Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/577

P E R P E R 551 PERM, capital of the above government, stands on the left bank of the Kama, on the great highway to Siberia, 930 miles north-east from Moscow. During summer it has regular steam communication with Kazan, 685 miles distant, and it is connected by rail with Ekaterinburg. The town is mostly built of wood, with broad streets and wide squares, and has a somewhat poor aspect, especially when compared with Ekaterinburg. It is the see of a bishop, and has an ecclesiastical seminary and a military school. The manufactures are few ; the Government manufactory of steel guns and munitions of war, in the immediate neigh bourhood of the town, turns out about 1600 tons of guns annually. The aggregate production of the private manu factories of all kinds did not exceed 165,000 in 1879; they included tanneries (78,600), distilleries (61,000), rope-works (9500), brick-works, breweries, soap and candle works, iron-wire and copper-ware works. Numerous flour-mills and several oil-works occur within the district. The town derives its commercial importance as being the chief place of storage for merchandise to and from Siberia (tea, metals and metal-wares, skins, leather, butter, wool, bristles, tallow, cedar nuts, linseed, &c.), which is un shipped here from the steamers coming up the Kama, and despatched by rail or on cars and sledges to Siberia, or rice versa. The trade is chiefly in the hands of Nijni Nov gorod, Kazan, Ekaterinburg, and Siberian merchants. The population of Perm in 1879 was 32,350. The present site of Perm was occupied, as early as the year 1568, by a settlement named Brukhanovo, founded by one of the Strogo- noffs ; this settlement seems to have received the name of Perm in the 17th century. The Yagozhikhinsky copper -work was founded in the immediate neighbourhood in 1723, and in 1781 it received officially the name of Perm, and became an administrative centre both for the country and for the mining region. The mining authorities left Perm for Ekaterinburg in 1830. PERMUTATIONS. See ALGEBRA, vol. i. p. 560. PERNAMBUCO, or RECIFE, a city and seaport of Brazil and the chief town of the extensive province of Pernam- buco. As it is situated on the coast in 8 3 27" S. lat. and 34 50 14" W. long. (Fort Picao), not far from the point where the continent begins to trend towards the south-west, it is naturally the first port visited by steamers from Lisbon to Brazil. The reef, which can be traced more or less distinctly along the Brazilian seaboard for several hundred miles, rises at Pernambuco into a perfectly straight artificial-looking wall, 3 miles long, with even Plan of Pernambuco. sides and a smooth and almost level top from 30 to 60 yards in width. It is of a hard pale-coloured sandstone, breaking with a very smooth fracture ; and a tough layer of calcareous matter, generally several inches thick, pro duced by the successive growth and death of the small shells of 8erpulse, with some few barnacles and nullipores, proves so effectual a protection of the outer surface that though it is exposed to the full force of the waves of the open Atlantic the oldest pilots know of no tradition of change in its appearance. 1 The belt of water within the reef is about a mile in width and forms a safe but rather shallow harbour; vessels drawing 19| feet can enter, and there is abundant room for mooring along the shore and reef, but mail-steamers usually anchor in the roads and discharge by means of lighters. Sir John Hawkshaw s scheme for the improvement of the harbour (1874) was rejected by the Government as too costly ; but extensive dredging operations are being prosecuted. The city of Per nambuco lies low, and is surrounded by a swampy stretch of country, with no high ground nearer than the hill on which Olinda is built, 8 miles to the north. It used to be considered the most pestilential of Brazilian seaports ; but its sanitary condition has greatly improved, partly owing to drainage- works executed by an English company. There are three natural divisions in the city Recife ("the Reef "), situated not on the reef proper but on an island forming the southern end of a sandbank that stretches north towards Olinda ; Sant Antonio, on a peninsula separated from the island by the united waters of the Capibaribe and the Biberibe ; and Boa Vista, the fashionable residential district on the mainland opposite Sant Antonio. In Recife the streets are narrow and crooked and many of the houses are of great age and present Dutch characteristics ; but Sant Antonio has broad straight streets, with well-paved side -walks, tramways (worked by mules), and modern- looking houses. Among the public buildings in Pernam buco it is enough to mention the governor s palace, the episcopal palace, the hospital of Pedro II. (5000 patients per annum, with French sisters of mercy as nurses), the foundling hospital, the poorhouse, the new lunatic asylum (1881), the university (18 professors and 530 students in 1879), the normal school, and the provincial library (13,000 vols., 11,581 readers, in 1880). The great commercial staple is sugar, and the brown sticky mud of the streets owes its peculiar character to the juice of the cane ; 825,711 bags of sugar were brought to the market in 1875-76 and 1,715,637 bags in 1879-80. Cotton, which was first ex ported in 1778 and continued a small item till 1781, now holds the second place, 130,925 bales in 1875-76 and 60,117 in 1879-80. Coal began to be imported in 1834, 25,314 tons in 1879-80. The total value of the exports and imports has greatly increased. 1S16. 1836. 1856. 1870. 1880. Imports KxDorts . 103,023 029,794 052,120 947.603 1,517,403 1.507,019 1,821,104 1,508,958 2,478,823 2,021,518 The port was opened to British vessels in 1 808, and goods, which formerly had to pass through Portugal, began to be brought to England direct. A cemetery for British subjects was opened in 1814, a British hospital in 1821, and a British chapel in 1836. In 1880, out of a total of 1047 vessels (674,227 tons) calling at Pernambuco 451 (249,912 tons) were British. Pernambuco is connected with Olinda by a steam-tramway line and with Caxanga (8 1 miles) by a mule -tram way ; the Recife and San Francisco Railway (1856-62) runs 78 miles to Una, and is continued by a narrow-gauge line to Garanhuns ; and another narrow line strikes up the Capibaribe 52 miles to Limoeiro. In 1878 the population of the town and immediate suburbs was 94,493. The name of Pernambuco (pcra, "a stone," namlmco, " pierced") appears to have been originally applied to Itamaraca (a town in