OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oasis

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​OASIS (Gr. ὄασις, the name given by Herodotus to the fertile spots in the Libyan desert: it probably represents an Egyptian word, cf. Coptic ouahe, ouih, to dwell, from which the Egyptian Arabic wā is derived), a fertile spot surrounded by desert. For example, where the high plateau of the Libyan desert descends into a longitudinal valley between Syrtis and the Nile delta there are a few spots where the water comes to the surface or is found in shallow wells. It may come to the surface in springs, upon the artesian principle, or it may collect and remain in mountain hollows. These areas are of small extent and are closely cultivated, and support thick forests of date-palms. All kinds of tropical vegetables, grains and small fruits grow under cultivation, and land is so precious in these limited areas of great richness and fertility that very narrow pathways divide each owner’s plot from his neighbour’s. Wherever oases are found they present similar features, and are naturally the halting-places and points of departure of desert caravans.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oastler, Richard

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​OASTLER, RICHARD (1789–1861), English reformer, was born at Leeds on the 20th of December 1789, and in 1820 succeeded his father as steward of the Thornhills’ extensive Fixby estates at Huddersfield, Yorkshire. In 1830 John Wood, a Bradford manufacturer, called Oastler’s attention to the evils of child employment in the factories of the district. Oastler at once started a campaign against the existing labour conditions by a vigorous letter, under the title “Yorkshire Slavery,” to the Leeds Mercury, Public opinion was eventually aroused, and, after many years of agitation, in which Oastler played a leading part, the Ten Hours Bill and other Factory Acts were passed, Oastler’s energetic advocacy of the factory-workers cause procuring him the title of “The Factory King.” In 1838, however, owing to his opposition to the new poor law and his resistance of the commissioners, he had been dismissed from his stewardship at Fixby; and, in 1840, being unable to repay £2000 which he owed his late employer, Thomas Thornhill, he was sent to the Fleet prison, where he remained for over three years. From prison he published the Fleet Papers, a weekly paper devoted to the discussion of factory and poor-law questions. In 1844 his friends raised a fund to pay his debt, and on his release he made a triumphant entry into Huddersfield. Oastler died at Harrogate on the 22nd of August 1861. A statue to his memory was erected at Bradford in 1869.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oannes

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​OANNES, in Babylonian mythology, the name given by Berossus to a mythical being who taught mankind wisdom. He is identical with the god Ea (q.v.), although there may not be any direct connexion between the two names. Berossus describes Oannes as having the body of a fish but underneath the figure of a man. He is described as dwelling in the Persian Gulf, and rising out of the waters in the daytime and furnishing mankind instruction in writing, the arts and the various sciences. The culture-myth on which the account of Berossus rests has not yet been found in Babylonian literature, but there are numerous indications in hymns and incantations that confirm the identification with Ea, and also prove the substantial correctness of the conceptions regarding Oannes-Ea as given by Berossus. (M. Ja.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Racan, Honoré de Bueil, Marquis de

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​RACAN, HONORÉ DE BUEIL, Marquis de (1589-167<>), French poet, was born at the chateau of La Roche-Racan in 1589. He became page at the court of Henry IV. and then entered the army, seeing some active service. Racan was very poor and was practically uneducated, for, if his own account ​may be credited, he had not learnt even Latin. But in middle life he inherited some property, and he was thus able to devote himself to the practice of poetry, in which he was the faithful, and perhaps the most distinguished, disciple of Malherbe. He had known Malherbe when he was a page at the court of Henry IV., and had early contributed to the fashionable albums of the day. In 1625 he published his most important work, Bergefies, a dramatic pastoral in five acts, a part of which, entitled Arthénice, was played in 1618. Racan was also the author of Sept psaumes (1631), Odes sacrées tirées des psaumes de Damki (1651), Derniéres aeuvres et poésies chrétiennes (1660), in all of which he was hampered by his inability to read the sacred writings except in other French paraphrases. He was one of the original members of the French Academy. He died in February 1670.
His Giuvres completes were edited by Tenant de Latour in 1857, and the edition includes a biographical notice. See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundz.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Racconigi

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RACCONIGI, a town of Piedmont, Italy, in the province of Cuneo, 24 m. S. of Turin, and 31 m. N. of Cuneo by rail, 837 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 7364 (town); 9077 (commune). It has a royal château built in 1570, with a large park laid out in 1755 by the French gardener Molard from designs by Le Notre, and enlarged in 1835. Since 1901 it has been the summer residence of the king of Italy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Raccoon-Dog

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RACCOON-DOG (Nyctereutes procyonoides), a small wild dog, with sharp-pointed muzzle, short rounded ears, bushy tail and long fur, found in China, Japan and Amurland. The total length is about 32 in., of which the tail measures 4 in. The prevailing hues are black and dusky yellow, the distribution of which varies in different individuals. In habit these dogs are chiefly nocturnal; and they are said to hibernate. In winter they feed on fish, and in summer on mice, forming small packs to hunt their prey.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rabirius

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​RABIRIUS, a Latin epic poet of the age of Augustus. Among the papyrus fragments discovered at Herculaneum in the early part of the 19th century were sixty-seven (mutilated) hexameters, referring to the final struggle between Antony and Octavian and the death of Cleopatra, generally supposed to be part of a poem by Rabirius, since Seneca (De Benef. vi. 3, 1) informs us that he wrote on those subjects. If genuine, they justify the qualified commendation of Quintilian rather than the exaggerated praise of Velleius Paterculus (ii. 36, 3), who couples Rabirius and Virgil as the two most eminent poets of his time.
Fragments in E. Bährens, Fragmenta Poetarum Romanorum (1885); W. Scott, Fragmenta Herculanensia (Oxford, 1885); O. Ribbeck, Geschichte der römischen Dichtung, ii. (1889); M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, ii. 1 (1899); Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 252, 9.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Race

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RACE, an homonymous word of which the principal meanings are (1) a trial or contest of speed; (2) a tribe, breed, a group of individuals descended from a common ancestor. In the first case the word is an adaptation of O. Nor. ras, a cognate form in O.E. being racs, rush, onset; while the O.E. descendant reese was frequently used in medieval poetry. The particular use of the word for a swift current of water running through a narrow channel, e.g. the Race of Alderney, and for the water conducted in an artificial channel to a point where its power is to be used, as in “mill-race,” may be due to the O.Fr. raz or raze, probably of Breton origin. The second word, an ethnical or national stock, comes from Fr. rase, adapted from Ital. razzo, cf. Span. raza. It has been referred to an O.H.G. reiza, line, mark, cognate with Eng. “write,” i.e. the line marking descent.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rabirius, Gaius

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​RABIRIUS, GAIUS, a Roman senator, who was defended (63 B.C.) by Cicero in a speech still extant. Nearly forty years after the death of L. Appuleius Saturninus, Titus Labienus (whose uncle had lost his life among the followers of Saturninus on that occasion) was put up by Caesar to accuse Rabirius of having been implicated in the murder. Caesar's real object was to warn the Senate against interference by force with popular movements, to uphold the sovereignty of the people and the inviolability of the person of the tribunes. The obsolete accusation of perduellio was revived, and the case was heard before Julius and Lucius Caesar as commissioners specially appointed (duoviri perduellionis). Rabirius was condemned, and the people, to whom the accused had exercised the right of appeal, were on the point of ratifying the decision, when Metellus Celer pulled down the military flag from the Janiculum, which was equivalent to the dissolution of the assembly. Caesar's object having been attained, the matter was then allowed to drop.
A nephew, known as C. RABIRIUS POSTUMUS, was also defended by Cicero (54 B.C.) in the extant speech Pro Rabirio Postumo, when charged with extortion in Egypt and complicity with Aulus Gabinius (q.°v.).
See Cicero, Pro Rabirio, ed. W. E. Heitland (1882); Dio Cassius, xxxvii. 26–28; H. Putsche, Über das genus judicii der Rede Ciceros pro C. Rabirio (Jena, 1881); O. Schulthess, Der Prozess des C. Rabirius (Frauenfeld, 1891).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Raccoon

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RACCOON (or RACOON), a name borne by the typical representative of a group of American arboreal placental mammals belonging to the order CARNIVORA (q.v.) and the family Procyonidae. The word is a corruption of the North-American Indian "arrathkune" or "arathcone." The Fr. raton or raton laveur, Ger. Waschbär, and other European names are derived from a curious habit the raccoon has of dipping or washing its food in water before eating it. The typical raccoon (Procyon lotor) is a thickly built animal about the size of a badger, with a coat of long coarse greyish-brown hairs, short ears, and a bushy black-and-white-ringed tail. Its range extends over the whole of the United States, and stretches on the west northwards to Alaska and southwards well into Central America, where it attains its maximum size. The following notes on the habits of the raccoon are from Dr C. Hart Merriam's The Mammals of the Adirondacks:—
    "Raccoons are omnivorous beasts and feed upon mice, small birds, birds' eggs, turtles and their eggs, frogs, fish, crayfish, molluscs, insects, nuts, fruits, maize and sometimes poultry. Excepting alone the bats and flying-squirrels, they are the most strictly nocturnal of all our mammals, and yet I have several times seen them abroad on cloudy days. They haunt the banks of ponds and streams, and find much of their food in these places, such as crayfish, mussels and fish, although they are unable to dive and pursue the latter under water, like the otter and mink. They are good swimmers and do not hesitate to cross rivers that lie in their path. . . . The raccoon hibernates during the severest part of the winter, retiring to its nest rather early, and appearing again in February or March, according to the earliness or lateness of the season. It makes its home high up in the hollow of some large tree, preferring a dead limb to the trunk itself. It does little in the way of constructing a nest, and from four to six young are commonly born at a time, generally early in April in this region. The young remain with the mother about a year."
The South-American species, P. cancrivorus, the crab-eating raccoon, is very similar to P. lotor, but differs by its shorter fur, larger size, proportionally more powerful teeth and other minor characters. It extends over the whole of South America, as far south as the Rio Negro, and is common in all suitable localities. Its habits are similar to those of the North-American species.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rabener, Gottlieb Wilhelm

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​RABENER, GOTTLIEB WILHELM (1714–1771), German satirist, was born on the 17th of September 1714 at Wachau near Leipzig, and died at Dresden on the 22nd of March 1771. In 1741 he made his début as satirist in Schwabe's Belustigungen des Verstandes und Witzes, and was subsequently a contributor to the Bremer Beiträge. Rabener's satires are in prose and mainly levelled at the follies of the middle classes. The papers which he published in the Bremer Beiträge were subsequently collected in a Sammlung satirischer Schriften (2 vols., 1751), to which two volumes were added in 1755.
Rabener's Sämtliche Werke appeared in 6 vols. in 1777; the edition by E. Ortlepp (1839) also contains his correspondence, first published by C. F. Weisse in 1772. See P. Richter, Rabener und Liscow (1884), and D. Jacoby in Allg. Deutsche Biographie (1888).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kurtz, Johann Heinrich

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​KURTZ, JOHANN HEINRICH (1809–1890), German Lutheran theologian, was born at Montjoie near Aix la Chapelle on the 13th of December 1809, and was educated at Halle and Bonn. Abandoning the idea of a commercial career, he gave himself to the study of theology and became religious instructor at the gymnasium of Mitau in 1835, and ordinary professor of theology (church history, 1850; exegesis, 1859) at Dorpat. He resigned his chair in 1870 and went to live at Marburg, where he died on the 26th of April 1890. Kurtz was a prolific writer, and many of his books, especially the Lehrbuch der heiligen Geschichte (1843), became very popular. In the field of biblical criticism he wrote a Geschichte des Alten Bundes (1848–1855), Zur Theologie der Psalmen (1865) and Erklärung des Briefs an die Hebräer (1869). His chief work was done in church history, among his productions being Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte für Studierende (1849), Abriss der Kirchengeschichte (1852) and Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte (1853–1856). Several of his books have been translated into English.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kuruman

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​KURUMAN, a town in the Bechuanaland division of Cape Colony, 120 m. N.W. of Kimberley and 85 m. S.W. of Vryburg. It is a station of the London Missionary Society, founded in 1818, and from 1821 to 1870 was the scene of the labours of Robert Moffat (q.v.) who here translated the Bible into the Bechuana tongue. In the middle period of the 19th century Kuruman was the rendezvous of all travellers going north or south. Of these the best known is David Livingstone. The trunk railway line passing considerably to the east of the town, Kuruman is no longer a place of much importance. It is pleasantly situated on the upper course of the Kuruman river, being beautified by gardens and orchards, and presents a striking contrast to the desert conditions of the surrounding country. Its name is that of the son and heir of Mosilikatze, the founder of the Matabele nation. Kuruman disappeared during his father’s lifetime and the succession passed to Lobengula (see Rhodesia: History). In November 1899 the town was besieged by a Boer force. The garrison, less than a hundred strong, held out for six weeks against over 1000 of the enemy, but was forced to surrender on the 1st of January 1900. In June following it was reoccupied by the British.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kurz, Hermann

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​KURZ, HERMANN (1813–1873), German poet and novelist, was born at Reutlingen on the 30th of November 1813. Having studied at the theological seminary at Maulbronn and at the university of Tübingen, he was for a time assistant pastor at Ehningen. He then entered upon a literary career, and in 1863 was appointed university librarian at Tübingen, where he died on the 10th of October 1873. Kurz is less known to fame by his poems, Gedichte (1836) and Dichtungen (1839), than by his historical novels, Schillers Heimatjahre (1843, 3rd ed., 1899) and Der Sonnenwirt (1854, 2nd ed., 1862), and his excellent translations from English, Italian and Spanish. He also published a successful modern German version of Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan und Isolde (1844). His collected works were published in ten volumes (Stuttgart, 1874), also in twelve volumes (Leipzig, 1904).
His daughter, Isolde Kurz, born on the 21st of December 1853 at Stuttgart, takes a high place among contemporary lyric poets in Germany with her Gedichte (Stuttgart, 1888, 3rd ed. 1898) and Neue Gedichte (1903). Her short stories, Florentiner Novellen (1890, 2nd ed. 1893), Phantasien und Märchen (1890), Italienische Erzählungen (1895) and Von Dazumal (1900) are distinguished by a fine sense of form and clear-cut style.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kurseong

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​KURSEONG, or Karsiang, a sanatorium of northern India, in the Darjeeling district of Bengal, 20 m. S. of Darjeeling and 4860 ft. above sea-level; pop. (1901), 4469. It has a station on the mountain railway, and is a centre of the tea trade. It also contains boys’ and girls’ schools for Europeans and Eurasians.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kurumbas and Kurubas

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​KURUMBAS and KURUBAS, aboriginal tribes of southern India, by some thought to be of distinct races. There are two types of Kurumbas, those who live on the Nilgiri plateau, speak the Kurumba dialect and are mere savages; and those who live in the plains, speak Kanarese and are civilized. The former are a small people, with wild matted hair and scanty beard, sickly-looking, pot-bellied, large-mouthed, with projecting jaws, prominent teeth and thick lips. Their villages are called mottas, groups of four or five huts, built in mountain glens or forests. At the 1901 census the numbers were returned at 4083.
See James W. Breeks, An Account of Primitive Tribes of the Nilgiris (1873); Dr John Shortt, Hill Ranges of Southern India, pt. i. 47–53; Rev. F. Metz, Tribes Inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills (Mangalore, 1864).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kurunegala

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​KURUNEGALA, the chief town in the north-western province of Ceylon. Pop. of the town, 6483; of the district, 249,429. It was the residence of the kings of Ceylon from A.D. 1319 to 1347, and is romantically situated under the shade of Adagalla (the rock of the Tusked Elephant), which is 600 ft. high. It was in 1902 the terminus of the Northern railway (59 m. from Colombo), which has since been extended 200 m. farther, to the northernmost coast of the Jaffna Peninsula. Kurunegala is the centre of rice, coco-nut, tea, coffee and cocoa cultivation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kusan

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​KUSAN (“lake” or “inland bay”), a small group of North American Indian tribes, formerly living on the Coos river and the coast of Oregon. They call themselves Anasitch, and other names given them have been Ka-us or Kwo-Kwoos, Kowes and Cook-koo-oose. They appear to be in no way related to their neighbours. The few survivors, mostly of mixed blood, are on the Siletz reservation, Oregon.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kursk (town)

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​KURSK, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, at the junction of the railways from Moscow, Kiev and Kharkov, 330 m. S.S.W. from Moscow. Pop. (1897), 52,896. It is built on two hills (750 ft.), the slopes of which are planted with orchards. The environs all round are well wooded and the woods are famous for their nightingales. Among the public buildings the more noticeable are a monastery with an image of the Virgin, greatly venerated since 1295; the Orthodox Greek cathedral (18th century); and the episcopal palace, Kursk being a bishopric of the national church. It is essentially a provincial town, and is revered as the birthplace of Theodosius, one of the most venerated of Russian saints. It has a public garden, and has become the seat of several societies (medical, musical, educational and for sport). Its factories include steam flour-mills, distilleries, tobacco-works, hemp-crushing mills, tanneries, soap-works and iron-works. It has a great yearly fair (Korennaya), and an active trade in cereals, linen, leather, fruit, horses, cattle, hides, sheepskins, furs, down, bristles, wax, tallow and manufactured goods.
Kursk was in existence in 1032. It was completely destroyed by the Mongols in 1240. The defence of the town against an incursion of the Turkish Polovtsi (or Comans or Cumani) is celebrated in The Triumph of Igor, an epic which forms one of the most valuable relics of early Russian literature. From 1586 to the close of the 18th century the citadel was a place of considerable strength; the remains are now comparatively few.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kuruntwad

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​KURUNTWAD, or Kurandvad, a native state of India, in the Deccan division of Bombay, forming part of the Southern Mahratta jagirs. Originally created in 1772 by a grant from the peshwa, the state was divided in 1811 into two parts, one of which, called Shedbal, lapsed to the British government in 1857. In 1855 Kuruntwad was further divided between a senior and a junior branch. The territory of both is widely scattered among other native states and British districts. Area of the senior branch, 185 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 42,474; revenue, £13,000. Area of junior branch, 114 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 34,003; revenue, £9000. The joint tribute is £640. The chiefs are Brahmans by caste, of the Patwardhan family. The town of Kuruntwad, in which both branches have their residence, is on the right bank of the Panchganga river near its junction with the Kistna. Pop. (1901), 10,451.