there is a good anchorage about 112 m. from the shore in 7 to 14 fathoms, besides cranage accommodation and a floating dock. Vessels discharge into lighters, and are rarely delayed on account of the weather. A part of the town lies on the foreshore, but the more important buildings—the government offices, the governor’s residence, the palace of the bishop of Angola, and the hospital—are situated on higher ground. Most of the European houses are large stone buildings of one storey with red tile roofs. Loanda possesses a meteorological observatory, public garden, tramways, gas-works, statues to Salvador Correia de Sá, who wrested Angola from the Dutch, and to Pedro Alexandrino, a former governor, and is the starting-point of the railway to Ambaca and Malanje.
Loanda was founded in 1576, and except between 1640 and 1648, when it was occupied by the Dutch, has always been in Portuguese possession. It was for over two centuries the chief centre of the slave trade between Portuguese West Africa and Brazil. During that time the traffic of the port was of no small account, and after a period of great depression consequent on the suppression of that trade, more legitimate commerce was developed. There is a regular service of steamers between the port and Lisbon, Liverpool and Hamburg. The town has some 15,000 inhabitants, including a larger European population than any other place on the west coast of Africa. It is connected by submarine cables with Europe and South Africa. Fully half the imports and export trade of Angola (q.v.) passes through Loanda.
LOANGO, a region on the west coast of Africa, extending from
the mouth of the Congo river in 6° S. northwards through about
two degrees. At one time included in the “kingdom of Congo”
(see Angola, History), Loango became independent about the
close of the 16th century, and was still of considerable importance
in the middle of the 18th century. Buali, the capital, was
situated on the banks of a small river not far from the port of
Loango, where were several European “factories.” The country
afterwards became divided into a large number of petty states,
while Portugal and France exercised an intermittent sovereignty
over the coast. Here the slave trade was longer maintained
than anywhere else on the West African seaboard; since its
extirpation, palm oil and india-rubber have been the main objects
of commerce. The Loango coast is now divided between French
Congo and the Portuguese district of Kabinda (see those articles).
The natives, mainly members of the Ba-Kongo group of Bantu
negroes, and often called Ba-Fiot, are in general well-built,
strongly dolichocephalous and very thick of skull, the skin of
various shades of warm brown with the faintest suggestion of
purple. Baldness is unknown, and many of the men wear
beards. Physical deformity is extremely rare. In religious
beliefs and in the use of fetishes they resemble the negroes of
Upper Guinea.
LOBACHEVSKIY, NICOLAS IVANOVICH (1793–1856),
Russian mathematician, was born at Makariev, Nizhniy-Novgorod,
on the 2nd of November (N.S.) 1793. His father
died about 1800, and his mother, who was left in poor circumstances,
removed to Kazan with her three sons. In 1807
Nicolas, the second boy, entered as a student in the University
of Kazan, then recently established. Five years later, having
completed the curriculum, he began to take part in the teaching,
becoming assistant professor in 1814 and extraordinary professor
two years afterwards. In 1823 he succeeded to the ordinary
professorship of mathematics, and retained the chair until about
1846, when he seems to have fallen into official disfavour. At
that time his connexion with the university to which he had
devoted his life practically came to an end, except that in
1855, at the celebration of his jubilee, he brought it as a last
tribute his Pangéométrie, in which he summarized the results
of his geometrical studies. This work was translated into
German by H. Liebmann in 1902. He died at Kazan on the
24th of February (N.S.) 1856. Lobachevskiy was one of the
first thinkers to apply a critical treatment to the fundamental
axioms of geometry, and he thus became a pioneer of the modern
geometries which deal with space other than as treated by
Euclid. His first contribution to non-Euclidian geometry is
believed to have been given in a lecture at Kazan in 1826, but
the subject is treated in many of his subsequent memoirs, among
which may be mentioned the Geometrische Untersuchungen zur
Theorie der Parallellinien (Berlin, 1840, and a new edition in 1887),
and the Pangéométrie already referred to, which in the subtitle
is described as a précis of geometry founded on a general
and rigorous theory of parallels. (See Geometry, § Non-Euclidean,
and Geometry, § Axioms of.) In addition to his
geometrical studies, he made various contributions to other
branches of mathematical science, among them being an elaborate
treatise on algebra (Kazan, 1834). Besides being a geometer of
power and originality, Lobachevskiy was an excellent man of
business. Under his administration the University of Kazan
prospered as it had never done before; and he not only organized
the teaching staff to a high degree of efficiency, but arranged
and enriched its library, furnished instruments for its observatory,
collected specimens for its museums and provided it with proper
buildings. In order to be able to supervise the erection of the
last, he studied architecture, with such effect, it is said, that
he was able to carry out the plans at a cost considerably below
the original estimates.
See F. Engel, N. I. Lobatchewsky (Leipzig, 1899).
LOBANOV-ROSTOVSKI, ALEXIS BORISOVICH, Prince
(1824–1896), Russian statesman, was born on the 30th of
December 1824, and educated, like Prince Gorchakov and so
many other eminent Russians, at the lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo.
At the age of twenty he entered the diplomatic service, and
became minister at Constantinople in 1859. In 1863 a regrettable
incident in his private life made him retire temporarily from
the public service, but four years later he re-entered it and
served for ten years as adlatus to the minister of the interior.
At the close of the Russo-Turkish war in 1878 he was selected
by the emperor to fill the post of ambassador at Constantinople,
and for more than a year he carried out with great ability the
policy of his government, which aimed at re-establishing tranquillity
in the Eastern Question, after the disturbances produced
by the reckless action of his predecessor, Count Ignatiev. In
1879 he was transferred to London, and in 1882 to Vienna;
and in March 1895 he was appointed minister of foreign affairs
in succession to M. de Giers. In this position he displayed
much of the caution of his predecessor, but adopted a more
energetic policy in European affairs generally and especially
in the Balkan Peninsula. At the time of his appointment
the attitude of the Russian government towards the Slav
nationalities had been for several years one of extreme reserve,
and he had seemed as ambassador to sympathize with this
attitude. But as soon as he became minister of foreign affairs,
Russian influence in the Balkan Peninsula suddenly revived.
Servia received financial assistance; a large consignment of
arms was sent openly from St Petersburg to the prince of Montenegro;
Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria became ostensibly reconciled
with the Russian emperor, and his son Boris was
received into the Eastern Orthodox Church; the Russian embassy
at Constantinople tried to bring about a reconciliation between
the Bulgarian exarch and the oecumenical patriarch; Bulgarians
and Servians professed, at the bidding of Russia, to lay aside
their mutual hostility. All this seemed to foreshadow the
creation of a Balkan confederation hostile to Turkey, and the
sultan had reason to feel alarmed. In reality Prince Lobanov
was merely trying to establish a strong Russian hegemony among
these nationalities, and he had not the slightest intention of
provoking a new crisis in the Eastern Question so long as the
general European situation did not afford Russia a convenient
opportunity for solving it in her own interest without serious
intervention from other powers. Meanwhile he considered
that the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire
must be maintained so far as these other powers were concerned.
Accordingly, when Lord Salisbury proposed energetic action
to protect the Armenians, the cabinet of St Petersburg suddenly
assumed the rôle of protector of the sultan and vetoed the
proposal. At the same time efforts were made to weaken the
Triple Alliance, the principal instrument employed being the
