Pop. (1900) 20,738, of whom 3402 were foreign-born and 2925 were negroes; (1910 census) 19,363. It is one of the most important railway centres west of the Missouri river, being served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Chicago Great Western, the Missouri Pacific, the Union Pacific and the Leavenworth & Topeka railways. The city is laid out regularly in the bottom-lands of the river, and its streets are named after Indian tribes. Rolling hills surround it on three sides. The city has many handsome public buildings, and contains the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Leavenworth being the see of a Roman Catholic bishop. The public institutions include the Kansas State Protective Home (1889) for negroes, an Old Ladies’ Rest (1892), St Vincent’s Orphans’ Asylum (1886, open to all sects) and a Guardian Angels’ Home (1889), for negroes—all private charities aided by the state; also St John’s Hospital (1879), Cushing Hospital (1893) and Leavenworth Hospital (1900), which are training schools for nurses. There is also a branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. In the suburbs there are state and United States penitentiaries. Leavenworth is a trading centre and has various manufactures, the most important being foundry and machine shop and flouring and grist-mill products, and furniture. The city’s factory products increased in value from $3,251,460 in 1900 to $4,151,767 in 1905, or 27.7%. There are valuable coal mines in Leavenworth and the immediate vicinity. About 3 m. N. of the city, on a reservation of about 6000 acres, is Fort Leavenworth, an important United States military post, associated with which are a National Cemetery and Service Schools of the U.S. Army (founded in 1881 as the U.S. Infantry and Cavalry School and in 1901 developed into a General Service and Staff College). In 1907 there were three general divisions of these schools: the Army School of the Line, for officers (not below the grade of captain) of the regular army and for militia officers recommended by the governors of their respective states or territories, offering courses in military art, engineering, law and languages; the Army Signal School, also open to regular and militia officers, and having departments of field signalling, signal engineering, topography and languages; and the Army Staff College, in which the students are the highest graduates from the Army School of the Line, and the courses of instruction are included in the departments of military art, engineering, law, languages and care of troops. The course is one year in each school. At Fort Leavenworth there is a colossal bronze statue of General U. S. Grant erected in 1889. A military prison was established at Fort Leavenworth in 1875; it was used as a civil prison from 1895 to 1906, when it was re-established as a military prison. Its inmates were formerly taught various trades, but owing to the opposition of labour organizations this system was discontinued, and the prisoners are now employed in work on the military reservation.
The fort, from which the city took its name, was built in 1827, in the Indian country, by Colonel Henry Leavenworth (1783–1834) of the 3rd Infantry, for the protection of traders plying between the Missouri river and Santa Fé. The town site was claimed by Missourians from Weston in June 1854, Leavenworth thus being the oldest permanent settlement in Kansas; and during the contest in Kansas between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery settlers, it was known as a pro-slavery town. It was first incorporated by the Territorial legislature in 1855; a new charter was obtained in 1881; and in 1908 the city adopted the commission plan of government. On the 3rd of April 1858 a free-state convention adopted the Leavenworth Constitution here; this constitution, which was as radically anti-slavery as the Lecompton Constitution was pro-slavery, was nominally approved by popular vote in May 1858, and was later submitted to Congress, but never came into effect. During the Civil War Leavenworth enjoyed great prosperity, at the expense of more inland towns, partly owing to the proximity of the fort, which gave it immunity from border raids from Missouri and was an important depôt of supplies and a place for mustering troops into and out of the service. Leavenworth was, in Territorial days and until after 1880, the largest and most thriving commercial city of the state, and rivalled Kansas City, Missouri, which, however, finally got the better of it in the struggle for railway facilities.
LEBANON (from Semitic laban, “to be white,” or “whitish,” probably referring not to snow, but to the bare white walls of chalk or limestone which form the characteristic feature of the whole range), in its widest sense is the central mountain mass of Syria, extending for about 100 m. from N.N.E. to S.S.W. It is bounded W. by the sea, N. by the plain Jun Akkar, beyond which rise the mountains of the Ansarieh, and E. by the inland plateau of Syria, mainly steppe-land. To the south Lebanon ends about the point where the river Litany bends westward, and at Banias. A valley narrowing towards its southern end, and now called the Bukaʽa, divides the mountainous mass into two great parts. That lying to the west is still called Jebel Libnan; the greater part of the eastern mass now bears the name of the Eastern Mountain (Jebel el-Sharḳi). In Greek the western range was called Libanos, the eastern Antilibanos. The southern extension of the latter, Mount Hermon (q.v.), may in many respects be treated as a separate mountain.
Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon have many features in common; in both the southern portion is less arid and barren than the northern, the western valleys better wooded and more fertile than the eastern. In general the main elevations of the two ranges form pairs lying opposite one another; the forms of both ranges are monotonous, but the colouring is splendid, especially when viewed from a distance; when seen close at hand only a few valleys with perennial streams offer pictures of landscape beauty, their rich green contrasting pleasantly with the bare brown and yellow mountain sides. The finest scenery is found in N. Lebanon, in the Maronite districts of Kesrawan and Bsherreh, where the gorges are veritable canyons, and the villages are often very picturesquely situated. The south of the chain is more open and undulating. Anti-Lebanon is the barest and most inhospitable part of the system.
The district west of Lebanon, averaging about 20 m. in breadth, slopes in an intricate series of plateaus and terraces to the Mediterranean. The coast is for the most part abrupt and rocky, often leaving room for only a narrow path along the shore, and when viewed from the sea it does not suggest the extent of country lying between its cliffs and the lofty summits behind. Most of the mountain spurs run from east to west, but in northern Lebanon the prevailing direction of the valleys is north-westerly, and in the south some ridges run parallel with the principal chain. The valleys have for the most part been deeply excavated by mountain streams; the apparently inaccessible heights are crowned by numerous villages, castles or cloisters embosomed among trees. The chief perennial streams, beginning from the north, are the Nahr Akkar, N. Arka, N. el-Barid, N. Kadisha, “the holy river” (the valley of which begins in the immediate neighbourhood of the highest summits, and rapidly descends in a series of great bends till the river reaches the sea at Tripoli), Wadi el-Joz (falling into the sea at Batrun), Wadi Fidar, Nahr Ibrahim (the ancient Adonis, having its source in a recess of the great mountain amphitheatre where the famous sanctuary Apheca, the modern Afka, lay), Nahr el-Kelb (the ancient Lycus), Nahr Beirut (the ancient Magoras, entering the sea at Beirut), Nahr Damur (ancient Tamyras), Nahr el-ʽAuwali (the ancient Bostrenus, which in the upper part of its course is joined by the Nahr el-Baruk). The ‘Auwali and the Nahr el-Zaherani, the only other considerable streams before we reach the Litany, flow north-east to south-west, in consequence of the interposition of a ridge subordinate and parallel to the central chain. On the north, where the mountain bears the special name of Jebel Akkar, the main ridge of Lebanon rises gradually from the plain. A number of valleys run to the north and north-east, among them that of the Nahr el-Kebir, the Eleutherus of the ancients, which rises in the Jebel el-Abiaḍ on the eastern slope of Lebanon, and afterwards, skirting the district, flows westward to the sea. South of Jebel el-Abiaḍ, beneath the main ridge, which as a rule falls away suddenly towards the east, occur several small elevated terraces having a southward slope; among these are the Wadi en-Nusur (“vale of eagles”), and the basin of the lake Yammuna, with its intermittent spring Nebʽa el-Arbaʽin. Of the streams which descend into the Bukaʽa, the Berdani rises in Jebel Sunnin, and enters the plain by a deep and picturesque mountain cleft at Zaḥleh.
The most elevated summits occur in the north, but even these are of very gentle gradient. The “Cedar block” consists of a double line of four and three summits respectively, ranged from north to south, with a deviation of about 35°. Those to the east are ʽUyun Urghush, Makmal, Muskiyya (or Nabaʽ esh-Shemaila) and Ras Zahr el-Kazib; fronting the sea are Ḳarn Sauda or Timarun, Fumm el-Mizab and Zahr el-Ḳandil. The height of Zahr el-Kazib, by barometric measurement, is 10,018 ft.; that of the others does not reach 10,000 ft. South from them is the pass (8351 ft.) which leads from Baalbek to Tripoli; the great mountain amphitheatre on the west side of its summit is remarkable. Farther south is a second group of lofty summits—the snow-capped Sunnin, visible
