Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/43

 ASSIGNMENT ASSINIBOINS 31 amounts in paper, the assignations soon came into such demand as to be worth a premium. This premium naturally increased with the dis- tance inland, and the fluctuations were so irreg- ular that in 1839 a ukase regulated the value of the assignations at 3 to 1 silver, and order- ed that henceforth the silver ruble should be the legal unit in all negotiations and legal doc- uments ; that a new paper money, called " bills of credit," should be issued, and the old assig- nations gradually withdrawn from circulation and destroyed. This was accomplished. ASSIGNMENT, in law, the making over or transferring of any species of property. It also signifies the deed or instrument by which the transfer is operated. The assignment of a lease is the transfer of the assignor's whole estate in the term created by the original lease. The difference between an assignment and an underlease is that the underlease retains the reversion, whereas the assignment parts with it. Assignment in commercial law was for- merly much restricted. Bills of lading and bills of exchange were not assignable. All in- terests in personal property, of which a man has not the actual possession, but merely the right to recover, are choses in action. Thus a debt, whether specialty or simple contract, is a chose in action, a something to be recovered. These were not assignable. These restraints were, however, evaded 'by a license to use the name of the legal creditor. Even under a bill of sale of goods, the property in them does not pass unless by actual delivery and possession as against bonajide creditors. Both by the Eng- lish and French law, property in the power and disposition of a debtor may by process of law be transferred to his creditor. ASSIBfG. I. Rosa Maria, a German poetess, sister of Vanrtiagen von Ense, born in Dussel- dorf, May 28, 1783, died Jan. 22, 1840. The outbreak of the French revolution obliged her family to take up their residence in Strasburg, and in 1796 they removed to Hamburg. After the death of her father in 1799 she became a teacher. In 1816 she married Dr. Assing, a physician of Konigsberg, who on her account removed to Hamburg, where his house became a favorite place of literary reunion. The poet Chamisso was a frequent visitor. Rosa's poems have been published, with a memoir of her life, under the title of Rosa Maria's poetiseher Naehlast (Altona, 1841). II. Lndmilla, daugh- ter of the preceding, born at Hamburg, Feb. 22, 1827. After the death of her parents she resided in Berlin with her uncle, the celebrated Varnhagen von Ense, occupying a daughter's place in his house, and receiving an unusually complete education. She first pub- lished essays in newspapers and reviews, and in 1857 produced a biography of the countess Elisa von Ahlefeldt. Several other biographies followed from her pen. On the death of her uncle she edited the unpublished portion of his Denlcwurdigkeiten, issuing the 8th and 9th vol- umes in 1859. In 18fiO she also published Alex- 55 VOL. ii. 3 ander von Humboldt's letters to her uncle, and in 1861-'2 the diaries of Varnhagen von Ense himself. The manner in which political events are treated in this collection brought her into disfavor with the court, and in May, 1862, an ac- tion was begun against her in Berlin she hav- ing in the autumn of 1861 taken up her residence in Florence which resulted in her conviction as a traducer of the king, queen, and various personages, and in her sentence to eight months' imprisonment. A similar trial, and sentence to two years' imprisonment, followed the publica- tion of the remaining volumes of the collec- tion in 1864; but she never actually under- went these punishments. She has since trans- lated much from the Italian. ASSIMHOI., a river of British North Amer- ica, rising in lat. 51 40' N. and about Ion. 105 W., and joining the Red river of the North at Fort Garry, Manitoba, in lat. 49 54' N. Its course is a distance of over 400 m. At a point 22 m. above Fort Garry it is 120 ft. wide, and has here in summer a mean depth of about 6 ft. ; 140 m. from its mouth its breadth be- comes 230 ft. and its mean depth over 8 ft. ; at 280 m. its depth increases to over 11 ft. with a width of 135 ft. It receives in its course the waters of the Little Souris, Qn'appelle or Calling river, the Rapid river or the Little Saskatchewan, White Sand river, and Beaver creek. At its junction with the Little Souris, 140 m. from Fort Garry, the volume of water is 12,899,040 gallons an hour ; while at Lane's Post, 118 m. lower down, this volume is di- minished, Mr. Hind asserts, more than one half; a result which he attributes to evapora- tion. At Fort Ellice the secondary banks are 240 ft. high, forming an eroded valley nearly a mile and a half wide. Parts of its course are bordered by inconsiderable forests of oak, ash, elm, maple, birch, poplar, and aspen. VSMMIions. a tribe of Indians of the Da- kota family, in Montana territory, United States, and in Manitoba and the region round about in British America. They were a part of the Yankton Sioux, but after a bitter quar- rel about women separated from the mass of the nation about the beginning of the 17th century, and the two parties have since been hostile. Their own distinctive name is never used : the neighboring Algonquin tribes called them Assinipwalak, Stone Sioux, or Stone Warriors, as some infer from the nature of their country near the Lake of the Woods. The adventurous French missionaries reported them as a nation as early as 1840, and at a very early period they traded furs on Hudson bay. In the British provinces they are divid- ed into Assiniboins of the prairies, who are tall, vigorous, and thievish, and Assiniboins of the woods, who are wretchedly poor. They extend from Souris or Mouse river to the Athabasca, and number some 5,000. There are Roman Catholic and Methodist missions among them at Lake Ste. Anne and Pigeon lake. They are friends and allies of the Crees,