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from Xalapa, a town in New Spain, in the neighbourhood of which it was discovered; though it is now principally brought from the Madeiras. It is an excellent purgative where serous humours are to be evacuated. Hill's Mat. Med.

JALAP. See CONVOLVULUS. This root is brought in thin transverse slices from Xalapa in New Spain. Such pieces should be chosen as are most compact, hard, weighty, dark-colored, and bound most with black circular striæ. Slices of bryony root, when mixed with those of jalap, may be easily distinguished by their whiter color and less compact texture. Jalap in substance, taken in a dose of about half a dram in plethoric, or cold phlegmatic habits, proves an effectual, and in general a safe purgative. In hypochondriacal disorders, and hot bilious temperaments, it gripes violently, but rarely takes effect as a purge. An extract made by water purges almost universally, but weakly, and has a considerable effect by urine. The root remaining after this process gripes violently. The pure resin, prepared by spirit of wine, occasions most violent gripings, and other distressing symptoms, but scarce proves at all cathartic: triturated with sugar or with almonds into the form of an emulsion, or dissolved in spirits, and mixed with syrups, it purges plentifully in a small dose, without cccasioning much disorder: the part of the jalap remaining, after the separation of the resin, yields to water an extract, which has no effect as a cathartic, but operates powerfully by urine, Its officinal preparations are an extract made with water and spirit, a simple tincture and compound powder. By M. Henry's analysis, the constituents of this root are,

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JALEMUS, in antiquity, a kind of mournful song, used upon occasion of death, or any other affecting accident. Hence the Greek proverbs, Lateμs oporεpoç, i. e. more sad than a jalemus; εις τις ιαλεμες εγγραπτέος, worthy to be ranked among jalemuses.

JALLONKADO0, a considerable country of Western Africa, which includes the sources of the Bafing, and of almost all the other rivers which form the Senegal. It is mountainous, and in many parts barren. The inhabitants are governed by a number of petty chiefs, commonly at enmity with each other; and their language differs considerably from that of the Mandingos, though there is a great affinity in many words. Caravans travel for five days here without seeing a human habitation; and if any of the party is unable to keep up with the rest, he has little hope but of perishing with hunger, or by wild beasts.

JALNAHI, a district of Hindostan, in the province of Aurungabad, situated between the nineteenth and twentieth degrees of northern latitude. It was taken by the British from the

VOL. XI.

Mahrattas in 1803, and by them ceded to the Nizam.

JALNAH, or JALNAPORE, a town and fortress of Hindostan, the capital of the above district, is now the head-quarters of the nizam's subsidiary force. The town and fort are on opposite sides of the river. Long. 76° 34′ E., lat. 19° 45′ N.

JALOFFS, or QUALOFFS, are a people of Africa, who occupy most of the country between the lower part of the Gambia and that of the Senegal. Their territory is reckoned by Mr. Golberry to occupy 4800 square leagues. They are of handsome person for negroes, their color being a fine bright black, and their features, upon the whole, regular and graceful. They boast of being the most ancient nation in this part of Africa, and were formerly subject to a common sovereign, called the Burb-y-Jaloff, who still occupies a considerable country in the interior. The Jaloffs profess Mahommedanism, but combine with it many of their own superstitions. They are fearless hunters and, brave warriors. Those inhabiting the towns rank also among the most expert thieves in the world, using their toes with the same dexterity as their fingers. They excel in the manufacture of cotton cloth, to which they give a superior dye; and great quantities of a particular bean are exported to Morocco for the purposes of dyeing. The language of the Jaloffs is agreeable and soft; but they have a singular mode of numeration, using as its basis the number five; and all their calculations are performed by the motion of the fingers, for they write nothing.

JAM, n. s. Arab. jama. A conserve of fruits boiled with sugar and water.

JAMAICA, the most considerable and valuable of the British West India Islands, is separated from the west end of St. Domingo, by the channel called by our seamen the Windward Passage. The island is 150 miles long and forty broad, containing 4,080,000 acres; thus distributed: 690,000 acres are under sugar canes, and wood for the use of the sugar-works.

700,000 in pasture.

350,000 all other species of agriculture.

1,740,000, leaving upwards of 2,000,000 of acres of unproductive mountain land, of which not above a quarter is improvable.

The Blue Mountains are an elevated ridge, which runs through the island longitudinally, and is covered with vast forests of mahogany, lignum vitæ, iron wood, log-wood, brazilletto, and many other heavy and close-grained woods. On the north, at a small distance from the sea, the land rises in small round-topped hills, eathered with spontaneous groves of pimento, under whose shade is a beautiful turfy carpet. This side of the island is also finely watered, every valley having its rivulet and every bill its cascade, many of which tumble from overhanging cliffs into the sea. In the back ground a vast amphitheatre of forest presents itself. melting gradually into the distant Blue Mountains, whose heads are lost in the clouds. On the south coast the picture is more sublime, but less pleasing. The mountains, approaching the sea in stupendous ridges, first present to the na

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vigator a scene of magnificent savageness; but on nearing the land the picture softens, cultivated spots being perceived on the sides of the hills, and at last the vast savannahs, covered with sugar canes, stretching from the sea to the foot of the mountains, offer the pleasing indication of human industry.

Jamaica has upwards of 100 rivers, rising in the mountains and running with torrent rapidity to the sea. This rapidity, as well as the obstructions from rocks, renders them unnavigable by any thing but canoes. The deepest is Black River on the south coast, which flows gently through a considerable tract of level country, and is navigable by flat boats thirty miles. The island has also some medicinal springs, warm, sulphureous, and chalybeate.

Appearances of metals are observed in the island, but the industry of the English colonists has always been more wisely employed in the certain profits of agriculture.

The climate of this island, even on the coasts, is temperate, the medium heat at Kingston throughout the year being 80° and the least 70°. In ascending towards the mountains, the temperature quickly alters with the elevation. Eight miles from Kingston the maximum is but 70'; at fourteen miles, where the elevation is 4200 feet, the general range is 55 to 65, and the minimum in winter 44°. On the highest summit, called Blue Mountain Peak, 7431 feet above the sea, the range in the summer is from 47° at sunrise to 58° at noon, and the minimum in winter is 42°.

Besides the staple exports, consisting of sugar, indigo, coffee and cotton, the cultivated vegetables of Jamaica are maize, Guinea coru, and calavances, for the food of the negroes; and almost all the kitchen vegetables of Europe, together with many indigenous ones, as the sweet potatoe, yam, eddoe root, callaloo (a kind of spinach, and the commonest substitute for greens, cassava, okery, &c.

Few of the northern European fruits thrive, but the indigenous ones are numerous and delicious; the principal are the plantain, cocoanut, guava, sour-sop, sweet-sop, papaw custard apple, mammee apple, avocado pear, star apple,

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cashew apple, granadilla, prickly pear, pine apple, &c. The orange, lime, lemon, mango, and grape have been naturalised, as well as the cinnamon tree, of which there are now considerable plantations. The horned cattle, sheep, and hogs, of the island are abundant and their flesh excellent. The indigenous quadrupeds of Jamaica are the armadillo, the opossum, the racoon, the agouti, the pecare or Mexican hog, the muskrat, the alco, and the monkey. Of these only the agouti and the monkey now remain. the lizard there are many varieties. The woods and marshes abound in great variety of wild fowl, some of them of exquisite flavor. Of these the most highly esteemed is the ortolan or October bird, or rice bird of South Carolina. These birds arrive in South Carolina in the month of September, to devour the rice; and, remaining there about three weeks, arrive in prodigious flights in Jamaica, about the month of October. Parrots are still found in the groves. The following was the progressive population of Jamaica

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In 1807, when the exports were somewhat inferior to the above years, the number of vessels that cleared out from the island was,

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The revenues are perpetual and annual. The perpetual revenue law, which was passed in the year 1728, raises about £12,000 per annum. The other public revenues are derived from occasional grants of the legislature. The principal taxes consist of a duty of twenty shillings per head on all negroes imported, a duty on all rum and other spirits consumed within the island, a poll tax on all slaves and stock, and a rate on rents and wheel carriages. There is also a penalty imposed on all persons who fail to keep one white person for every thirty blacks, which has become a productive source of re

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The capital is St. Jago de la Vega, or Spanish Town, on the river Cobre, six miles from the south coast, and in the county of Middlesex. It contains about 5000 inhabitants, and is the residence of the governor, whose palace is a magnificent building.

The legislature of the island is composed of the governor, a council nominated by the crown, consisting of twelve gentlemen, and a house of assembly containing forty-three members, elected by the freeholders. The power of making laws is vested in the assembly and the governor, who has the privilege of a veto on the acts of the legislative body; and a further power of rejection is reserved to the crown. Until his majesty's pleasure is known, however, laws are valid.

The two towns of the county of Surrey are Kingston and Port Royal; the latter situated on a narrow sandy peninsula that separates Port Royal Bay from Kingston Harbour. In 1692 this town contained 2000 houses, when an earthquake swallowed nine-tenths of it, covering the houses with seven fathoms water. It was immediately rebuilt, but ten years after it was destroyed by fire, and being again rebuilt, was a third time destroyed by a hurricane in 1722. This succession of calamities caused the inhabitants to remove to Kingston, on the west side of the harbour, five miles from Port Royal; and here the chief government offices have been built, but the royal naval arsenal, for careening and refitting ships, is at Port Royal.

The town of Kingston contains about 2000 well-built houses: the harbour can hold 1000

ships, and those of 200 lay at the quays. Both the harbour and bay are protected by strong fortifications, which place them beyond all possible insult from an enemy.

The towns of the county of Cornwall are, Savannah le Mar, which, being destroyed by the hurricane of 1780, now contains but sixty to seventy houses: it is at the south-west end of the island. Montego Bay Town, on the north coast, contains 225 houses: seventy large ships

and eighty smaller vessels load here annually. Falmouth, the third town, is also on the north coast, on the south side of Martha Brea Harbour; including the villages of Martha Brea and the Rock, the number of houses is 250. Thirty large ships, besides small vessels, load here for England.

The villages of Jamaica are generally small hamlets on the bays, where the produce is shipped in the droggers to be conveyed to the ports of clearance. The few other places worthy of mention are Lucea Harbour on the north coast, and Bluefields and Carlisle Bay on the south.

Jamaica was discovered in 1494 by Columbus. He was shipwrecked on it in 1503; and remained here on this occasion, in considerable distress, more than twelve months. A Spanish colony was established on it in the year 1509; all whose establishments were abandoned in 1655, except St. Jago de la Vega. Diego, the son of Columbus, according to the powers granted to his father by the king of Spain, appointed Esquivel, a noble Castilian, as governor of the newly discovered island, in the year 1506, who built a town, called Sevilla Nueva, near the spot where Columbus was shipwrecked. In the year 1596 Sir Anthony Shirley invaded and plundered Jamaica, and about forty years afterwards it was again plundered by a party of English, under colonel Jackson. In the year 1655 this island was taken by the English, under the command of Penn and Venables, who had been sent by Cromwell to seize on Hispaniola: it was afterwards settled by 3000 soldiers, disbanded from the parliamentary army; and these were followed by 1500 royalists. From this time the colony has gradually increased in importance, though its tranquillity has been occasionally disturbed by the inroads of the Maroons, the slaves of the Spanish settlers, who, on the surrender of the island to the English, fled to the mountains, where they have since lived in an almost savage state. In 1738 a treaty was concluded with them, by which their freedom was secured, along with a grant of 1500 acres of land. They remained peaceable till the year 1795, when a new

war commenced between them and the white

inhabitants. Being vigorously attacked, however, and the barbarous expedient of bloodhounds being resorted to, for the purpose of tracing their haunts, they were at last compelled

to surrender at discretion to their enemies the whites, by whom about 600 of them were transported to Nova Scotia. Long. 76° 45′ W., lat. 18° 12′ N.

JAMB, n. s. Fr. jambe, a leg. Any sup porter on either side, as the posts of a door.

No timber is to be laid within twelve inches of the Moxon.

foreside of the chimney jamds.

IAMBE, in fabulous history, a servant girl of Metanira, afterwards wife of Celeus, king of Eleusis, who endeavoured to exhilarate Ceres, when she travelled in search of Proserpine. From the humor she displayed on that occasion, free and satirical verses are said to have been called iambics.

IA'MBIC, n. s. Fr. iambique; Lat. iambicus. Verses composed of iambic feet, or a

short and long syllable alternately used origin- Venosa, who, in our age, hath improved music ally in satire, therefore taken for satire.

In thy felonious heart though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish peu, and dies: Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen iambicks, but mild anagram. Dryden. IAMBICS, in ancient poetry. See IAMBUS, There are two kinds of iambics, viz. dimeter and trimeter; the former contains four feet, and the

latter six. See VERSE.

JAMBLICUS, a celebrated Platonic philosopher of Colchis, whom Julian equals to Plato. He was the disciple of Anatolius and Porphyry, and died in the reign of Constantine the Great.

JAMBLICUS, another celebrated Platonic philosopher, born at Apamea, in Syria, and nearly contemporary with the former. Julian wrote several letters to him, and it is said he was poisoned under the reign of Valens. It is not certainly known to which of the two we ought to attribute the works in Greek under the name of Jamblicus, viz. 1. The History of the Life of Pythagoras, and the sect of the Pythagoreans. 2. An Exhortation to the Study of Philosophy. 3. A piece against Porphyry's letter, on the mysteries of the Egyptians.

IAMBUS, in the Greek and Latin prosody, a poetical foot, consisting of a short syllable followed by a long one; as in

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Horace calls the iambus pes citus, a swift rapid foot. The name, according to some, took its rise from Iambus, the son of Pan and Echo, who invented this foot. Others derive it from lambe, queen of Eleusis. Others from the Greek tog, poison; or taμßiw, I rail; because iambics were at first only used in satire.

JAMES I., king of Scotland in 1423, fell into the hands of his enemies in his thirteenth year, when flying from the snares of his ambitious uncle, who governed his dominious, and was suspected of designs against his life. Having secretly embarked for France, the ship was taken by an English privateer off Flamborough Head; and the prince and his attendants, among whom was the earl of Orkney, were confined in a neighbouring castle until they were sent to London. He was detained till summer 1417, when Henry V. carried him with him into France in his second expedition. Hector Boece tells us, that Henry IV. and V. furnished their royal prisoner with the best teachers in all the arts and sciences; and that, by their assistance, he made great proficiency in every part of learning; that he became a perfect master in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, and all the secrets of natural philosophy, and was inferior to none in divinity and law. Above a century after his death he was celebrated in Italy by Alexander Tassoni, a writer of undoubted credit: We may reckon among moderns (says he) James, king of Scotland, who not only composed many sacred pieces of vocal music, but also of himself in vented a new kind of music, plaintive and melancholy, different from all other; in which he hath been imitated by Carlo Gesualdo, prince of

with new and admirable inventions.' As James I. was one of the most accomplished princes that ever filled a throne, he was also one of the most unfortunate. After spending almost twenty years in captivity, and encountering many dithculties on his return into his native kingdom, he was murdered by assassins in the prime of life. Only three of his poems are now extant, viz. Christ's Kirk on the Green, Peebles at the Play, and the King's Quair.

JAMES II., king of Scotland, succeeded his father in 1447, when not seven years of age; and was killed at the siege of Roxburgh in 1460, aged twenty-nine.

JAMES III. succeeded his father in 1460, in

the seventh year of his age. The most striking

feature in his character was his excessive fondness for the fine arts, and for those who excelled in them, on whom he bestowed his confidence and favor. This excited in his fierce and haughty nobles dislike and contempt of their sovereign, and indignation against the objects of his favor; which produced the most pernicious consequences, and ended in a rebellion that proved fatal to James, who was slain in 1488, aged thirty-six.

JAMES IV. Succeeded his father in 1488.

He

subdued his rebellious subjects; and afterwards, taking part with Louis XII, against Henry VIII. of England, he was slain in the battle of Flodden-Field in 1513, aged forty-one. His Latin epistles are classical, compared with the barbarous style of the foreign princes with whom he corresponded. The attention he paid to the civilisation of his people, and his distribution of justice, merit the highest praise.

JAMES V. king of Scotland, in 1513, was but eighteen months old when his father lost his life. When of age, he assisted Francis I. of France against the emperor Charles V., for which service Francis gave him his eldest daughter in marriage in 1535. This princess died in two years; and James married Mary of Lorraine, daughter of Claud, duke of Guise, and widow of Lewis of Orleans, by whom he had one child, the unfortunate Mary queen of Scots, born only eight days before his death, which happened December 14th, 1542, in his thirty-fifth year.

JAMES I. king of England, and VI. of Scotland, was the son of Mary queen of Scots, whom he succeeded in Scotland in 1567, as he did Elizabeth in England in 1603. Strongly attached to the Protestant religion, he signalised himself in its support; which gave rise to the conspiracy of the Papists to destroy him and all the English nobility by the gunpowder plot, discovered November 5th, 1605. The chief glory of this king's reign consisted in the establishment of new colonies, and the introduction of some manufactures. The nation enjoyed peace, and commerce flourished during his reign. Yet his administration was despised both at home and abroad for, being the head of the Protestant cause in Europe, he did not support it in the war of Bohemia; abandoning his son-in-law, the elector palatine; negociating when he should have fought, deceived at the same time by the courts

of Vienna and Madrid; and continually sending illustrious ambassadors to foreign powers, but never making a single ally. He valued himself much upon his polemical writings; and was so fond of theological disputations, that he founded, for this express purpose, Chelsea College; which was converted to a much better use by Charles II. His Basilicon Doron, Commentary on the Revelation, writings against Bellarmine, and his Dæmonologia, or Doctrine of Witchcraft, are sufficiently known. There is a collection of his writings and speeches in one folio volume. Several other pieces of his are extant; some of them in the Caballa, others in MS. in the British Museum, and others in Howard's collection. He died in 1625, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and twenty-third of his reign.

JAMES II. of England and VII. of Scotland, grandson of James I., succeeded his brother Charles II. in 1685. A bigot from his infancy to the Romish religion and hierarchy, he sacrificed every thing to establish them, in direct contradiction to the experience he had acquired, during the long reign of his brother, of the genius and character of the people he was to govern. Guided by the Jesuit Peters, his confessor, and the infamous chancellor Jeffries, he violated the laws enacted for the security of the Protestant religion; and he rather chose to live and die, as he believed, a saint, than to support the dignity of his ancestors, or perish beneath the ruins of his throne. The consequence was the revolution in 1688. James II. died in France in 1710, aged sixty-eight. He wrote, 1. Memoirs of his own Life and Campaigns to the Restoration; the original of which is preserved in the Scotch College at Paris. This piece is printed at the end of Ramsay's Life of Marshal Turenne. 2. Memoirs of the English Affairs, chiefly naval, from the year 1660 to 1673. 3. The Royal Sufferer, king James II., consisting of meditations, soliloquies, vows, &c., composed at St. Germain's.

JAMES (Dr. Thomas), a learned English critic and divine, born about 1571. He was educated at Winchester, and studied at Oxford, where he took his degree of D.D. and was appointed keeper of the public library. He distinguished himself by the arduous undertaking of publishing a catalogue of the MSS. in each college library at both universities. He was elected to this office in 1602, and held it eighteen years, when he resigned it. In the convocation held with the parliament at Oxford, in 1625, of which he was a member, he moved to have proper commissioners appointed to collate the MSS. of the fathers in all the libraries in England, with the Popish editions, in order to detect any forgeries; but, this proposal not meeting with the desired encouragement, he engaged in the laborious task himself, which he continued until his death in 1629. He left behind him a great number of learned works.

JAMES (Robert), M.D., an English physician of great eminence, and particularly distinguished by his fever powder, was born at Kinverston, in Staffordshire, 1703. He was of St. John's College in Oxford, where he took the degree of A.B., and afterwards practised bysie at Sheffield,

Litchfield, and Birmingham. Thence he removed to London, became a licentiate in the College of Physicians, practised physic, and, in 1743, published a Medicinal Dictionary, in 3 vols. folio. Soon after he published an English translation, with a Supplement, by himself, of Rammazini de Morbis Artificum; to which he prefixed a piece of Frederic Hoffman upon Endemial Distempers, 8vo. In 1746 he published the Practice of Physic, 2 vols. 8vo.; in 1760 on Canine Madness, 8vo.; in 1764 a Dispensatory, 8vo. In 1755, the king being at Cambridge, he was admitted M. D. by mandamus. In 1778 were published a Dissertation upon Fevers, and a Vindication of the Fever Powder, 8vo.; with a short Treatise on the Disorders of Children. This was the eighth edition of the Dissertation, of which the first was printed in 1751; and the purpose of it was, to set forth the success of this powder, as well as to describe more particularly the manner of administering it. The Vindication was posthumous and unfinished : for he died March 23d, 1776, while employed upon it.

JAMES (St.), surnamed Major, or the Greater, the son of Zebedee, and the brother of John the evangelist, was born at Bethsaida, in Galilee. The only authentic accounts we have of him are recorded by the evangelists. It is believed that St. James first preached the gospel to the dispersed Jews; and afterwards returned to Judea, where he preached at Jerusalem, when the Jews excited Herod Agrippa against him, who put him to a cruel death about A. D. 44. Thus he was the first of the apostles who suffered martyrdom. St. Clement, of Alexandria, relates, that his accuser was so struck with his constancy, that he became converted, and suffered with him. The Spaniards pretend that they had St. James for their apostle, and boast of possessing his body.

JAMES (St.), surnamed Minor, or the Less, an apostle, the brother of Jude, and the son of Cleophas and Mary, the sister of the mother of our Lord, is called in Scripture the Just, and the brother of Jesus, who appeared to him in particular after his resurrection. He was the first bishop of Jerusalem, when Ananias II., high priest of the Jews, caused him to be condemned, and delivered him into the hands of the people and the Pharisees, who threw him down from the steps of the temple, when a fuller dashed out his brains with a club, about the year 62. His life was so holy, that Josephus considers the ruin of Jerusalem as a punishment inflicted on that city for his murder. He was the author of the epistle which bears his name.

JAMES (St.), an hospital and burying ground near Basil, in the Helvetic republic, and near the small river Birs. It is famous for a desperate battle fought by about 3000 Swiss against an army of 30,000 French, commanded by the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., in which only thirty-two of the former remained alive, desperately wounded, on the field of battle. Sixteen that escaped from the field were branded with infamy, for not having sacrificed their lives in defence of their country. The conqueror himself, who was compelled to retire with his army into

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