Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/369

PETEEHEAD PETERS 355 ter been followed at this juncture, and a rapid march made upon Madrid, the archduke might have been established upon the throne of Spain. But dissensions arose among the allied generals, and Peterborough, finding his counsels disregarded, quitted Spain in disgust, and in 1707 returned to England, where he was thanked by the house of lords for his " won- derful and amazing success." In 1710 he was employed on embassies to Vienna and other continental courts. In 1713 he was sent to the king of Sicily, and shortly afterward was made governor of the island of Minorca. Hatred of Marlborough induced him during the last years of Queen Anne's reign to side with the tories ; and on the accession of George I. and a whig administration he returned to his country seat. Throughout his life he was the intimate friend of Dryden, Swift, Pope, Gay, and other men of letters, and had a considerable reputation as a writer. He is said to have composed his own memoirs, which after his death were destroyed by his countess, the celebrated singer Anasta- sia Robinson, with whom he contracted a sec- ond marriage in 1735. Macaulay calls Peter- borough " the most extraordinary character of that age, the king of Sweden not excepted; .... a polite, learned, and amorous Charles the Twelfth." In person he was tall and grace- ful, but so attenuated that Swift compared him to a living skeleton. See " Memoir of Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Mon- mouth, with Selections from his Correspon- dence," by Eliot Warburton (2 vols., 1853). PETERHEAD, a seaport town of Aberdeen- shire, Scotland, 26 m. N". K E. of Aberdeen, on a peninsula which is the most easterly point of Scotland, connected with the mainland by an isthmus only m. wide; pop. in 1871, 8,535. The principal streets are well paved and handsomely built up, chiefly with granite. There are two excellent harbors on the N. and S. sides of the peninsula, connected by an arti- ficial channel. The imports consist of lime, wool, timber, salt, and flour, and the exports of red granite quarried in the vicinity, grain, meal, pork, butter, cheese, eggs, herrings (of which 50,000 bbls. are cured annually), and whitefish. The tonnage entered in 1873 was 75,623 (13,311 in the foreign trade), and cleared 74,287 (15,718 foreign). The manufactures are unimportant, but there is some ship building. Peterhead is frequented in summer by bathers, and there are mineral springs near by. PETERMAM, August, a German geographer, born at Bleicherode, near Nordhausen, in Prus- sian Saxony, April 18, 1822. He studied in the academy established at Potsdam by Berg- haus, with whom he lived six years as his private secretary and librarian, assisting him in the preparation of his "Physical Atlas." In 1841 he published for Humboldt the map of central Asia. In 1845 he went to Edinburgh to aid A. K. Johnston in the English edition of the u Physical Atlas;" and in 1847 to Lon- don, where he became a member of the royal geographical society, and in conjunction with the Rev. Thomas Milner prepared an "Atlas of Physical Geography." To him is due in great measure the aid which Earth, Overweg, and Vogel received from the English govern- ment in their African explorations. In 1854 he became superintendent of the geographical institute of Justus Perthes at Gotha, and in the following year he established the monthly Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes 1 geographi- scher Anstalt, of which 21 volumes have ap- peared (1855-'75), besides numerous and valu- able supplements. He has efficiently promoted arctic, African, and other explorations. To the new edition of Stieler's Hand-Atlas, now (1875) approaching completion, he has con- tributed some of the finest maps, including a map of the United States in six parts. PETERMAM, Julius Heiurich, a German ori- entalist, born in Glauchau, Saxony, in 1806. He studied in Leipsic and Berlin, and gradu- ated in 1829. In 1832 he visited Venice to study Armenian among the Mekhitarists, and in 1837 he became professor of oriental litera- ture in Berlin. In 1865 he visited the East, and in 1867-'8 he was consul at Jerusalem. Besides grammars of Armenian, Arabic, Chal- daic, and Hebrew, he has published Reise in den Orient (2 vols., Leipsic, 1860), and many interesting works relating to oriental litera- ture (1868 et seq.}. PETERS, or Peeters, Bonaventnra, a Flemish painter, born in Antwerp in 1614, died there, according to most authors, July 25, 1652, but according to Valkema in 1671. He was espe- cially distinguished as a marine painter. His best works are now scarce. PETERS, Christian August Friedrich, a German astronomer, born in Hamburg, Sept. 7, 1806. He was employed in the observatory of that city and afterward of Pulkova, and in 1839 became one of the directors of the latter. In 1849 he was appointed professor of astronomy at Konigsberg, and in 1854 director of the ob- servatory of Altona. He has edited Die Astro- nomischen NacliricJiten since 1854, and has made various discoveries of asteroids and ob- servations of fixed stars and comets. PETERS. I. Christian Henry Frederick, a Ger- man American astronomer, born at Colden- btittel, Schleswig, Sept. 19, 1813. After grad- uating at the university of Berlin he spent several years in travel and scientific explora- tions in Italy, Palestine, and the region of an- cient Troy. He then came to the United States, was connected with the coast survey, and in 1858 was appointed professor of mathematics and astronomy in Hamilton college, and direc- tor of the observatory (now the Litchfield ob- servatory), at Clinton, K Y. In 1859, by ex- change of star signals with the observatory of Harvard college, he determined accurately the longitude of his own observatory, and after- ward of several other places in the state, and also of the observatory at Ann Arbor, Mich., which was made the fundamental point in the