Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/368

GUALEGUAY.  a theatre, a library, and a branch of the National Bank. Population, 7700.  GUALEGUAYCHÚ,. A city in the Province of Entre Rios, Argentina, situated on the Gualeguaychú River, 12 miles from its junction with the Uruguay (Map:, F 10). The town has a library and a school, various milling establishments, important manufactures of beef extracts, and an active river trade. Population, 14,000.  GUAM,, or GUAJÁN,. The largest of the (q.v.), lying in the Pacific Ocean, and belonging to the United States. It is the southernmost of the group, and is situated in latitude 13° 30′ N., and longitude 144° 45′ E., about 1500 miles east of Manila, and nearly the same distance southeast of Yokohama. It is 31 miles long and from 5 to 7 miles wide, and has an area of about 195 square miles. The northern half consists of a level and barren plateau 250 feet above the sea, toward which it falls abruptly on all sides; the southern half is mountainous, and the whole island is surrounded by a coral reef, with here and there a break permitting entrance to the harbors, of which the largest and best is that of Apra, on the western coast. The climate is humid, with rain at all seasons, but not unhealthful. The indigenous flora is poor and little varied, the principal trees being the cocoanut-palm and the breadfruit tree. Rice, sugar, and indigo are also cultivated, and the farms are well stocked with domestic animals imported by the Spaniards. Agriculture and fishing are almost the only occupations of the inhabitants, who consist chiefly of aboriginal Chamorros intermixed with Tagalos and Malays. The island is of little importance to the United States except as a naval station and port of transit between America and Asia, to which end the harbor of Apra is being extensively improved. The population, in 1898, numbered 9000, of whom more than half live in the capital, (q.v.). Guam was captured by the United States cruiser Charleston on June 21, 1898, and by the Treaty of Paris was ceded by Spain to the United States. Consult: Griffis, List of Books (with references to periodicals) on Samoa and Guam (Washington, 1901); Wheeler, Report on the Island of Guam (Washington, 1900).  GUAN, (South American name). A gallinaceous bird of Central and South America, often domesticated. It belongs to the same family (Cracidæ) as the curassow, the guans constituting the subfamily Penelopinæ. They have been separated into seven genera, of which Penelope (16 species) and Ortalis (19 species) are the largest. All are rather large, varying from the body size of a grouse to that of a goose. Their plumage is mainly black, glossed with green, and varied with white and brown; nearly all have the throat bare, and many have pendent gular wattles. Their heads are often crested, and their tails are long and gracefully carried. They go about in large flocks, but separate into pairs during the breeding season, and spend most of their time in the high forest trees, descending to the ground in search of fallen fruits, insects, and the like. Their nests are placed in trees, on bushes, or on the ground. Only one species ranges sufficiently far north to enter the United States. This is the Texan guan or ‘chachalaca’

(Ortalis vetula, var. McCalli), which is a dark, glossy, olivaceous-green bird nearly two feet long; but one-half of the length is due to the graduated tail of twelve feathers. It is noisy in the breeding season (April), the name chachalaca being imitative of its notes, which are as harsh and loud as those of a guinea-fowl; and all the guans of a neighborhood join in a stentorian chorus at sunrise each morning. These birds may be easily tamed, and to a certain extent are domesticated about the rural villages; but there seems little probability of their becoming a really widespread and useful fowl. See Plate of  GUANABACOA,. A town of Cuba, situated a few miles east of Havana, on the Havana-Matanzas Railway line (Map:, C 3). It is built chiefly on a range of hills, and is surrounded by groves of trees, watered by numerous springs. It has a theatre, a lyceum, and a hospital. It was formerly an ancient Indian town, but the Indians were supplanted by Spaniards before the end of the sixteenth century. It received its town charter on August 14, 1743. In 1762 it was sacked by the English. Population, in 1899, 20,080.  GUANACO, (Sp., from the South American name huanaco, huanaca). The larger of the two wild species of the camel family inhabiting South America, of which the llama and alpaca are domesticated varieties. This animal (Lama guanaco) has more the appearance of a hornless goat-antelope than of a camel. Its back is flat and straight, its legs in fair proportion, its head small and neat, with long, pointed, expressive ears, and its tail reduced to a bushy stump. A full-grown male stands about four feet high at the shoulder, and is covered with a thick coat of long, almost woolly hair, pale reddish in color, and longest and palest on the under parts. Domestication and artificial breeding with reference to the improvement of this coat has produced the (q.v.).

The guanaco is distributed throughout South America wherever a temperate climate exists. It inhabits the valleys of the Andes as far north as Bolivia and Ecuador, in company with the vicunias (the other species of the genus, Lama vicunia), and there has habits very similar to its mountain-keeping relatives; but on the plains of Patagonia it ranges to the shores of the Atlantic and of Magellan's Straits, and moves about in herds. The pairing season comes in August and September, and the young are born in May and June. They feed upon the pungent herbage of the Patagonian deserts, as well as upon the bitter grasses of the Pampas, and furnish to the wandering natives their principal flesh food, and the only skins useful for clothing or tent-making, except those of the rheas. The Gauchos hunt them extensively also, and they form the principal prey of the puma, so that they take the place in South America of the antelopes of other plains regions. The guanaco also occurs on Tierra del Fuego and neighboring islands, and swims readily from one to the other. Over a large part of its habitat none but salt water is to be had, and this it drinks readily. One very curious circumstance in its history is its habit of resorting to certain places in river valleys when it feels ill, so that nearly all which die a natural death seem to do so at these spots. This has been plausibly explained as