Report, No. 3672, 1906, pp. 13 sqq.). The port was cleared in 1905 by 1492 vessels of 1,486,269 tons. The imports represented a value of £629,892 and the exports a value of £663,201—an increase of £84,077 and £57,807 respectively on the figures of the previous year, while in 1899 the amounts, which were below the average, were only £298,400 and £253,000. The main imports are coal, flour, sulphur, timber and metals; and the main exports, wine and spirits, oil and dried fruits.
Frederick II. erected a castle, with huge round towers, to guard the inner harbour; it is now a convict prison. The cathedral, ruined by earthquakes, was restored in 1743–1749, but has some remains of its mosaic pavement (1178). The baptismal church of S. Giovanni al Sepolcro (11th century) is now a museum. The town was captured in 836 by the Saracens, and destroyed by them; but was rebuilt in the 11th century by Lupus the protospatharius, Byzantine governor. In 1071 it fell into the hands of the Normans, and frequently appears in the history of the Crusades. Early in the 14th century the inner port was blocked by Giovanni Orsini, prince of Taranto; the town was devastated by pestilence in 1348, and was plundered in 1352 and 1383; but even greater damage was done by the earthquake of 1456. (T. As.)
BRINDLEY, JAMES (1716–1772), English engineer, was born at Thornsett, Derbyshire, in 1716. His parents were in very humble circumstances, and he received little or no education. At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a millwright near Macclesfield, and soon after completing his apprenticeship he set up in business for himself as a wheelwright at Leek, quickly becoming known for his ingenuity and skill in repairing all kinds of machinery. In 1752 he designed and set up an engine for draining some coal-pits at Clifton in Lancashire. Three years later he extended his reputation by completing the machinery for a silk-mill at Congleton. In 1759, when the duke of Bridgewater was anxious to improve the outlets for the coal on his estates, Brindley advised the construction of a canal from Worsley to Manchester. The difficulties in the way were great, but all were surmounted by his genius, and his crowning triumph was the construction of an aqueduct to carry the canal at an elevation of 39 ft. over the river Irwell at Barton. The great success of this canal encouraged similar projects, and Brindley was soon engaged in extending his first work to the Mersey, at Runcorn. He then designed and nearly completed what he called the Grand Trunk Canal, connecting the Trent and Humber with the Mersey. The Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the Oxford and the Chesterfield Canals were also planned by him, and altogether he laid out over 360 m. of canals. He died at Turnhurst, Staffordshire, on the 30th of September 1772. Brindley retained to the last a peculiar roughness of character and demeanour; but his innate power of thought more than compensated for his lack of training. It is told of him that when in any difficulty he used to retire to bed, and there remain thinking out his problem until the solution became clear to him. His mechanical ingenuity and fertility of resource were very remarkable, and he undoubtedly possessed the engineering faculty in a very high degree. He was an enthusiastic believer in canals, and his reported answer, when asked the use of navigable rivers, “To feed canals,” is characteristic, if not altogether authentic.
BRINTON, DANIEL GARRISON (1837–1899), American archaeologist and ethnologist, was born at Thornbury, Pennsylvania, on the 13th of May 1837. He graduated at Yale in 1858, studied for two years in the Jefferson Medical College, and then for one year travelled in Europe and continued his studies at Paris and Heidelberg. From 1862 to 1865, during the Civil War in America, he was a surgeon in the Union army, acting for one year, 1864–1865, as surgeon in charge of the U.S. Army general hospital at Quincy, Illinois. After the war he practised medicine at Westchester, Pennsylvania, for several years; was the editor of a weekly periodical, the Medical and Surgical Reporter, in Philadelphia, from 1874 to 1887; became professor of ethnology and archaeology in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1884, and was professor of American linguistics and archaeology in the university of Pennsylvania from 1886 until his death at Philadelphia on the 31st of July 1899. He was a member of numerous learned societies in the United States and in Europe, and was president at different times of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, of the American Folk-Lore Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. During the period from 1859 (when he published his first book) to 1899, he wrote a score of books, several of them of great value, and a large number of pamphlets, brochures, addresses and magazine articles. His principal works are:—The Myths of the New World (1868), the first attempt to analyse and correlate, according to true scientific principles, the mythology of the American Indians; The Religious Sentiment: Its Sources and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and Philosophy of Religion (1876); American Hero Myths (1882); Essays of an Americanist (1890); Races and Peoples (1890); The American Race (1891); The Pursuit of Happiness (1893); and Religions of Primitive People (1897). In addition, he edited and published a Library of American Aboriginal Literature (8 vols. 1882–1890), a valuable contribution to the science of anthropology in America. Of the eight volumes, six were edited by Brinton himself, one by Horatio Hale and one by A. S. Gatschet.
BRINVILLIERS, MARIE MADELEINE MARGUERITE D’AUBRAY, Marquise de (c. 1630–1676), French poisoner, daughter of Dreux d’Aubray, civil lieutenant of Paris, was born in Paris about 1630. In 1651 she married the marquis de Brinvilliers, then serving in the regiment of Normandy. Contemporary evidence describes the marquise at this time as a pretty and much-courted little woman, with a fascinating air of childlike innocence. In 1659 her husband introduced her to his friend Godin de Sainte-Croix, a handsome young cavalry officer of extravagant tastes and bad reputation, whose mistress she became. Their relations soon created a public scandal, and as the marquis de Brinvilliers, who had left France to avoid his creditors, made no effort to terminate them, M. d’Aubray secured the arrest of Sainte-Croix on a lettre de cachet. For a year Sainte-Croix remained a prisoner in the Bastille, where he is popularly supposed to have acquired a knowledge of poisons from his fellow-prisoner, the Italian poisoner Exili. When he left the Bastille, he plotted with his willing mistress his revenge upon her father. She cheerfully undertook to experiment with the poisons which Sainte-Croix, possibly with the help of a chemist, Christopher Glaser, prepared, and found subjects ready to hand in the poor who sought her charity, and the sick whom she visited in the hospitals. Meanwhile Sainte-Croix, completely ruined financially, enlarged his original idea, and determined that not only M. Dreux d’Aubray but also the latter’s two sons and other daughter should be poisoned, so that the marquise de Brinvilliers and himself might come into possession of the large family fortune. In February 1666, satisfied with the efficiency of Sainte-Croix’s preparations and with the ease with which they could be administered without detection, the marquise poisoned her father, and in 1670, with the connivance of their valet La Chaussée, her two brothers. A post-mortem examination suggested the real cause of death, but no suspicion was directed to the murderers. Before any attempt could be made on the life of Mlle Théresè d’Aubray, Sainte-Croix suddenly died. As he left no heirs the police were called in, and discovered among his belongings documents seriously incriminating the marquise and La Chaussée. The latter was arrested, tortured into a complete confession, and broken alive on the wheel (1673), but the marquise escaped, taking refuge first probably in England, then in Germany, and finally in a convent at Liége, whence she was decoyed by a police emissary disguised as a priest. A full account of her life and crimes was found among her papers. Her attempt to commit suicide was frustrated, and she was taken to Paris, where she was beheaded and her body burned on the 16th of July 1676.
See G. Roullier, La Marquise de Brinvilliers (Paris, 1883); Toiseleur, Trois énigmes historiques (Paris, 1882).
BRIONIAN ISLANDS, a group of small islands, in the Adriatic Sea, off the west coast of Istria, from which they are separated by the narrow Canale di Fasana. They belong to Austria and
