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 714 ERIE CANAL ERIVAN and men generally. The remains of the offi- cers killed were buried at Put-in Bay island, on the anniversary of the battle in 1858, when the corner stone of a monument was laid. ERIE CANAL. See CANAL. ERIES (properly Erilce), a tribe of Indians of the same family as the Hurons, Iroquois, and Susquehannas. They seem in early times to have dwelt near the Niagara river and Lake Erie, but were driven inland by enemies in the west. They took no part in the war be- tween the Iroquois and Hurons, but after the overthrow of the latter were attacked by the former about 1653. Being brave and expert bowmen and able to raise 2,000 warriors, they took up arms, invaded the Seneca country, and gained several victories, so that the Iroquois cantons sought the aid of the French and agreed to receive missionaries. An Iroquois army of 1,800 men in 1656 invaded the Erie territory, and, though the Eries sought to make peace, attacked one of their palisaded forts, to which they had fled. After a desperate resistance the fort fell, most of the Eries were put to death, and the remnant of the tribe was incorporated with the Senecas. Their locality at this time cannot be positively identified; it abounded in wild cats, whence they were called Chats by the French; and it was near oil springs. One of their towns was called Kentaienton. ERIGENA, John Seotns, a scholastic philosopher, born near the beginning of the 9th century, in one of the British isles, probably Ireland. It is probable that he died about 880, but whether in France or England is uncertain. The most learned doctor and extraordinary thinker of his time, his life is best explained by supposing him to have been educated in Ireland, where a colony of philosophers had preserved almost intact, during the tumults of barbaric invasion, the traditions of the Alexandrian school of phi- losophy, elsewhere 'Completely lost. Several writers agree in declaring that he travelled to Athens and acquired a knowledge of the Greek and oriental languages. Some old an- nalists identified him with John, abbot of Ethe- ling, assassinated in 895, from which confusion Erigena enjoyed in some localities the honor of saintship. He went to the court of Charles the Bald of France before 847", was placed at the head of the school of the palace, and engaged in the religious discussions of his time concerning grace and the eucharist, and in philosophical speculations. The king im- posed upon him the task of translating into Latin the Greek works of the pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, and of composing a treatise against the doctrines of Godeschalcus or Ful- gentius about predestination. He affirmed the eucharist to be a remembrance or commemo- ration of the sacrifice upon the cross ; and in answering those who annihilated the freedom of the will, he elevated the moral nature of man to the exclusion of the efficacy of grace. His views were condemned by the councils of Valencia in 855 and Langres in 859, and Pope Nicholas I. demanded his disgrace of Charles the Bald. From this point information con- cerning his career is entirely wanting. Many of his works are lost, including the treatises De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, De Visione Dei, excepting an unimportant fragment, and De Egressu et Eegressu AnimcB ad Deum. His most important work remains, De Divisione Naturm, which was first published at Oxford in 1681, and was republished in 1838, with notes by Schltiter, at Munster in Germany. An abstract of it is given in Sharon Turner's " His- tory of the Anglo-Saxons." It contains all his philosophy, in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil upon the universe, nature, and what is termed that grand universality of being which embraces at once God and man. The human intelligence, according to him, is inhabited by emanations from the divine intel- ligence ; our ideas are pure theophanies, or manifestations of the Creator in his creature. He divides nature into four categories : 1, God, who possesses and diffuses life; 2, the first causes or eternal ideas by which he accom- plishes his work ; 3, the sensible world of the creation, of which man is the summit ; 4, God as he shall be at last when the perfected world, its destiny being accomplished, shall return to him. Several of his theological works were refuted by contemporaries ; but the pantheistic consequences of his philosophical system were not formally condemned until the council of Paris in the 13th century. After the barbarous ages which followed the northern invasions, Eri- gena rose suddenly to the heights of metaphy- sics, undertook to reduce the Christian faith to a scientific system, and founded the philosophy of the middle ages. He was intimate with the ideas of Plotinus, Proclus, and the Greek fathers, and has been ranked as at once the last of the Neo-Platonists and the first of the scholastics. ERIVAN. I. A Transcaucasian government of Russia, bounded by Georgia, Persia, and Turkish Armenia; area, 10,577 sq. m. ; pop. in 1867", 435,658, of whom about 120,000 are no- madic and gypsy tribes, who are all Moham- medans, while the rest are Armenians. The principal river is the Aras or Araxes. The principal mountain is Mt. Ararat in the south. The country is rich in salt, gold, silver, and other minerals. II. A fortified city, capital of the government, on the Zenghi, an affluent of the Aras, 35 m. N. by E. of Mt. Ararat, and 116 m. S. by W. of Tiflis ; pop. in 1867, 14,342. It is the seat of the Armenian catholicos, the head of the entire Armenian church, who re- sides in the monastery of Etchmiadzin in the vicinity. It has a beautiful mosque, a large bazaar, a cannon foundery, and manufactories of morocco leather and of cotton fabrics. It is strongly fortified, is a station for caravans from Tiflis and Erzerum, and has considera- ble trade with Turkey, Persia, and Russia. It is thought to have been founded by an Armenian king in the 1st century of our era, and formerly occupied a site nearly a mile dis-