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22 ABERDEEN ABERDEENSHIRE running around the whole. The commerce and manufactures of Aberdeen are extensive. Ships of 1,000 to 1,500 tons are built here. Cotton manufactures employ 4,000 hands, linens and woollens each as many more. The Aberdeen granite is used all over Great Brit- ain, and largely exported. Aberdeen is ac- tively engaged in the northern whale fishery. The Victoria dock has a water area of 40 acres. There are water works which supply the town from the river Dee. There is rail- way communication direct with London. The town is governed by a provost, four bailies, a dean of guild, and a treasurer, with 12 other members of council. II. Old, a town of great antiquity, situated one mile N. of the new town, near the mouth of the Don ; pop. about 2,000. King's college, founded in 1494, is situated here. ABERDEEN, Earls of, viscounts of Formartin and barons of Haddo, Methlic, Tarvis, and Kel- lie in the Scottish peerage, and Viscounts Gor- don in that of the United Kingdom. The family is an offshoot of the ancient Scotch family of the Gordons. Sir JOHN GORDON of Haddo was created a baronet in 1642 by Charles I., as a reward for his services in the battle of Turriff between that monarch and the par- liamentary forces. Being taken prisoner after a desperate defence of the house of Kellie, he was long imprisoned in the nave of the ancient cathedral of St. Giles at Edinburgh, which from him took the familiar name of Haddo's Hole, 1 ' and was at length beheaded in 1645. His estates remained under seques- tration till the restoration of Charles II., when they were restored to his eldest son, Sir John Gordon, who died in 1665. Sir GEORGE GOR- DON of Haddo, lord high chancellor of Scotland, was in 1682 elevated to the Scottish peerage, by the titles above mentioned. On the revo- lution the new earl resigned office, and de- clined taking the oaths of allegiance to Wil- liam of Orange, but he appeared again at court in the reign of Queen Anne. He opposed the union of Scotland and England from his seat in parliament, and died in 172U, aged 83. GEORGE HAMILTON GORDON, 4th earl, born in Edinburgh, Jan. 28, 1784, died Dec. 14, 1860. He was educated at Harrow, and at St. John's college, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1804. While still a young man he founded a club, the members of which must have made a journey to Greece. In 1806, though only 22, he was elected as one of the 16 Scottish representative peers, and so remained until he was created a peer of the realm in his own right in 1814, as Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen. In 1813 he was sent to the court of Vienna as a secret envoy to detach Austria from her enforced alliance with Napoleon. He .succeeded, and was soon afterward ag;iin sent to Vienna, and arranged the preliminaries between the emperor Francis and Joachim Murat, king of Naples, for tin- restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of Naples. During Canning's ministry he was in opposition. In 1828, the duke of Wellington having formed a ministry on high tory princi- ples, Aberdeen became secretary of state for foreign affairs, remaining in office till Novem- ber, 1830, and opposing the Greek war of in- dependence, but favoring the abolition of the test and corporation acts, and the Catholic emancipation act, while resisting the movement for parliamentary reform. On the death of George IV. Aberdeen resigned with his col- leagues. He afterward took a conspicuous part in endeavoring to reunite the Scottish na- tional church. From 1841 to 1846 he was again secretary for foreign affairs, in the min- istry of Sir Robert Peel, and participated in settling the northeastern and Oregon bound- ary questions with the United States. On Dec. 28, 1852, he became prime minister, but was compromised in public opinion by his attempt to evade the Crimean war, and by its blunders after it was begun, and was compelled to re- sign Feb. 1, 1855, when he was made a knight of the Garter. He had been president of the society of antiquaries, and in 1822 published "An Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture." GEORGE HAMILTON GORDON, 6th earl, born Dec. 10, 1841, lost at sea Jan. 27, 1870. He succeeded to the title in 1864. In 1866 he embarked in a sailing vessel from Aberdeen for St. Johns, N. B., and dur- ing the voyage volunteered to fill the place of a disabled seaman. This occupation he re- sumed after some time spent in travel, made several short voyages under the name of George Henry Osborne, acted as a commercial agent at Pensacola, and was licensed as a mate in New York in 1867, and as a captain in 1868. In January, 1870, he shipped as mate of the three-masted schooner Hera, bound from Bos- ton to Melbourne, and on the fourth day out was swept overboard in a storm. He had for some time kept his family advised of his wan- derings, but as all replies to his letters miscar- ried, he ceased writing. An agent sent out in search of him succeeded with great difficulty in tracing his subsequent career. IMIUH I HIIIU:. a county of Scotland, on the N. E. coast, between lat. 56 52' and 57 42' N., and Ion. 1 49' and 3 48' W. ; length, 87 m. ; greatest breadth, 36 m. ; area, 1,985 sq. m., or 1,270,740 acres, being about one sixteenth of all Scotland; pop. in 1871, 244,607. It contains 83 parishes and parts of six others, and is divided into the districts of Mar, Formartin, Buchan, Garioch, and Strath- bogie. On the S. and S. W. borders of the county are the Grampian hills. The High- lands of this district include some of the high- est mountains in Scotland, Ben Macdhui, Cairntoul, Ben Avon, and Cairngorm, from which last the fine yellow pebble so much used in Highland dress and ornaments take> its name. The Scottish kings used to hold for- midable gatherings to hunt the red deer in the wilds of Braemar ; and the abundance of care- fully preserved game makes the district still a