. lat. and 98 2' W. long., at a height of 7220 feet above the sea. It is admirably situated on a spacious and fertile plateau, which, while almost destitute of trees, is, especially in the neighbourhood of the city, clothed with gardens and fields. To the south-west rises the summit of Popocatepetl, and Orizaba and Iztaccihuatl are also within the horizon. By Humboldt Puebla was ranked as the most important city of Spanish America after Mexico, Guanajuato, and Havana, and in the matter of population it still stands third among the state capitals. Its spacious streets run exactly east-west and north-south, and its houses, often of three stories, are solidly built of stone and in Spanish style. The cathedral, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, was commenced in 1552 after the designs of Juan Gomez de Mora, but it was not completed until 1649, after Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza had devoted eight years of strenuous effort to the enterprise. It is rather more than 320 feet kxng and 165 wide, and consists of a nave 80 feet high, with side aisles and a dome, the upper portion of which is con- structed of pumice-stone for the sake of lightness. The main front, like the columns of the interior, is in the Doric style, but its two side towers are Ionic. In one is a great bell cast in 1637 and weighing upwards of 8 tons. Apart from the cathedral Puebla was famous for the number, and more especially for the lavish decoration of its churches, monasteries, and colleges. Several of these (such as the church and convent of Santo Domingo and the church of S. Felipe Neri) are still of note, and the city also contains a museum, a theatre, &c. Puebla has long been one of the great trading and manufacturing centres of the country, and it has recently become an important point in the rapidly -developing railway system, having in 1884 lines to Apizaco on the railway from Vera Cruz to Mexico (28 miles), to Villa de Libres (58 miles), to San Martin (24 miles), to Matamoros Izucar (31 miles), and to San Juan de los Llanos. Cotton and woollen goods, leather, earthen- ware, soap, and glass are the leading manufactures. The population, which was about 80,000 in 1746 and 52,717 in 1793, and which greatly decreased during the revolu- tionary period, is now (1885) stated at 75,000. Puebla was founded in 1533-34 by Sebastian Ramirez de Fuenleal, archbishop of Santo Domingo, and the Franciscan friar Toribio Motolinia. In 1550 it became the seat of the bishopric which had originally been founded in 1526 at Tlaxcala. The epithet "de los Angeles," which is now practically dropped, was in the 17th and 18th centuiies the chief part of the name, which often appears simply as Angeles. It is associated with a popular belief that during the building of the cathedral two angels every night added as much to the height of the walls as the workmen had managed to add in the preceding day. In 1845 Santa Anna made an unsuc- cessful attempt to capture the city. On 18th March 1863 it was invested by the French under Forey, and on 17th May taken by storm. See Buschman's history of the city and cathedral in Ztschr. f. allgcm. Erd- kunde, 1863, vol. xv. pp. 195-212, and xvi. pp. 338-345. PUERPERAL FEVER. See SEPTICAEMIA. PUERTO CABELLO, a town and seaport in the South American republic of Venezuela, in the province of Cara- bobo, used to rank next to Cartagena, and possesses one of the finest natural harbours in that part of the world. It is backed at the distance of about 5 miles by a range of mountains 3000 feet high, across which pass, at a height of 1800 feet, the road (36 miles) and the railway now (1885) in course of construction to Valencia, the capital of the province. The old town used to lie on an island (originally a coral bank) joined to the mainland by a bridge; but since about 1850 the narrow channel between the town and the more extensive suburbs on shore has been filled up and covered with blocks of building, so that now Puerto Cabello occupies a kind of headland projecting into the bay. Formerly the lowness of its site and the mangrove swamps which fringed the whole coast rendered it appallingly unhealthy : at the time of Humboldt's visit, for example, the surgeon of the hospital reported that in seven years he had 8000 cases of yellow fever, and there were instances of the authorities having to take possession of vessels in the harbour because the entire crew had per- ished (Eastwick). But yellow fever has not been known at Puerto Cabello since about 1868, and the general death- rate of the place is quite normal. A good supply of water is obtained from the Rio Esteban by me^ns of an aqueduct