name, between the Faleme and Senegal rivers; lon. 9° 30′ W.; lat. 13° 25′ N. The country is situated between 12 30 and 14° 15′ N. lat.; about 36 leagues from N. to S., and 28 in breadth, and said to contain about 60,000 inhabitants. It is composed chiefly of lofty, naked and barren mountains, and its wealth consists entirely in its mineral productions. These are gold (which is abundant), silver, iron, tin, lead and loadstone. The most remarkable animals are a species of asses, extremely white (which the inhabitants will not allow to be sent out of the country), white foxes and the giraffe. The little which is known of this state is derived from a Frenchman named Compagnon, who resided there a year and a half, in the beginning of the last century. (Labat, Afrique Occidentale, iv. 5.)

BAN, in ancient jurisprudence; a declaration of outlawry, of which we have recently had an instance in the proclamation issued against Napoleon after his return from Elba.-Ban, in political law, is equivalent to excommunication in ecclesiastical. The emperor of Germany had the right to declare a member of the empire under the ban, and to dispose of his feud. The ban, like the excommunication, forbids every one to have intercourse with the person proscribed, or to give him food or shelter. Very often, however, the sentence was repealed, and the party restored to all his rights and privileges.-Ban, in military affairs, is an order, given by beating the drum or sounding the trumpet, requiring the strict observance of discipline, or announcing the appointment of an officer, &c.

BAN (bannus). This name is given to the governors of Dalmatia, Sclavonia, Croatia, placed at the head of civil and military affairs in these countries. Ban signifies, in the Sclavonian tongue, a master. A province, over which a bannus was placed, is called bannat. At present, the only ban is that of Croatia, who has the third place among the secular nobles of Hungary. Before him come the palatinus regni and the judex curia.

BANANA. The banana is a valuable plant (musa sapientium) which grows in the West Indies and other tropical countries, and has leaves about six feet in length and a foot broad in the middle, and fruit four or five inches long, and about the shape of the cucumber. When ripe, the banana is a very agreeable fruit, with a soft and luscious pulp, and is frequently introduced in desserts in the West Indies, but never eaten green, like the

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plantain. The Spaniards have a superstitious dislike to cut this fruit across; they always slice it from end to end, because, in the former case, the section presents an imaginary resemblance to the instrument of our Savior's crucifixion. The banana is sometimes fried in slices as fritters. If the pulp of this fruit be squeezed through a fine sieve, it may be formed into small loaves, which, after having been properly dried, may be kept for a great length of time.

BANCA, an island belonging to the Netherlands, near Sumatra, one of the vassal states of Palembang, containing 60,000 inhabitants, among them 25,000 Chinese, is known on account of its tin mines, worked by the Dutch East India company (the annual profit of which, to the Dutch, is estimated at 150,000£), and its pearl fishery, which is also productive on the shores of the group of Solo islands, north-east from Borneo. The tin of Banca is pure and easily obtained. The southeasterly part of Banca has not yet been examined. The Banca islands, in 2° 22′ S. lat., and 105° 41′ E. lon., afford shelter from S. W. by S. to N. W., with a good supply of water and fuel.

BANDA ISLANDS; a group of islands belonging to the Netherlands, in the Eastern ocean, lying E. of the Celebes; so called from Banda, the principal of them; lon. 130° 37′ E.; lat. 4° 12 S. They contain but 5763 inhabitants, though they are said formerly to have contained 15,000. Their chief produce is nutmegs, of which they are competent to supply the want to the rest of the world. The whole quantity produced on these islands cannot be accurately stated. The annual sales are said formerly to have amounted to 350,000 pounds of nutmegs and 100,000 pounds of mace. When, however, they were taken by the English, in 1796, the half year's crop was found to be little more than 80,000 pounds of nutmegs and about 24,000 pounds of mace. The trees in all the other islands were carefully extirpated by command of the Dutch; and the whole trade of those where the growth is cherished is a complete monopoly.-The names of the islands are Banda, or Lantor; Puloway, or Poolaway; Pulo Run, or Poolaron; Neira, Gunong Assi, or Guanapee Rosyngen; Pulo Prampon, Pulo Suanjée Capal, and Nylacky. The inhabitants are in alliance with the Dutch East India company.-These islands can never be expected to yield any advantage beside that derived from the spice trade. Entirely cut off from the other parts of

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India, and deprived of all commerce, save a trifling bartering with the indigent natives of the south-eastern and south-western islands, they are even destitute of the means of subsistence for their own inhabitants, and must be supplied with every necessary from abroad, as nature, which has lavishly bestowed upon them articles of luxury, has denied them those of immediate necessity. Banda is likewise accounted a most unhealthy place, especially at the chief settlement of Neira. Some attribute this circumstance to the neighborhood of the volcano, in the island of Gunong Api, and others to a deleterious quality in the water.

BANDA ORIENTAL. This tract of country has fixed public attention, as the subject of an obstinate war between Brazil and the United Provinces of La Plata, and seems destined, by its geographical position, to possess much importance hereafter. It is situated between the eastern bank of the river Uruguay and the ocean, and between the river La Plata on the south and the Sierra do Topas on the north (which separates it from Brazil), and receives its name from its position with respect to the Uruguay. It is fertile and healthy, and, although checked in its prosperity by political misfortunes, had gained a white population of 80,000 souls. Having been originally settled by a Spanish colony from Buenos Ayres, it fell under the authority of Spain, but came, at length, to be the occasion of contention with Portugal. Both nations prized it; Spain, as giving her the control of both sides of the river La Plata; Portugal, as necessary to the free and secure navigation of the immense interior of Brazil; and each nation asserted a claim to a territory of so much consequence. During the long wars between Portugal and Spain, relative to the various boundaries of their vast possessions in South America, the Banda Oriental was overrun and wasted, sometimes by one and sometimes by the other, and their respective pretensions were differently regulated by successive treaties. In 1777, Portugal was forced to consent to the line of the Sierra do Topas, but afterwards seized on the district of the Missions, which she consented to restore, in 1804, as the price of the Portuguese fortress of Olivenza, held by Spain. When the revolution commenced, the Orientalists naturally sided with the government of Buenos Ayres; but whether they merely acted in concert with the latter, or acknowledged a dependance, does not appear. Certain it is

that they soon made themselves independent of Buenos Ayres, under the guidance of Artigas, in consequence of a victory gained by him over the Buenos Ayreans, in 1815, at Gaubiju. But, soon afterwards, the Brazilians, pretending to fear that Artigas would propagate his revolutionary doctrines in Brazil, attacked him, broke up his forces, and compelled him to fly into Paraguay.-Brazil continued to hold military possession of the country, although resisted by the inhabitants, until 1822, when they were induced, ostensibly by persuasion, but really by intimidation, to send delegates to a convention at their capital, Monte Video, and to consent to be annexed to Brazil, by the name of the Cis-Platine province, which don Pedro claims as a voluntary union of the people with the empire of Brazil. When Brazil separated from Portugal, in 1822, the Orientalists joined a party of the army which declared for Portugal, and, on the submission of these troops, called upon Buenos Ayres for aid. Assistance was given them in arms, money and men, but not ostensibly by the congress, until their leaders, Lavalleja and Fructuoso Rivera, had shut up the Brazilians in Monte Video, and a provisional government, organized in the town of Florida, formally declared the Banda Oriental to be reunited to Buenos Ayres. The standard of independence was raised by Fructuoso Rivera, April 27th, 1826; and, as he was immediately aided, by Lavalleja, with forces organized in Buenos Ayres, this may be considered as the actual commencement of the war. Oct. 12, Lavalleja gained the victory of Sarandi, and the republic no longer hesitated to assume a quarrel, which_began to wear a prosperous aspect. But no formal declaration of war was issued until that of Pedro, dated Dec. 30th, 1826, which entered into an elaborate exposition of the alleged rights of Brazil. The war has been alike prejudicial to both countries. While Pedro blockaded Buenos Ayres, the cruisers of the latter cut up the commerce of Brazil; and while both parties contributed to waste the Banda Oriental, the Orientalists carried similar devastation into the Brazilian province of Rio Grande. But neither party possessed adequate resources to strike a decisive blow; and the solicitations of Great Britain, who, like other neutral nations, suffered by the war, at length brought about a peace, which was signed at Rio, Aug. 28th, 1828, and, in substance, provided that the Banda Oriental should

become an independent state, under the mutual guarantee of the two contracting parties. Thus the war, after completely exhausting both Brazil and Buenos Ayres, ended in a drawn game as to the subject

of the contest.

BANDELLO, Matteo, a novelist, born, about 1480, at Castelnuovo di Scrivia, studied at Rome and Naples, and applied himself almost exclusively to polite literature. He was, in his youth, a Dominican monk at Castelnuovo. He seems to have lived some years in Mantua, where Pirro Gonzaga and Camilla Bentivoglio intrusted to him the education of their daughter. He afterwards resided at Milan, until, after the battle of Pavia, the Spaniards banished him thence as a partisan of France. Upon this he went first to Ludovico Gonzaga, then to Cesare Fregoso, who had left the Venetian for the French service, and lived with the latter, in Piedmont, till the conclusion of the truce between the belligerent powers, and then followed him to France. After the death of his protector, he resided at Agen, with the family of the deceased, and, in 1550, was appointed bishop of that city. He left the administration of his diocese to the bishop of Grasse, and employed himself, at the advanced age of 70, in the completion of his novels, of which he published three volumes in 1554; a fourth was published in 1573, after his death. Camillo Franceschini also published his novels at Venice, in 1566, 4to. B. published, at Agen, in 1545, Canti XI delle Lodi della S. Lucrezia Gonzaga di Ganzuela e del Vero Amore, col Tempio di Pudicitia, and also two other poems; altogether of but little value. Other poems of his, found in manuscript at Turin, were printed by Costa, in 1816, under the title of Rime di Matteo Bandello. The novels of B. are distinguished by a natural simplicity, a rapid narration, and periods at once short and harmonious; but their contents are frequently impure. This reproach applies more to him than to Boccaccio, that he loves to dwell on wanton scenes, and to paint them in lively colors to the imagination.

BANDE NOIRE. When the revolution in France had rendered superfluous much ecclesiastical property, also many castles and residences of the emigrant and resident nobility, by the abolition of trusts and entails, and by the equal division of property among the children of these families, nothing was more natural than that, with the increase of population, societies should be formed to purchase

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the edifices which had thus become useless (churches, chapels, abbeys, monasteries, bishops' residences, parsonages, Gothic castles, with their prisons and other appurtenances, hunting lodges, watch-towers, &c.), and pull them down, just as the merchants of Amsterdam, on the decline of their prosperity, allowed the villas about that commercial city to be pulled down, or sold in order to be pulled down, by the slopers, so called. To many this seems a barbarous custom. In Germany, also, after the great secularization of cathedrals and monasteries, associations were formed, particularly of the Jews, who, with profit to themselves, bought the buildings which had become unnecessary, pulled them down, and sold the materials, as well as the state's domains, which had been alienated in large lots, and were now disposed of by them in small portions. The bande noire enriched itself from the sale of the materials for building, from the felling of wood in the parks, and from the disposal of land for gardens, meadows and fields. The public, too, were benefited at the same time. In places where this has frequently happened, the countryman dwells more comfortably, and is richer, than in many other quarters; for example, in the Pyrenees, and particularly in the southerly part of France.

BANDETTINI, Theresa, an improvisatrice, born at Lucca, about 1756, received a careful education, but was obliged (her family having lost their property) to go upon the stage. She made her first appearance in Florence, and was unsuccessful. This, united to her love for polite literature, led her to the most assiduous study of the poets. As she was one day listening to an improvisatore of Verona, her own genius broke forth in a splendid poetical panegyric on the poet. Encouraged by him, she devoted herself entirely to this beautiful art. Her originality, her fervid imagination, and the truth and harmony of her expression, soon gained for her a distinguished celebrity. She was enabled to abandon the stage, and travel through Italy; and she enjoyed the honor of being chosen a member of several academies. One of her most celebrated poems was that which she delivered, in 1794, impromptu, before the prince Lambertini, at Bologna, on the death of Marie Antoinette of France. In 1813, wearied with travelling, she returned to her native city, where she lived retired on her small property. She published Ode tre (Lucca, 4), of which the first celebrates

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Nelson's victory at Aboukir, the second Suwaroff's victories in Italy, and the third the victories of the archduke Charles in Germany. She also gave to the world, under the name of Amarilli Etrusca, Saggio di Versi Estemporanei (published, in Pisa, by Bodoni), among which the poem on Petrarch's interview with Laura, in the church, is particularly distinguished, and places her by the side of Rossi.

BANDIT (Ital. bandito); originally an erile, then a hired murderer. This name was given to the assassins (see Ishmaelites) of Italy. At the present time, in Italy, bandit and robber are almost synonymous. They form a kind of society of themselves, which is subjected to strict laws, and lives in open or secret war with the civil authorities, and are a disgraceful proof of its weakness, no Italian government having succeeded in extirpating them. The strict measures which the papal government adopted, in 1820, against persons who should harbor bandits and robbers, have indeed destroyed their lurking-places; but the villains who were formerly settled are now become vagabonds. Those, however, who infest the environs of Naples, are the peasants of the country, who, besides being engaged in agriculture, employ themselves in robbery and murder. The fear of capital punishment is ineffectual to deter them from these crimes. Peter the Calabrian, the most terrible among these robbers, in 1812, named himself, in imitation of the titles of Napoleon, "emperor of the mountains," "king of the woods," "protector of the conscribed," and "mediator of the highways from Florence to Naples." The government of Ferdinand I was compelled to make a compact with this bandit. One of the robbers entered the royal service, as a captain, in 1818, and engaged to take captive his former comrades. More lately, adventurers of all kinds have joined them. These bandits are to be distinguished from other robbers, who are called malviventi; and the Austrian troops, which occupied Naples, were obliged to send large detachments to repress them. It is remarkable, in these robbers, that they only attack travellers on the highways. This also is true of those who exact from strangers and natives a sum of money for protection, and give them in return a letter of security; which, a short time ago, was the case in Sicily, where the bandits dwell in the greatest numbers in the Val Demone. Here the prince of Villa Franca declared himself, from political and other views,

their protector: he gave them a livery, and treated them with much confidence, which they never abused; for even among them there is a certain romantic sense of honor derived from the middle ages. They keep their promises inviolate, and often take better care of the security of a place intrusted to them than the public authorities.

BANER, also BANNIER, John (in English, always written Baner), a Swedish general in the thirty years' war, descended from an old noble family of Sweden, was born in 1596. When a child, he fell from the castle of Hörnings-holm, four stories high, without being injured. Gustavus Adolphus, who valued him very much, early prophesied that he was destined for greatness. He made his first campaigns in Poland and Russia, and accompanied his king to Germany. After the death of Gustavus, in 1632, he had the chief command over 16,000 men, and was the terror of the enemy. He obtained the greatest glory by his victory at Wittstock, in 1636, over the imperial and Saxon troops; and it was also owing to his activity, that, after the battle of Nordlingen, the affairs of Sweden gradually improved. He died at Halberstadt, in 1641, under 45 years of age, and was suspected to have been poisoned. In him Sweden lost her ablest general, and the imperial troops their most dangerous enemy. B. was careful to engage in no enterprise without a reasonable probability of success. He knew how to avoid danger with dexterity, and to escape from a superior force. During his command, 30,000 of the enemy were killed, and 600 standards taken, on different occasions. He was always found at the head of his men, and maintained good discipline. He wanted patience for sieges. He has been accused of pride and severity. The pleasures of the table and of love occupied all the leisure time which his employments allowed him, and probably immoderate indulgence in them was the real poison which brought on his death. He was three times married.

BANGOR; a post-town and capital of the county of Penobscot, in Maine, on the W. side of Penobscot river, at the head of the tide and of navigation; 52 miles N. of Owl's-head, at the mouth of Penobscot bay; 68 miles N. E. of Augusta; lat. 44° 45′ N.; lon. 68° 45′ W.: population, in 1820, 1221; in 1825, 2002. Its situation is pleasant, and very advantageous for commerce. It is a flourishing town, and contains a theological seminary with two professors, a court-house,

and other public buildings. The river is navigable, as far as this town, for vessels of 300 or 400 tons.

BANGUE; a kind of opiate, much used throughout the East as a means of intoxication. The Persians call it beng. It is made of the leaf of a kind of wild hemp, in different ways.

BANIANS; a name formerly given by Europeans to almost all the Hindoos, because baniyà, the term whence it is derived, signifies a banker, the class with which Europeans had most frequent intercourse. It is one of the mixed classes, sprung from a father of the medical and a mother of the commercial class. The English sailors call banian days those days on which they have no flesh meat. Probably the name is taken from the word at the head of this article, because, before people were acquainted with the abstinence of all the Hindoos, it was thought to be confined to the Banians.

BANISHMENT. (See Exile.)

BANK. The term bank, in reference to commerce, implies a place of deposit of money. Banks, like most commercial institutions, originated in Italy, where, in the infancy of European commerce, the Jews were wont to assemble in the market-places of the principal towns, seated on benches, ready to lend money; and the term bank is derived from the Italian word banco (bench). Banks are of three kinds, viz., of deposit, of discount, and of circulation. In some cases, all these functions are exercised by the same establishment; sometimes two of them; and, in other instances, only one.-1. A bank of deposit receives money to keep for the depositor, until he draws it out. This is the first and most obvious purpose of these institutions. The goldsmiths of London were formerly bankers of this description: they took the money, bullion, plate, &c. of depositors, merely for safe keeping.-2. Another branch of banking business is the discounting of promissory notes and bills of exchange, or loaning money upon mortgage, pawn, or other security.-3. A bank of circulation issues bills or notes of its own, intended to be the circulating currency or medium of exchanges, instead of gold and silver. Banks are also divided into public and private; but what is a public bank, is not very definitely settled. Where the government of a nation, or the municipal authorities of a place, as in Amsterdam, has the direct management or control of a bank, it is a public one; and those institutions of this class, the credit of which is

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connected with that of the government, or which are used as instruments in collecting and distributing the public revenues, or in which the government is a proprietor, are public banks; and so are also those usually considered to be, which are carried on under a charter from the government; whereas a private bank is usually understood to be one that is carried on by one or more individuals, without any particular connexion with the government, or any special authority or charter. There is, for instance, in England, but one public bank, namely, the bank of England; whereas, in the U. States, most of the banks are public, and, in some of the states, private banks of circulation are prohibited by law. The general character and the different kinds of these institutions being thus explained, the reader will be enabled the more easily to understand our account of some of the banking institutions of the greatest historical notoriety.

The Bank of Venice was established as early as 1171, during the crusades, and for the purpose of rendering assistance to those expeditions. It was a bank of deposit only, and strictly a public bank, as the government became responsible for the deposits, and the whole capital was, in effect, a public loan, the funds of the bank being made use of by the government; and, in the early periods of the operations of this bank, they were not withdrawn, when once deposited, but the depositor had a credit at the bank to the amount deposited; and he used the money so deposited by transferring this credit to another person, instead of paying money. Subsequently, however, the deposits were allowed to be withdrawn; for, though the bank credits answered all the purposes of money at Venice, a specie currency was wanted by persons going abroad, or having payments to make in distant places. This bank continued in operation until the dissolution of this republic, in 1798.

The Bank of Amsterdam was established in 1609, and owed its origin to the clipped and worn currency, which, being of uncertain and fluctuating value, subjected the exchange to a corresponding fluctuation and uncertainty. The object of the institution was, to give a certain and unquestionable value to a bill on Amsterdam; and, for this purpose, the various coins were received in deposit at the bank at a certain value, according to their weight and fineness, a small deduction of seigniorage being made, equivalent to the supposed expense of coinage into money