pids, showing that between the surveys of 1841 and 1886 the Horseshoe Falls receded 485 feet, or at the rate of nine feet a year.

The great maelstrom called the Whirlpool, soine distance below the falls, excites much interest. Its depths are unknown; a thousand feet of cord was found too short to reach its bottom. All the water pouring over the falls passes through the Whirlpool and flows on and out through the cañon. Authorities state that at one time the falls were here and during thousands of years excavated the whirlpool. The grounds about the falls have lost much of their beauty by the destruction of timber and the building of unsightly mills. In 1878 Lord Dufferin, then gov.-gen. of Canada, conferred with Gov. Robinson of N. Y., in regard to taking measures to form an international park about Niagara. Gov. Robinson in his message to the N. Y. legislature, 1879, urged some action in the matter. By resolution the commissioners of the state survey were charged to investigate the question. They found that it would be practicable to restore the scenery about the falls to its natural aspect by clearing away the buildings from a narrow strip of land, 100 to 800 ft. broad and a mile long, and planting it with trees which would screen from view the buildings of the village; a map was made showing what lands should be taken for the purpose. An act providing for the selection and appropriation of the lauds was framed, but was defeated in the senate, 1880. Friends of the measure succeeded, however, in keeping alive public interest in the matter, and a society was organized, called the Niagara Falls assoc., through whose efforts the defeated bill was again brought before the legislature and passed, 1883. A commission was empowered to proceed to condemn through the courts the lands needed, which adopted in the main the plan before proposed by the commissioners of the state survey. The lands selected were surveyed and appraised at a valuation of $1,433,429.50. A bill appropriating this sum was passed, 1885, which declares that the lands are purchased by the state, that they may be restored to and preserved in a state of nature; and that every part of them shall be forever free of access to all mankind. Following these directions, the lands were, with form and ceremony, transferred to the state, 1885. The reservation on the Canadian side comprises 154 acres, which cost $436,813, and was formally opened in 1888. At Niagara Falls city, where a number of railroads are concentrated, the river is crossed by a steel suspension bridge, built to replace the original one (1869) which was destroyed by a gale in 1889; by a cantilever railroad bridge, the first of its kind in the United States, built in 1883; and by a steel suspension bridge, north of the cantilever, carrying railroa i tracks, a roadway, and footways.

NIARE, Bos brachicheros, the wild ox or buffalo of tropical Western Africa, is in size and weight about equal to the smaller breeds of British oxen, but of greater strength. The head is rather small, the muzzle black, the ears long and pointed, and fringed with beautiful silky hair, several inches long. The horns are 10 or 12 in. long, curved backwards, and sharply pointed. The animal is gracefully proportioned, having nothing of the clumsiness of the common buffalo. The body is covered with a coat of thin red hair. The tail is tufted at the extremity with black hair several in. long. Herds of these oxen were seen by Du Chaillu in the open or prairie lands to the s. of the mouth of the Ogobai. They are shy and fierce; if wounded, they turn upon the hunter with terrible fury. No attempt seems yet to have been made to domesticate this animal, which is probably very capable of it, and might be found more suitable than other oxen for warm climates.

NIAS, an important island belonging to Holland, lies to the w. of Sumatra, in 0° 18' 54"-1° 35′ n. lat., and 97°-98° e. long., and has an area of about 2100 sq. miles. In 1857, when the Dutch took complete possession of the island, the population was reckoned at 170,000. There are several places where ships can anchor and take in provis ions, water, etc. On the e. coast is the village of Nias, and on the w. Silorongang. Little islands and coral reefs lie here and there on the coast, which in some places is steep, while mountain-chains run from the s.e. to the north-west. There is a greater breadth of excellent farming-grounds than the population, reduced by internal wars and the exportation of slaves, can properly cultivate. They grow rice, cocoa-nuts, bananas, tobacco, sugar-canes, etc., and raise large quantities of pepper. Cattle and horses have been imported, and they pay great attention to the raising of pigs and fowls, Formerly, about 500 Niassers were carried away annually as slaves to Batavia and other places, but this traffic has been in a great measure suppressed. Its present population is between 200,000 and 250,000.

The Niassers are of the Malay race, but fairer than the Malays usually are. They are gentle, sober, and peaceful, remarkably ingenious in handicraft, ornamenting their houses with wood-carvings, forging arms, etc. The women labor in the fields, the children weave mats, while the men look after the live-stock, and hunt the deer and wild swine. They worship a superior deity, and fear a powerful one, who pursues them if they do evil. Polygamy is permitted, but is rare. The gift to the bride's family is from 60 to 500 dollars. Divorce is not allowed, and adultery is punished by the death of both parties. Dead bodies are placed in coffins above the ground, and creepers and flowering shrubs planted, which speedily grow up and cover them. Trade is on the increase. See Malayan Miscellanies, vol. ii.; Het Eiland Nias, door H. J. Domis; Crawford's Descriptive Dictionary (London, 1856); Tydschrift voor Ned. Indië (1854, 1860); E. Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nias (Milan, 1890), etc.

NIASSA. See NYASSA.

NIBBY, ANTONIO, a Roman archæologist of high celebrity, was b. in 1792. He was one of those who, following in the footsteps of Winckelmann, made an elaborately minute investigation of the remains of antiquity their special study. The first work that made him known was his translation of Pausanias, with antiquarian and critical notes. In 1820 he was appointed professor of archæology in the university of Rome. In the same year appeared his edition of Nardini's Roma Antica; and in 1837-38, his learned and admirable Analisi Storicotopografico-antiquaria della curta de Contorni di Roma, to which was added (1838-40) a description of the city of Rome itself. Among his other writings, may be mentioned his La Mura di Roma disegnate da W. Gell, and a large number of valuable treatises on the form and arrangement of the earliest Christian churches, the circus of Caracalla, the temple of Fortuna at Præneste, the graves of the Horatii and the Curiattii, etc. Nibby d. Dec. 29, 1839.

NI BELUNGENLIED, or Niebelunge Not,' as the words are written in the oldest manuscripts, is one of the most finished specimens of the genuine epic of Germany belonging to the middle ages. There exist twenty more or less perfect manuscript copies of this curious poem, the earliest of which belong to the beginning of the 13th c., from which period till the middle of the 16th c. it enjoyed the greatest popularity among Germans of all classes. Nothing certain is known of the author or authors of the work beyond the fact, that it was put into its present form by a wandering minstrel in Austria about or prior to the year 1210, which is the date of the oldest accredited manuscript. According to W. Grimm and Lachman's critical analysis of the poem, it is in itself a compilation of pre-existing songs and rhapsodies, strung together into one whole upon a plan remarkable for its grand simplicity, although less skill is shown in some instances in the manner in which the several parts are connected. In the more authentic manuscripts the poem consists of only twenty parts, and it is conjectured that the latter portions of the epic, which are given only in some of the texts, as that of St. Gall, are the composition of later compilers. The epic cycle embraced in the Nibelungenlied may be more specially regarded as the fusion of the history of the mythical people, called in the poem the Nibelungen, with five leading groups of myths, in which are incorporated the adventures of some of the most universally popular personages belonging to the semi-historic myths of medieval German folk-lore, as, for instance, the hero Siegfried with his mantle of invisibility, and the lovely Icelandic heroine Brunhilt; King Günther of Burgundy, and his fair sister, Kriembilt, the wife of Siegfried; Haco of Norway, Dietrich (Theodoric the great king of the Ostrogoths) of Berne (Verona), and Etzel (Attila), king of the Huns. The loves and feuds, and the stormy lives and violent deaths of these national heroes and heroines, are skillfully intertwined in the Nibelungenlied, and artistically made to center round the mythical treasure of the Nibelungen, which, after the murder of Siegfried, who had brought it from the far north, is secretly buried by his murderer Haco beneath the Rhine, where it still remains. The poem, in its rude but strict versification, tells the tale of Kriemhilt's vengeance for her husband's death with a passionate earnestness that carries the sympathies of the reader with it, until the interest culminates in the catastrophe of the fierce battle between the Burgundians and Huns at the court of Etzel, whose hand Kriemhilt has accepted, the better to accomplish her purposes of revenge. The tale of horrors fitly closes with the murder of Kriemhilt herself, after she has satisfied her vengeance by slaying with Siegfried's sword his murderer Haco. This tale, which seemed to echo back the clash of arms and strife of passion which characterized the early periods of German history, kept a firm hold on the imaginations of the people till the taste for polemic writings, fostered, if not created, at the period of the reformation, caused this as well as many other treasures of folk-lore to be almost lost sight of and forgotten. Attention was again, however, drawn to it in the 18th c., by the publication of detached portions of the poem by Bodmer, Criemhilden-Rache (Zurich, 1751), and by Müller in his Sammlung deutscher Gedichte aus dem 12-14 Jahrh. (Berlin, 1782); but it was not until comparatively recent times that the value of the work in an historical and philological point of view was recognized. Lachmann made known the result of his investigations in 1826. His views were supported by Müllenhoff and Rieger (1856). Holtzmann (1854), on the other hand, asserted that the longest version is the more ancient, and was followed by Zarncke, Hermann, and Fischer. Pfeiffer tried, in 1862, to prove that the author of the present Nibelungenlied was the Austrian Von Kürenberg (circa 1140). See Paul's statement of the case in Die Niebelungenfrage (1877). All the manuscripts in the Nibelungenlied comprise another poem under the title of Die Klage, which treats of the burial of the heroes who fell in the conflict at Etzel's court, and the laments which were composed in commemoration of that event. It is of greater antiquity than the Nibelungenlied, and, like it, the work of an unknown author. Ă critical analysis of the Nibelungenlied will be found in Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays NICE A. See NICE.

NICARAGUA, a republic of Central America, bounded on the n. by the republic of Honduras on the e. by the Carribean sea, on the s. by the republic of Costa Rica, and on the w. by the Pacific; lat. 10° 45′ to 15° n.; long. 83° 20' to 87° 30'; area, about 49,200 sq. m.; pop. '95, 380,000, or including uncivilized Indians, 420,000. Nicaragua is traversed by two ranges of mountains-the western which follows the direction of the