Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/19

 ASHTABULA ASIA pelled a surprise from a party of 800 savages, and defeated them entirely a few days later. When obliged by ill health to abandon the country, March 26, 182S, he left a community of 1,200 freemen. isilT l!l U, a N. E. county of Ohio, border- ing on Lake Erie and Pennsylvania ; area, 420 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 32,517. The surface is level, the soil clayey and adapted to grazing purposes. It is drained by Grand and Conne- aut rivers, and traversed by two railroads. In 1870 the county produced 190,191 bushels of wheat, 557,632 of oate, 382,556 of Indian corn, 363,957 of potatoes, 58,678 tons of hay, 197,- 464 Ibs. of wool, 1,134,877 of butter, 1,193,089 of cheese, and 146,306 of maple sugar. Capi- tal, Jeft'erson. ASHT01V-OIDER-LYNE, a manufacturing town and parish of Lancashire, England, on the Tame, 6 m. E. S. E. of Manchester; pop. in 1871, 32,030. The extensive factories for cot- ton spinning and weaving, calico printing, and other branches of the manufacture of cotton goods, employ more than 15,000 hands. ASHTORETII (plur. Ashtaroth; called by the Babylonians Mylitta, by the Assyrians Ishtar, and by the Greeks Astarte, and nearly identical with the Egyptian Athor or Hathor), the great female deity of the ancient Semitic nations on both sides of the Euphrates, and chiefly of Phoe- nicia. By Ashtoreth was originally meant the moon "the queen of heaven" and subse- quently the planet Venus. Under her name is supposed to have been worshipped the principle of conception and production, in contradistinc- tion to that of generation, variously represent- ed by Baal, Belus, or Jupiter. According to many critics, she is identical with the Asherah of the Scriptures, the divinity of happiness. In Phoenicia she was at first represented by a white conical stone ; afterward with the head of a bull or a cow ; and ultimately as a human being with a thunderbolt in one hand and a sceptre in the other. Ashtoreth was some- times worshipped in groves, sometimes in tem- ples. Cakes made in the shape of a crescent, and male kids, are said to have been the offer- ings in which she most delighted. Eunuchs dressed in feminine attire, or women, were her favorite priests ; and many of the rites in which they indulged at her altars were of the most lascivious character. The dove, the crab, and the lion among animals, and the pomegranate among fruits, were sacred to Ashtoreth. Stat- ues and groves consecrated to her were very numerous in Syria. In Bashan a town of Og was named from her worship, Ashtaroth Kar- naim (horned Astartes). The idolatry of Ash- toreth was introduced into Israel in the days of the judges, and was not finally extirpated till the reign of Josiah. ASH WEDNESDAY, the first day of Lent, called by the fathers of the church caput je- junii, the beginning of the fust, or dies cine- rum, ash day, in allusion to the custom of sprinkling the head with ashes. In the Roman Catholic church, on this day the priest marks the sign of the cross with ashes on the fore- heads of the people, repeating the words, Me- mento, homo, quod pulvis es, et in puherem reverteru: "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt return." ASIA, the largest of the recognized conti- nental divisions of the globe. The name, which was originally used in a much more limited sense than at present, comes to us from the Greeks, though believed by many to be of Semitic origin ; its import is still a mat- ter of question. The estimates of the area of Asia differ very considerably. That of Elis6e Reclus gives the extent of the continents aa follows, in square miles : Asia, 16,771,879; America, 14,902,989; Africa, 11,244,958; Eu- rope, 3,822,320 ; Australia, 2,972,916 ; to- tal, 49,725,062. Thus, considering Australia a continent, Asia comprehends almost exactly one third of the solid land of the globe, exclu- sive of the great groups of islands called Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. In this estimate the Japanese islands are regarded as belonging to Asia, although separated from the continent by considerable channels. Asia, thus considered, is bounded by the Arctic ocean, the Pacific, the Indian ocean, the Red sea, the Mediterranean, the Archipelago, the Black and Caspian seas, and European Russia. On the ex- treme N. E. it is cut off from America only by the narrow Behring strait. Between Asia and Africa the only connection is the isthmus of Suez. The separation between Europe and Asia is rather geographical than physical or political, the low range of the Ural mountains, which for the greater part forms the nominal line, being little more than a watershed, and running almost midway through the Russian empire. Europe is physically a corner arbitrarily cut off from the northwest of the great Asian con- tinent. The bulk of Asia forms a solid square lying between the Arctic circle and the tropic of Cancer, and Ion. 65 and 120 E. Among the projections from this solid square on the west are the peninsulas of Asia Minor and Arabia; on the north, the Siberian capes; on the east, the N. E. extremity of Siberia, with its southern prolongation of Kamtchatka and the peninsula of Corea; on the south, India and the Malay peninsula. Asia as a whole forms a great trapezium, its main axis running N. E. to S. W., chiefly through Siberia, the intersecting line passing N. and S., nearly on the meridian of 100, from Siberia on the north, in lat. 78, to the S. extremity of the Malay peninsula on the south, almost under the equator. Including the Japanese islands, and a few others which may be properly con- sidered as belonging to the continent, Asia thus extends from lat. 78 N. to the equa- tor ; or, including the islands of Sumatra and Java, and some minor insular prolongations of the Malay peninsula, to lat. 10 S. ; and from Ion. 26 E. to 190 E., equivalent, count- ed in the other direction, to 170 W. Asia