Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/633

Rh belles-lettres, a lyceum, an antiquarian museum, a society of agriculture, and schools of medicine, artillery, and design, besides two deaf and dumb institutions. The chief branch of industry is the manufacture of watches anc? jewellery. There are also some considerable breweries and manufactories of carpets, porcelain, hardware, Seltzer-water, artificial flowers, iL r c. Besanon enjoys a good position for the commerce between France and Switzerland. Population in 1872, 39,808. Long. 5 5G 26&quot; E., lat. 47 14 12&quot; N.

1em  BESKOW,, Baron, the Swedish dramatist, was born at Stockholm, April 19, 1796. Beskow s first book, Poetical E/orts, published in 1818, made a favourable impression with the public, and he wrote the prize poem for the Swedish Academy some years later. His dramas, however, are his chief claim to remembrance ; the best are TorJcel Knutsson, Erik XIV., Birger and his Race, and Gustavus Adolphus in Germany. Torkel Knuts son is considered the finest drama that Swedish literature possesses. In the highest sense of the word, these are not, however, dramas at all, since they lack unity and fail in the development of character, but they are grandiose historical studies in a dramatic form. Beskow s poetry is over-decorated with phrases, and becomes the prey of sonorous antithesis. Bjsides lyrical and dramatic poetry, Baron von Beskow distinguished himself in history, philosophy, politics, and travels. In 1823 he was elected president of the Swedish Academy, and became an enthusiastic and liberal patron of national poetry and art. (Ehlenschlager translated his dramas into Danish, and various persons rendered them into German. He died on the 17th of October 1868.  BESSARABIA, a government in the S.W. of European Russia, on the borders of Austria and the Danubian princi palities, with an area, since the cessions of the Paris peace in 1856, of 14,577 English square miles. Till the last Eastern war Bessarabia occupied the whole space between the Dniester and the Pruth from the Austrian frontier to the Black Sea. The northern portion of Bessarabia is mountainous, the southern flat and low, the limit between the two being marked by the so-called upper Trajan wall, an artificial elevation executed, according to some, in the end of the 2d century A.D., under Trajan, but, according to others, in the 3d century, under Probus. This wall extends from the. confluence of the Botna with the Dniester to the Pruth. In northern or mountainous Bessarabia two systems of elevations may be distinguished. The first is an immediate offshoot of the Carpathians, and occupies the whole of Khoteen, or the north-western district of the government. It rises about 450 feet above the valley of the Dniester, and consists of strata of Palaeozoic formation, sandstones, schists, and limestones. The second system is especially extended in the very middle of Bessarabia, and may be called the Yassa-Orgievian range. It consists of limestone of secondary formation, and its highest point is Mount Megura, about 20 miles S. of Bielitz, between Bakhmut and Poltava. The low portion of Bessarabia stretches south from the Trajan wall, with a length of 133 miles and a breadth of 33, and is well known as the Budjak steppes. The surface is perfectly level ; and the soil, except in the region along the shore, consists of a thick bed of loam. The province is washed on its eastern parts by the Black Sea only for the distance of 20 miles to the south of the estuary of the Dniester. Its only seaport is that of Akerman, situated on the estuary of the Dniester. This river divides Bessarabia from Kherson and Podolia for a distance of almost 600 miles. The shores of the Dniester are in general high and steep, and numerous bars obstruct its channel, particularly at Yampol and Bakat. On the Bessarabian bank are situated the towns Khoteen, Cosoka, and Bender; and thirteen natural harbours for ships are counted along this side of the river. Among the principal tributaries are the Reuth, the Ikel, the Buik, and Botna. Another important stream is the Pruth, of which the left shore skirts the province for a distance of more than 140 miles. The navigation on the Pruth is not important; its course is impeded by bars and falls. The only important lakes in the government lie along the coast of the Black Sea in the Akerman district. Marshes extend along the Reuth and its tributaries, and there are also some along the Botna ; they offer no great obstacles, however, to free communication. Bessarabia up to 1856 possessed great quantities of sedimental salt ; but after the cessions of the Black Sea coast and the salt lakes, the quantity obtained, which formerly exceeded 60,000 tons, almost came to nothing. The climate of Bessarabia, is temperate. The medium annual temperature of Keesheneff, 230 feet above the sea-level, is 50 Fahr.; the temperature of the warmest month, about 73; of the coldest, about 20. In the valley of the Dniester the climate is in general much healthier than in that of the Pruth; the climate of the north-west is much colder, and spring commences there ten days later. In all the upper part there are forests, consisting princi pally of beech, oak, and sorb, besides small quantities of birch. The chief forest region lies along the heights of the Orgieff and Yassa districts about the Megura Mountains, and extends thence east to the Dniester and south-west to Keesheneff. The Khoteen hills are almost all covered with timber. The three northern districts, Khoteen, Bielitz, and Soroka, are especially suited for agriculture, and may be regarded as the granary of Bessarabia. The two intermediate districts of Orgieff and Keesheneff, though possessing a sufficiently fertile soil, are pre-eminently woodland ; while the two southern, Bender and Akerman, although also fertile, have a steppe-like character, and are better adapted to the rearing of cattle.

