cigars and tobacco. The city owns its water-supply system and owns and operates its gas plant; an electric plant, privately owned, lights the streets and many houses. The site of the city was a part of the Castle Hill estate of Thomas Walker (1715–1794), an intimate friend of George Washington. The act establishing the town of Charlottesville was passed by the Assembly of Virginia in November 1762, when the name Charlottesville (in honour of Queen Charlotte, wife of George III.) first appeared. In 1779–1780 about 4000 of Burgoyne’s troops, surrendered under the “Convention” of Saratoga, were quartered here; in October 1780 part of them were sent to Lancaster, Pa., and later the rest were sent north. In June 1781 Tarleton raided Charlottesville and the vicinity, nearly captured Thomas Jefferson, and destroyed the public records and some arms and ammunition. In 1888 Charlottesville was chartered as a city administratively independent of the county.
CHARLOTTETOWN, a city of Canada, the capital of Prince Edward Island, situated in Queen’s county, on Hillsborough river. Pop. (1901) 12,080. It has a good harbour, and the river is navigable by large vessels for several miles. The export trade of the island centres here, and the city has regular communication by steamer with the chief American and Canadian ports. Besides the government buildings and the court-house, it contains numerous churches, the Prince of Wales College, supported by the province, the Roman Catholic college of St Dunstan’s and a normal school; among its manufactures are woollen goods, lumber, canned goods, and foundry products. The head office and workshops of the Prince Edward Island railway are situated here. The town was founded in 1750 by the French under the name of Port la Joie, but under British rule changed its name in honour of the queen of George III.
CHARM (through the Fr. from the Lat. carmen, a song), an incantation, verses sung with supposed magical results, hence anything possessing powers of bringing good luck or averting evil, particularly articles worn with that purpose, such as an amulet. It is thus used of small trinkets attached to bracelets or chains. The word is also used, figuratively, of fascinating qualities of feature, voice or character.
CHARNAY, (CLAUDE JOSEPH) DESIRE (1828– ), French traveller and archaeologist, was born in Fleurie (Rhône), on the 2nd of May 1828. He studied at the Lycée Charlemagne, in 1850 became a teacher in New Orleans, Louisiana, and there became acquainted with John Lloyd Stephens’s books of travel in Yucatan. He travelled in Mexico, under a commission from the French ministry of education, in 1857–1861; in Madagascar in 1863; in South America, particularly Chile and Argentina, in 1875; and in Java and Australia in 1878. In 1880–1883 he again visited the ruined cities of Mexico. Pierre Lorillard of New York contributed to defray the expense of this expedition, and Charnay named a great ruined city near the Guatemalan boundary line Ville Lorillard in his honour. Charnay went to Yucatan in 1886. The more important of his publications are Le Mexique, souvenirs et impressions de voyage (1863), being his personal report on the expedition of 1857–61, of which the official report is to be found in Viollet-le-Duc’s Cités et ruines americaines: Mitla, Palenqué, Izamal, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal (1863), vol. 19 of Recueil des voyages et des documents; Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde (1885; English translation, The Ancient Cities of the New World, 1887, by Mmes. Gonino and Conant); a romance, Une Princesse indienne avant la conquête (1888); À travers les forêts vierges (1890); and Manuscrit Ramirez: Histoire de I’origine des Indiens qui habitent la Nouvelle Espagne selon leurs traditions (1903). He translated Cortez’s letters into French, under the title Lettres de Fernand Cortes à Charles-quint sur la découverte et la conquête du Mexique (1896). He elaborated a theory of Toltec migrations and considered the prehistoric Mexican to be of Asiatic origin, because of observed similarities to Japanese architecture, Chinese decoration, Malaysian language and Cambodian dress, &c.
CHARNEL HOUSE (Med. Lat. carnarium), a place for depositing the bones which might be thrown up in digging graves. Sometimes, as at Gloucester, Hythe and Ripon, it was a portion of the crypt; sometimes, as at Old St Paul’s and Worcester (both now destroyed), it was a separate building in the churchyard; sometimes chantry chapels were attached to these buildings. Viollet-le-Duc has given two very curious examples of such ossuaires (as the French call them)—one from Fleurance (Gers), the other from Faouët (Finistère).
CHARNOCK, JOB (d. 1693), English founder of Calcutta, went out to India in 1655 or 1656, apparently not in the East India Company’s service, but soon joined it. He was stationed at Cossimbazar, and subsequently at Patna. In 1685 he became chief agent at Hugli. Being besieged there by the Mogul viceroy of Bengal, he put the company’s goods and servants on board his light vessels and dropped down the river 27 m. to the village of Sutanati, a place well chosen for the purpose of defence, which occupied the site of what is now Calcutta. It was only, however, at the third attempt that Charnock finally settled down at this spot, and the selection of the future capital of India was entirely due to his stubborn resolution. He was a silent morose man, not popular among his contemporaries, but “always a faithfull Man to the Company.” He is said to have married a Hindu widow.
CHARNOCK (or Chernock), ROBERT (c.1663–1696), English conspirator, belonged to a Warwickshire family, and was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, becoming a fellow of his college and a Roman Catholic priest. When in 1687 the dispute arose between James II. and the fellows of Magdalen over the election of a president Charnock favoured the first royal nominee, Anthony Farmer, and also the succeeding one, Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford. Almost alone among the fellows he was not driven out in November 1687, and he became dean and then vice-president of the college under the new regime, but was expelled in October 1688. Residing at the court of the Stuarts in France, or conspiring in England, Charnock and Sir George Barclay appear to have arranged the details of the unsuccessful attempt to kill William III. near Turnham Green in February 1696, Barclay escaped, but Charnock was arrested, was tried and found guilty, and was hanged on the 18th of March 1696.
CHARNOCKITE, a series of foliated igneous rocks of wide distribution and great importance in India, Ceylon, Madagascar and Africa. The name was given by Dr T. H. Holland from the fact that the tombstone of Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta, is made of a block of this rock. The charnockite series includes rocks of many different types, some being acid and rich in quartz and microcline, others basic and full of pyroxene and olivine, while there are also intermediate varieties corresponding mineralogically to norites, quartz-norites and diorites. A special feature, recurring in many members of the group, is the presence of strongly pleochroic, reddish or green hypersthene. Many of the minerals of these rocks are “schillerized,” as they contain minute platy or rod-shaped enclosures, disposed parallel to certain crystallographic planes or axes. The reflection of light from the surfaces of these enclosures gives the minerals often a peculiar appearance, e.g. the quartz is blue and opalescent, the felspar has a milky shimmer like moonshine, the hypersthene has a bronzy metalloidal gleam. Very often the different rock types occur in close association as one set forms bands alternating with another set, or veins traversing it, and where one facies appears the others also usually are found. The term charnockite consequently is not the name of a rock, but of an assemblage of rock types, connected in their origin because arising by differentiation of the same parent magma. The banded structure which these rocks commonly present in the field is only in a small measure due to crushing, but is to a large extent original, and has been produced by fluxion in a viscous crystallizing intrusive magma, together with differentiation or segregation of the mass into bands of different chemical and mineralogical composition. There have also been, of course, earth movements acting on the solid rock at a later time and injection of dikes both parallel to and across the primary foliation. In fact, the history of the structures of the charnockite series is the history of the most primitive gneisses in all parts of the world, for which we cannot pretend to have as yet any thoroughly satisfactory explanations to offer. A striking fact is the very wide distribution of rocks of this group
