St Georges

St George's. See Bermudas, Grenada.

St Georges Channel

St George's Channel. See Ireland.

St-Germain-en-Laye

St-Germain-en-Laye (Sang-Zhermang-ong-Lay), a town of France, dep. Seine-et-Oise, stands on an eminence above the Seine, with a royal forest (10,000 acres) behind it, 13 miles \V. of Paris. Above the river runs the famous terrace (2625 yards long by 115 feet wide), made in 1672. The historic associations cluster round the old royal chateau which, until Louis XIV. removed the court to Versailles, was the favourite residence of the kings of France. Here were born Henry II., Charles IX., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV.; here died Louis XIII.; and here James II. of England lived from 1689 to his death in 1701. Turned into barracks, then into a military prison, it was made by Napoleon III. a museum of Gallo-Roman antiquities. Pop. 14,076. - St Germain-des-Pres, named like the other from St Germanus, was a famous Benedictine monastery; its church (1001-1163) is the oldest in Paris.

St Germans

St Germans, formerly the seat of the ancient diocese of Cornwall, now a small village on a branch of the river Lynher, 9 1/2 miles W. by N. of Plymouth. Its fine parish church has an excellent Norman west front. Pop. of parish, 2384.

St Gervais-les-Bains

St Gervais-les-Bains (Sang-Zhervay-leh-Bang), a watering-place in the French dep. of Haute-Savoie, 42 miles SB. of Geneva, was overwhelmed by an ice and water avalanche in 1892.

St Gilles

St Gilles (Sang Zheel), a town of France, dep. Gard, 12 miles SSE. of Nimes. The west front of its abbey church (1116) is a masterpiece of Romanesque. Pope Clement IV. was born here. Pop. 5094.

St Goar

St Goar (Sankt Go-ahr'), a village on the Rhine, 14 miles SE. of Coblenz by rail; pop. 1453. On the other side of the Rhine is St Goarshausen.

St Gothard

St Gothard (Got'tard; Ger. Gotthard), an Alpine mountain-knot, 9850 feet high, in the Swiss cantons of Uri, Grisons, Ticino, and Valais. It is the source of the Rhine, Rhone, Ticino, and Reuss, thus sending the water from its melted snows to the German Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Adriatic. On its shoulder it bears the celebrated Alpine pass (6936 feet) from the Lake of Lucerne in Switzerland to the Lago Maggiore in Italy. In 1820-24 the road was widened to 18 feet and smoothed for carriages. Near the summit of the pass stand two hotels and a hospice, the latter for poor wayfarers, of whom some 12,000 used to travel this way every year. Since 1882, however, a railway has climbed up the lower slopes of the St Gothard, and then burrowed through it in a tunnel (1872-80), which extends from Goschenen (at a height of 3639 feet) in Uri to Airolo (3757 feet) in Ticino, measures 9 1/4 miles in length, is 26 feet wide and 21 high, and cost £2,270,000.

St Helens

St Helens, (1) a town of Lancashire, on the Sankey brook, flowing to the Mersey, 12 miles ENE. of Liverpool and 21 W. by S. of Manchester. Thanks to its railway and canal facilities, and to the immediate neighbourhood of coal, it has grown within recent years from quite a small village to an important industrial centre, and now is the great seat of the manufacture of crown, plate, and sheet glass, and also possesses extensive alkali, copper-smelting, and iron works. It became a municipal borough in 1868; a parliamentary borough, returning one member, in 1885; and a county borough in 1888. The town-hall, with library, was opened in 1876. Pop. (1851) 14,866; (1871) 45,134; (1901) 84,410. - (2) A small town in the Isle of Wight, 4 miles SE. of Ryde. Pop. (1851) 1948; (1901) 4652.