Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/87

ACLINIC LINE ACONCAGUA 67 Arnold. Major Acland was shot through the legs and taken prisoner. When Gen. Fraser was brought mortally wounded to the quarters of the baroness do Riedesel, a report reached Lady Harriet Acland (daughter of the earl of Ilchester), in a tent near by, that her husband was also mortally wounded. She determined to seek him in the American camp, although she was at the time much debilitated by want of food and rest, and by anguish of mind. She was received with kindness; her atten- tions restored her husband to health, and the bearing of the Americans toward both made a profound impression on the mind of Major Acland. After his return to England the next year, he was provoked to give the lie direct at a dinner party to Lieut. Lloyd for some foul aspersions on the American name. A duel ensued, and Major Acland was shot through the head, a circumstance which caused his devoted wife the loss of her senses for two years. She afterward married the Rev. Mr. Brudenell, a chaplain in the British army, who had accompanied her in her perilous pursuit of her husband, and died in 1815. She wrote a narrative of the campaigns of 1776-'7. II. Henry Wentworth, M. D., F. R. S., grand- nephew of the preceding, born in 1815, phy- sician to the Radcliffe infirmary, and Lee's reader in anatomy at Oxford, is distinguished as a promoter of sanitary reform. He accom- panied the prince of "Wales to the United States in 1860 as his medical attendant. ACLINIC LINE (Gr. a, without, and I&IVEIV, to incline), an imaginary line on the earth's surface between the tropics, where the compass needle has no inclination ; that is, where the dipping needle is horizontal. This line is also called the magnetic equator, being about 90 distant from the magnetic poles; it is variable and runs quite irregularly. At present it inter- sects the geographical equator near the "W. coast of Africa, and some 160 E. of that point in the Pacific ocean. In the western hemi- sphere it is S. and in the eastern N. of the equator. AWEMETJI (Gr. OKOI^TO^ sleepless), an order of Greek monks who chanted the divine service day and night, without ceasing. This they accomplished by dividing themselves into three reliefs, succeeding one another alter- nately. Their centre was the cloister of Irenarion, near Constantinople. They flour- ished in the 5th century; in the succeeding century they were put under the ban of the church, on account of their leanings toward the Nestorian Christians and their doctrines. ACOLTTE (Gr. a/coAovtfo? , attending), a clergy- man in the Roman Catholic church, and in the churches of the East, next in rank to the sub-deacon, whose principal office is to light the candles on the altar, and attend on the priest or other sacred ministers during mass and vespers. The youths who serve at the altar are also called acolytes, though not or- dained. ACOMA, a village of New Mexico, in lat. 35 24' N., Ion. 106 10' W., supposed by the abbe" Domenech to be the Acuco of the ancient Spanish historians, and the oldest Indian town in the territory. It is built upon the horizontal summit of an isolated and almost perpendicular rock 394 feet in height. The greater part of the ascent to it is made by means of a road cut like a spiral staircase in the rock. The village consists of large blocks of houses, 60 or 70 in each block. It is said the Spaniards took the town from the Indians in 1599. ACONCAGUA. I. A central province of Chili; area, about 6,000 sq. m. ; pop. in 1868, 130,672. The entire eastern portion is occupied by rugged spurs of the Andes and very fertile valleys, watered by several rivers flowing through the province to the Pacific. This region abounds in copper, silver, and gold mines ; the last were at one time very famous. In 1862 there were in working order 8 gold, 9 silver, and 228 copper mines. The western part is irrigated by innumerable artificial water courses, supplied from the rivers, by means of which large crops are produced of excellent wheat and other cereals, as well as of hemp of a very superior quality. Such irrigation is rendered indispensable by the extraordinary scarcity of rain. The province is divided into the five departments of Andes, Ligua, Petorca, Patacudo, and San Felipe. Capital, San Felipe de Aconcagua, situated at the foot of the Andes, in a fertile valley 2,000 feet above the Pacific, 55 m. N. E. of Valpa- raiso; pop. about 7,000. II. A peak of the Andes in the preceding province, N. E. of San Felipe, in lat. 32 39' S., Ion. 70 W., believed to be the highest in this hemisphere. According to the measurement of M. Pissis, to the results of whose labors more credit is given than to those of any other scientific investigator of the Andes, Aconcagua reaches a height of 6,834 metres, or 22,422 feet, above the level of the ocean, being 997 feet higher than Chimborazo and 1,138 feet higher than Sorata, which were formerly considered the most elevated peaks of the Andean chain. Aconcagua has been described as the cone of an extinguished volcano, and the error prob- ably arises from a widely published statement of Darwin, who asserts that when in the Beagle expedition in 1835 it was reported to him that the volcano of Aconcagua was in eruption. Neither its shape nor its external features would indicate an extinguished vol-