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BUBASTIS—BUCCANEERS
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of the Spanish Jesuits. In 1814 Pius VII., in accordance with the bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, gave to Brzozowski among others full authority to receive those who desired to enter the society. The Russian government, however, soon began to be alarmed at the growth of the Jesuits, and on the 20th of December 1815 published an edict expelling them from St Petersburg. Brzozowski, having vainly requested to be allowed to retire to Rome, died on the 5th of February 1820. He is interesting mainly from the fact that he was general of the Society at the time of its restoration throughout Europe.


BUBASTIS, the Graecized name of the Egyptian goddess Ubasti, meaning “she of [the city] Bast” (B;s-t), a city better known by its later name, P-ubasti, “place of Ubasti”; thus the goddess derived her name Ubasti from her city (Bast), and in turn the city derived its name P-ubasti from that of the goddess; the Greeks, confusing the name of the city with that of the goddess, called the latter Bubastis, and the former also Bubastis (later Bubastos). Bubastis, capital of the 19th nome of Lower Egypt, is now represented by a great mound of ruins called Tell Basta, near Zagazig, including the site of a large temple (described by Herodotus) strewn with blocks of granite. The monuments discovered there, although only those in hard stone have survived, are more important than at any other site in the Delta except Tanis and cover a wider range, commencing with Khufu (Cheops) and continuing to the thirtieth dynasty.

Ubasti was one of many feline goddesses, figured with the head of a lioness. In the great development of reverence for sacred animals which took place after the New Kingdom, the domestic cat was especially the animal of Bubastis, although it had also to serve for all the other feline goddesses, owing no doubt to the scarcity and intractability of its congeners. Her hieratic and most general form was still lioness-headed, but a popular form, especially in bronze, was a cat-headed women, often holding in her right hand a lion aegis, i.e. a broad semicircular pectoral surmounted by the head of a lioness, and on the left arm a basket. The cat cemetery on the west side of the town consisted of numbers of large brick chambers, crammed with burnt and decayed mummies, many of which had been enclosed in cat-shaped cases of wood and bronze. Herodotus describes the festival of Bubastis, which was attended by thousands from all parts of Egypt and was a very riotous affair; it has its modern equivalent in the Moslem festival of the sheikh Said el Badawi at Tanta. The tablet of Canopus shows that there were two festivals of Bubastis, the great and the lesser: perhaps the lesser festival was held at Memphis, where the quarter called Ankhto contained a temple to this goddess. Her name is found on monuments from the third dynasty onwards, but a great stimulus was given to her worship by the twenty-second (Bubastite) dynasty and generally by the increased importance of Lower Egypt in later times. Her character seems to have been essentially mild and playful, in contrast to Sokhmi and other feline goddesses. The Greeks equated Ubasti with their Artemis, confusing her with the leonine Tafne, sister of Shöou (Apollo). The Egyptians themselves delighted in identifying together goddesses of the most diverse forms and attributes; but Ubasti was almost indistinguishable in form from Tafne. The name of her son Iphthimis (Nfr-tm), pronounced Eftem, may mean “All-good,” and, in the absence of other information about him, suggests a reason why he was identified with Prometheus.

See K. Sethe in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie; E. Naville, Bubastis, and Festival Hall of Osorkon II.; Herodotus ii. 67, 137-156; Grenfell and Hunt, Hibeh Papyri, i.  (F. Ll. G.) 


BUCARAMANGA, a city of Colombia, capital of the department of Santandér, about 185 m. N.N.E. of Bogotá. Pop. (estimate, 1902) 25,000. It is situated on the Lebrija river, 3248 ft. above sea-level, in a mountainous country rich in gold, silver and iron mines, and having superior coffee-producing lands in the valleys and on the lower slopes. The city is laid out with wide, straight streets, is well built, and has many public buildings of a substantial character.


BUCCANEERS, the name given to piratical adventurers of different nationalities united in their opposition to Spain, who maintained themselves chiefly in the Caribbean Sea during the 17th century.

The island of Santo Domingo was one of several in the West Indies which had early in the 16th century been almost depopulated by the oppressive colonial policy of Spain. Along its coast there were several isolated establishments presided over by Spaniards, who were deprived of a convenient market for the produce of the soil by the monopolies imposed by the mother country. Accordingly English, Dutch and French vessels were welcomed and their cargoes readily bought. The island, thinned of its former inhabitants, had become the home of immense herds of wild cattle; and it became the habit of smugglers to provision at Santo Domingo. The natives still left were skilled in preserving flesh at their little establishments called boucans. The adventurers learned “boucanning” from the natives; and gradually Hispaniola became the scene of an extensive and illicit butcher trade. Spanish monopolies filled the seamen who sailed the Caribbean with a natural hate of everything Spanish. The pleasures of a roving life, enlivened by occasional skirmishes with forces organized and led by Spanish officials, gained upon them. Out of such conditions arose the buccaneer, alternately sailor and hunter, even occasionally a planter—roving, bold, unscrupulous, often savage, with an intense detestation of Spain. As the Spaniards would not recognize the right of other races to make settlements, or even to trade in the West Indies, the governments of France, England and Holland would do nothing to control their subjects who invaded the islands. They left them free to make settlements at their own risk. Each nation contributed a band of colonists, who selected the island of St Kitts or St Christopher, in the West Indies, where the settlers of both nations were simultaneously planted. The English and French were, however, not very friendly; and in 1629, after the retirement of several of the former to an adjoining island, the remaining colonists were surprised and partly dispersed by the arrival of a Spanish fleet of thirty-nine sail. But on the departure of the fleet the scattered bands returned, and encouragement was given to their countrymen in Santo Domingo. For buccaneering had now become a most profitable employment, operations were extended, and a storehouse secure from the attacks of the Spaniards was required. The small island of Tortuga (north-west of Hispaniola) was seized for this purpose in 1630, converted into a magazine for the goods of the rivals, and made their headquarters, Santo Domingo itself still continuing their hunting ground. A purely English settlement directed by a company in London was made at Old Providence, an island in the Caribbean Sea, now belonging to Colombia. It began a little before 1630, and was suppressed by the Spaniards in 1641.

Spain was unable to take immediate action. Eight years later, however, watching their opportunity when many buccaneers were absent in the larger island, the Spaniards attacked Tortuga, and massacred every settler they could seize. But the others returned; and the buccaneers, now in open hostility to the Spanish arms, began to receive recruits from every European trading nation, and for three-quarters of a century became the scourge of the Spanish-American trade and dominions.

France, throughout all this, had not been idle. She had named the governor of St Kitts “Governor-General for the French West India Islands,” and in 1641 he took possession of Tortuga, expelled all English from the island, and attempted the same with less success in Santo Domingo. England was absorbed in the Civil War, and the buccaneers had to maintain themselves as best they could,—now mainly on the sea.

In 1654 the Spaniards regained Tortuga from the French, into whose hands it again, however, fell after six years. But this state of affairs was too insecure even for these rovers, and they would speedily have succumbed had not a refuge been found for them by the fortunate conquest of Jamaica in 1655 by the navy of the English Commonwealth. These conquests were not made without the aid of the buccaneers themselves. The taking and re-taking of Tortuga by the French was always with the assistance of the roving community; and at the conquest of Jamaica the English navy had the same influence in its favour. The