merly one of the two capitals. The country is hilly, and the soil rough and stony, being chiefly devoted to pasturage and orchards. The minerals consist of building-stone, talc, lime and graphite. The principal rivers are the Paw tucket, Blackstone and Pawcatuk In the main they supply waterpower for the numerous factories.
Rhode Island is a manufacturing state, having nearly 300 million dollars invested in various enterprises. The principal lines of industry are cotton, woolen and knit-goods factories. There also are dyeing and finishing establishments; foundry and machine-shop products and rubber and elastic goods are manufactured. Much cheap jewelry is made, and no better solid silverware is manufactured in the United States than in Rhode Island. The fisheries employ about 2,000 people and have a valuation of one million dollars annually. It was at Pawtucket in 1790 that the first cottonspinning works in the United States were established. Educationally the state does most creditably, expending nearly two million dollars a year. The pupils enrolled number 80,110, and the average daily attendance is 61,487. It has 247 high-school teachers and 6,021 high-school pupils. The state maintains a normal school with 38 teachers and an agricultural school with a faculty of 25. At Providence is Brown University (q. v.). There are a state sanitarium for consumptives, a state home and school for children, institutions for the deaf and insane, a state work-house, house of correction, a state-prison and many benevolent establishments.
Rhode Island was settled in 1636 by Roger Williams (q. v.) and his Baptist companions, who were expelled from the Puritan colony in Massachusetts on account, partly, of their religious opinions. It is also believed to have been the Vinland of the Norsemen, who explored its coast in the 10th century. Population 542,610.
Rhodes (rōdz), an island in the Mediterranean belonging to Turkey, formerly an independent state of ancient Greece. It is about 50 miles long and 20 broad, and is traversed by a chain of mountains, the highest peak reaching a height of 4,070 feet. The island was inhabited at a very early period, and is said to have sent nine ships to the Trojan War. In 404 B. C. the city of Rhodes was founded at the northern extremity of the island, and after that the history of the island is comprised in that of the new city. The city was girt by strong walls surmounted by towers, and was furnished with two good harbors. At the entrance to one of its ports stood a brazen statue of Helios, 70 cubits in height and called the Colossus of Rhodes. Besides this statue, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, there were 3,000 others in the city, of which 100 were colossal. The arts were cultivated in Rhodes, and intellectual activity showed itself long after it had declined in other parts of Greece. After the death of Julius Cæsar, whose side the Rhodians had taken in his contest with Pompey, they were defeated in a naval engagement by Cassius, who entered the city by force, seized the public property and rifled the temples. During several centuries Rhodes remained under the power of the Byzantine emperors. In 1309 it fell into the hands of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who retained possession until 1523, when they were besieged by the Turks and compelled to sail away to Crete; and the island has remained a Turkish possession ever since.
Rhodes, Cecil John, English and South African statesman, railway projector and mining operator, was born at Bishop Stortford, England, where his father was rector of the parish, July 5, 1853. Aftef graduating at Oxford, he went to the Cape of Good Hope in 1871 for his health, and settled at Kimberley, engaged in diamond-mining and began to dream of a united British South Africa and of a railway project that would connect the Cape with the Zambezi and ultimately through Egyptian Sudan with Cairo. Cape politics for a time attracted him, and he entered the local legislature and became prime minister, but resigned in consequence of the Jameson raid. In 1893, in alliance with the Dutch Afrikander party at the Cape, he took the field against the warlike Matabele and subdued them; after which he obtained mining rights over what is now Rhodesia, which he did much to develop. By this time, while working out his schemes of British expansion in the country, he had formed the great De Beers mine consolidation, where he amassed great wealth. When war in the Transvaal broke out, he went to Kimberley, and remained there during the investment of the great diamond-mining town by the Boers, raising and equipping at his own expense a town-guard of 400 men at a cost of $75,000. He died on March 28, 1902.
Rhodesia (rṓ-dē'zĭ-ȧ), named from Cecil Rhodes, is bounded on the northwest and north by Congo Free State, on the north and northeast by German East Africa, on the east by Portuguese East Africa, on the south by the Transvaal and the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and on the west by German Southwest Africa and Portuguese West Africa or Angola, comprising all the territory formerly known as British South and Central Africa, north of the twenty-second parallel, excepting the British Central Africa Protectorate. Rhodesia is divided by the Zambezi into Southern and Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia into Matabeleland and Mashonaland, and Northern
