Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/111

Rh P U E P U F 99 3 miles long. The harbour, about 2 miles long and from one-fourth of a mile to a mile in breadth, is formed by a narrow spit of land or coral ledge running out for about 2 miles from the coast in a northerly and westerly direction. The entrance, about 90 feet deep, is so clear that no pilot is required; and in the outer bay (100 to 300 feet deep) there is safe anchorage. On a high rock to the south- east of the town is the Mirador of Solano, or castle of Puerto Cabello, which has often proved an obstacle to enemies advancing from the interior. In 1883 the muni- cipality, with a population of 12,000, contained a tannery, a foundry and machine-shop, a coffee-mill, two soap and candle factories, and about fourteen wholesale warehouses. The exports consist of coffee, cocoa, hides, goat and deer skins, bark, woods, indigo, and cotton, but only the first in large quantities. Germany and the United States are the chief recipients. Within 6 miles of the town there are four villages of from 200 to 1500 inhabitants. See Jiilfs and Balleer, Scehdfen der Erde, Oldenburg, 1878 ; and U.S. Consular Reports, Nos, 24, 26, 30, &c. PUERTO DE SANTA MARIA, probably the " Mene- sthei Portus " of Ptolemy, commonly called EL PUERTO ("The Port"), a town of Spain, in the province of Cadiz, 7 miles to the north-east of that city (21^ miles by rail; see sketch map, vol. iv. p. 627), near the mouth and on the right bank of the Guadalete, which is here crossed by a suspension bridge. It is a pleasant and well-built though somewhat dull town, in a fertile country, and its houses resemble those of Cadiz, though they are often larger and profusely decorated with painting. Calle Larga, the principal street, is handsome and well-paved ; there are several " alamedas " or public promenades, that of La Victoria being the finest. The place is famous for its bull-fights, that given here in honour of Wellington being the subject of the considerably idealized description in Byron's Childe Harold. Among the public buildings is a large Jesuit college, recently established. Puerto is chiefly important as a wine-exporting place; the "bodegas" or wine -stores are large and lofty, but hardly equal to those of Xerez. The harbour is formed by the river ; its mouth is considerably obstructed by a bar. There is regular steam communication with Cadiz. Timber and iron are the chief imports. The population of the munici- pality in December 1877 was 22,125. PUERTO PRINCIPE, or now more correctly CIUDAD DEL PRINCIPE, a city at the head of the central department of the island of Cuba. When first founded in the begin- ning of the 16th century by Velazquez, it was, as its more familiar name implies, on the sea-coast ; but it has been more than once shifted southward and inland, and is now nearly as far from the north as from the south side of the island. Though for some time after the surrender of San Domingo to France in 1800 Principe was the seat of the central government and supreme courts of the Spanish West Indies, it is no longer a place of much importance. The population is estimated at 31,000. Since 1840 the city has been connected by a railway with its port, which is sometimes called by its own name and sometimes by that of a smaller town on the bay about 11 miles from its entrance, San Fernando de Nuevitas. The harbour or bay is large, completely sheltered, and capable of admitting . vessels of the largest draught ; but it is entered by a narrow crooked passage 6 miles long, which, though there are no hidden dangers, makes the assistance of a pilot i desirable. PUERTO RICO. See PORTO Rico. PUFENDORF, SAMUEL (1632-1694), was born at Chemnitz, Saxony, on the 8th of January 1632, the same year which also saw the birth of three other illustrious political and philosophical writers Locke, Cumberland, and Spinoza. He belonged to an ecclesiastical family; his father was a Lutheran pastor, and he himself was destined for the ministry. Having completed his pre- liminary studies at the celebrated school of Grimma, he was sent to study theology at the university of Leipsic, at that time the citadel of Lutheran orthodoxy. Its narrow and dogmatic teaching was profoundly repugnant to the liberal nature of the young student, who was not long in bidding adieu to the professors of theology and throwing himself passionately into the study of public law. He soon went so far as to quit Leipsic altogether, and betook himself to Jena, where he formed an intimate friendship with Erhard Weigel the mathematician, a man of great distinction. Weigel was imbued with the Cartesian philosophy ; and it was to his teaching and to the impetus he gave to the application of the mathematical method that Pufendorf owes the exact and ordered mind, and the precision, frequently approaching almost to dryness, which characterize his writings. It was also under Weigel's in- fluence that he developed that independence of character which never bent before other writers, however high their position, and which showed itself in his profound disdain for " ipsedixitism," to use the piquant phrase of Bentham. Pufendorf was twenty-five years old when he quitted Jena. He hoped to find a career in some of the adminis- trative offices which were so frequently the refuge of the learned in the small states of ancient Germany ; but in this he was unsuccessful. In 1658, thanks to his eldest brother Isaiah, who had given up university teaching to enter the Swedish service, he went, in the capacity of tutor, into the family of Petrus Julius Coyet, one of the resident ministers of Charles Gustavus, king of Sweden, at Copen- hagen. At this time Charles Gustavus was endeavouring to impose upon Denmark a burdensome alliance, and in the middle of the negotiations he brutally opened hostilities. The anger of the Danes was turned against the envoys of the Swedish sovereign ; Coyet, it is true, succeeded in escaping, but the second minister, Steno Bjelke, and the whole suite were arrested and thrown into prison. Pufen- dorf shared this misfortune, and the future successor of Grotius was subjected to a strict captivity of eight months' duration. Like Grotius, he too had his Loevestein. The young tutor, deprived of books, occupied himself during his captivity in meditating upon what he bad read in the works of Grotius and Hobbes. He mentally constructed a system of universal law ; and, when, at the end of his captivity, he accompanied his pupils, the sons of Coyet, to the university of Leyden, he was enabled to publish the fruits of his reflexions under the title of Elementa jurisprudentix tiniversalis, libri duo. The work was de- dicated to Charles Louis, elector palatine, an enlightened prince and patron of science, who offered Pufendorf a chair of Roman law at Heidelberg, and when this was declined he created a new chair, that of the law of nature and nations, the first of the kind in the world. Pufen- dorf accepted it, and was thus in 1661, at the age of twenty-nine, placed in the most enviable of positions. He showed himself equal to his task, and by his science and eloquence proved himself to be an honour and an orna- ment to the university. The keenly sarcastic tract De statu imperil germanici, liber unus, dates from this period of his life. Small in bulk, it is great in significance, and is one of Pufen- dorf's most important works. Written with the assent of the elector palatine, but published under the cover of a pseudonym at Geneva in 1667, it was supposed to be addressed by a gentleman of Verona, Severinus de Mon- zambano, to his brother Laelius. The pamphlet made a great sensation. Its author arraigned directly the organi