This section is from "The American Cyclopaedia", by George Ripley And Charles A. Dana. Also available from Amazon: The New American Cyclopædia. 16 volumes complete..
See Cobija.
Puerto Plata, Or Porto Plata, a seaport town of Santo Domingo, on the N. coast, 100 m. N. N. W. of Santo Domingo city; pop. about 3,000. It lies on the slope of a mountain at the foot of a crescent-shaped bay. The harbor has good anchorage, but shallows rapidly near the shore, and ships are loaded from lighters. The trade, principally in tobacco, is in the hands of foreign merchants, mostly Germans. In 1873, 201 vessels, of 12,191 tons, entered the port; of these 75 were English, 37 Spanish, 34 German, and 20 American. The total value of the imports in 1873 was $871,116; of the exports, $1,093,753. - Puerto Plata is said to have been planned by Columbus on his first voyage. In the beginning of the 16th century it was largely resorted to by Spanish vessels. It has been destroyed several times, the last time by the Spaniards when they evacuated the island in 1865.
See Lycoperdon.
See Auk.
See Obseevatory.
See Mechanics, vol. xi., p. 327.
See Lungwort.
See Anemone.
See Poltava.
See Couguar.
See Obsidian and Pumice.
Purbach, Or Peurbach, Georg, a German astronomer, born at Peurbach, Austria, in 1423, died in Vienna in 1461. He studied astronomy under Gmunden at the university of Vienna, went to Italy, and on his return succeeded his master in the professorship at Vienna. At the time of his death he was reputed the first astronomer in Europe. He began a new edition of Ptolemy's Almagest, based upon the Latin translation from the Arabic; and though he neither understood Greek, in which the work was originally written, nor Arabic, his knowledge of astronomy enabled him to make his edition much better than previous ones. He left this work unfinished to his pupil Regio-montanus, who completed it. The most celebrated of Purbach's own works is his posthumous Theorioe Novoe Planetarum (1472), which served as an introduction to Ptolemy.
See Oassius, Purple of.
Purus, a river of South America, rising about lat. 14° S., in the mountains E. of Cuzco, Peru, and flowing in a northeasterly direction to its junction with the Amazon, into which it falls by two principal and three minor mouths, the extremes of which are over 100 m. apart. The most easterly branch is 125 m. W. of the Rio Negro. A part of its upper course is on the borders of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, and the lower, more than half of the whole, through the latter country. Its entire length is estimated, inclusive of curves, at upward of 2,000 m., and it flows through uninterrupted primeval forests of great beauty. The Purús, probably the Amam-mayu of the Incas and the Madre de Dios of the early Spaniards, is the most important of all the Amazon feeders W. of the Madeira, parallel to which it rolls and with which it communicates. It is navigable uninterruptedly from the Amazon, about Ion. 60° 30', to southern Peru.
 
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