There are two leading MSS. of Clavijo’s narrative—(a) London, British Museum, Additional MSS., 16,613 fols. I, n.-125, v.; (b) Madrid, National Library, 9218; and two old editions of the original Spanish—(1) by Gonçalo Argote de Molina (Seville, 1582), (2) by Antonio de Sancha (Madrid, 1782), both having the misleading titles, apparently invented by Molina, ofHistoria del gran Tamorlan, andVida y hazañas del gran Tamorlan(the latter at the beginning of the text itself); a better sub-title is added, viz.Itinerario y enarracion del viage y relacion de la embaxada que Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo le hizo. Both editors, and especially Sancha, supply general explanatory dissertations. The Spanish text has also been published, with a Russian translation, in vol. xxviii. (pp. 1-455) of thePublications of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences(Section of Russian Language, &c.), edited by I.I. Sreznevski (1881). An English version, by Sir Clements Markham, was issued by the Hakluyt Society in 1859 (Narrative of the Embassy of R ... G ... de Clavijo to the Court of Timour). The identification of a great number of the places mentioned by Clavijo is a matter of considerable difficulty, and has given rise to some discussion (see Khanikof’s list inGeographical Magazine(1874), and Sreznevski’sAnnotated Indexin the Russian edition of 1881). A short account ot Clavijo’s life is given by Alvarez y Baena in theHijos de Madrid, vol. ix. See also C.R. Beazley,Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 332-56.
There are two leading MSS. of Clavijo’s narrative—(a) London, British Museum, Additional MSS., 16,613 fols. I, n.-125, v.; (b) Madrid, National Library, 9218; and two old editions of the original Spanish—(1) by Gonçalo Argote de Molina (Seville, 1582), (2) by Antonio de Sancha (Madrid, 1782), both having the misleading titles, apparently invented by Molina, ofHistoria del gran Tamorlan, andVida y hazañas del gran Tamorlan(the latter at the beginning of the text itself); a better sub-title is added, viz.Itinerario y enarracion del viage y relacion de la embaxada que Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo le hizo. Both editors, and especially Sancha, supply general explanatory dissertations. The Spanish text has also been published, with a Russian translation, in vol. xxviii. (pp. 1-455) of thePublications of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences(Section of Russian Language, &c.), edited by I.I. Sreznevski (1881). An English version, by Sir Clements Markham, was issued by the Hakluyt Society in 1859 (Narrative of the Embassy of R ... G ... de Clavijo to the Court of Timour). The identification of a great number of the places mentioned by Clavijo is a matter of considerable difficulty, and has given rise to some discussion (see Khanikof’s list inGeographical Magazine(1874), and Sreznevski’sAnnotated Indexin the Russian edition of 1881). A short account ot Clavijo’s life is given by Alvarez y Baena in theHijos de Madrid, vol. ix. See also C.R. Beazley,Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 332-56.
CLAVIJO Y FAJARDO, JOSÉ(1730-1806), Spanish publicist, was born at Lanzarote (Canary Islands) in 1730. He settled in Madrid, became editor ofEl Pensador, and by his campaign against the public performance ofautos sacramentalessecured their prohibition in 1765. In 1770 he was appointed director of the royal theatres, a post which he resigned in order to take up the editorship of theMercurio histórico y politico de Madrid: at the time of his death in 1806 he was secretary to the Cabinet of Natural History. He had in abundance the courage, perseverance and gift of pungent expression which form the equipment of the aggressive journalist, but his work would long since have been forgotten were it not that it put an end to a peculiarly national form of dramatic exposition, and that his love affair with one of Beaumarchais’ sisters suggested the theme of Goethe’s first publication,Clavigo.
CLAY, CASSIUS MARCELLUS(1810-1903), American politician, was born in Madison county, Kentucky, on the 19th of October 1810. He was the son of Green Clay (1757-1826), a Kentucky soldier of the war of 1812 and a relative of Henry Clay. He was educated at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, and at Yale, where he graduated in 1832. Influenced to some extent by William Lloyd Garrison, he became an advocate of the abolition of slavery, and on his return to his native state, at the risk of social and political ostracism, he gave utterance to his belief. He studied law, but instead of practising devoted himself to a political career. In 1835, 1837 and 1840 he was elected as a Whig to the Kentucky legislature, where he advocated a system of gradual emancipation, and secured the establishment of a public school system, and a much-needed reform in the jury system. In 1841 he was defeated on account of his abolition views. In 1844 he delivered campaign speeches for Henry Clay throughout the North. In 1845 he established, at Lexington, Kentucky, an anti-slavery publication known asThe True American, but in the same year his office and press were wrecked by a mob, and he removed the publication office to Cincinnati, Ohio. During this and the earlier period of his career his zeal and hot temper involved him in numerous personal encounters and several duels, in all of which he bore himself with a reckless bravery. In the Mexican War he served as a captain of a Kentucky company of militia, and was taken prisoner, while reconnoitring, during General Scott’s advance on the City of Mexico. He left the Whig party in 1850, and as an anti-slavery candidate for governor of Kentucky polled 5000 votes. In 1856 he joined the Republican party, and wielded considerable influence as a Southern representative in its councils. In 1860 he was a leading candidate for the vice-presidential nomination. In 1861 he was sent by President Lincoln as minister to Russia; in 1862 he returned to America to accept a commission as major-general of volunteers, but in March 1863 was reappointed to his former post at St Petersburg, where he remained until 1869. Disapproving of the Republican policy of reconstruction, he left the party, and in 1872 was one of the organizers of the Liberal-Republican revolt, and was largely instrumental in securing the nomination of Horace Greeley for the presidency. In the political campaigns of 1876 and 1880 he supported the Democratic candidate, but rejoined the Republican party in the campaign of 1884. He died at Whitehall, Kentucky, on the 22nd of July 1903.
See his autobiography,The Life, Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches of Cassius Marcellus Clay(Cincinnati, 1896); andThe Writings of Cassius Marcellus Clay(edited with a “Memoir” by Horace Greeley. New York, 1848).
See his autobiography,The Life, Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches of Cassius Marcellus Clay(Cincinnati, 1896); andThe Writings of Cassius Marcellus Clay(edited with a “Memoir” by Horace Greeley. New York, 1848).
CLAY, CHARLES(1801-1893), English surgeon, was born at Bredbury, near Stockport, on the 27th of December 1801. He began his medical education as a pupil of Kinder Wood in Manchester (where he used to attend John Dalton’s lectures on chemistry), and in 1821 went to Edinburgh to continue his studies there. Qualifying in 1823, he began a general practice in Ashton-under-Lyne, but in 1839 removed to Manchester to practise as an operative and consulting surgeon. It was there that, in 1842, he first performed the operation of ovariotomy with which his name is associated. On this occasion it was perfectly successful, and when in 1865 he published an analysis of 111 cases he was able to show a mortality only slightly above 30%. Although his merits in this matter have sometimes been denied, his claim to the title “Father of Ovariotomy” is now generally conceded, and it is admittted that he deserves the credit not only of having shown how that operation could be made a success, but also of having played an important part in the advance of abdominal surgery for which the 19th century was conspicuous. In spite of the claims of a heavy practice, Clay found time for the pursuit of geology and archaeology. Among the books of which he was the author were a volume ofGeological Sketches of Manchester(1839) and aHistory of the Currency of the Isle of Man(1849), and his collections included over a thousand editions of the Old and New Testaments and a remarkably complete series of the silver and copper coins of the United States. He died at Poulton-le-Fylde, near Preston, on the 19th of September 1893.
CLAY, FREDERIC(1838-1889), English musical composer, the son of James Clay, M.P., who was celebrated as a player of whist and a writer on that subject, was born in Paris on the 3rd of August 1838. He studied music under W.B. Molique in Paris and Moritz Hauptmann at Leipzig. With the exception of a few songs and two cantatas,The Knights of the Cross(1866) andLalla Rookh(1877),—the latter of which contained his well-known song “I’ll sing thee songs of Araby,”—his compositions were all written for the stage. Clay’s first public appearance was made with an opera entitledCourt and Cottage, the libretto of which was written by Tom Taylor. This was produced at Covent Garden in 1862, and was followed byConstance(1865),Ages Ago(1869), andPrincess Toto(1875), to name only three of many works which have long since been forgotten. The last two, which were written to libretti by W.S. Gilbert, are among Clay’s most tuneful and most attractive works. He wrote part of the music forBabil and Bijou(1872) andThe Black Crook(1873), both of which were produced at the Alhambra. He also furnished incidental music for a revival ofTwelfth Nightand for the production of James Albery’sOriana. His last works,The Merry Duchess(1883) andThe Golden Ring(1883), the latter written for the reopening of the Alhambra, which had been burned to the ground the year before, showed an advance upon his previous work, and rendered all the more regrettable the stroke of paralysis which crippled his physical and mental energies during the last few years of his life. He died at Great Marlow on the 24th of November 1889.
CLAY, HENRY(1777-1852), American statesman and orator, was born in Hanover county, Virginia, on the 12th of April 1777, and died in Washington on the 29th of June 1852. Few public characters in the United States have been the subject of more heated controversy. His enemies denounced him as a pretender, a selfish intriguer, and an abandoned profligate; his supporters placed him among the sages and sometimes even among the saints. He was an arranger of measures and leader of political forces, not an originator of ideas and systems. His public life covered nearly half a century, and his name and fame rest entirely upon his own merits. He achieved his success despite serious obstacles. He was tall, rawboned and awkward; his early instruction was scant; but he “read books,” talked well, and so, after his admission to the bar at Richmond, Virginia, in 1797, and his removal next year to Lexington, Kentucky, he quickly acquired a reputation and a lucrative income from his law practice.
Thereafter, until the end of life, and in a field where he met, as either friend or foe, John Quincy Adams, Gallatin, Madison, Monroe, Webster, Jackson, Calhoun, Randolph and Benton, his political activity was wellnigh ceaseless. At the age of twenty-two (1799), he was elected to a constitutional convention in Kentucky; at twenty-six, to the Kentucky legislature; at twenty-nine, while yet under the age limit of the United States constitution, he was appointed to an unexpired term (1806-1807) in the United States Senate, where, contrary to custom, he at once plunged into business, as though he had been there all his life. He again served in the Kentucky legislature(1808-1809), was chosen speaker of its lower house, and achieved distinction by preventing an intense and widespread anti-British feeling from excluding the common law from the Kentucky code. A year later he was elected to another unexpired term in the United States Senate, serving in 1810-1811. At thirty-four (1811) he was elected to the United States House of Representatives and chosen speaker on the first day of the session. One of the chief sources of his popularity was his activity in Congress in promoting the war with Great Britain in 1812, while as one of the peace commissioners he reluctantly signed the treaty of Ghent on the 24th of December 1814. During the fourteen years following his first election, he was re-elected five times to the House and to the speakership; retiring for one term (1821-1823) to resume his law practice and retrieve his fortunes. He thus served as speaker in 1811-1814, in 1815-1820 and in 1823-1825. Once he was unanimously elected by his constituents, and once nearly defeated for having at the previous session voted to increase congressional salaries. He was a warm friend of the Spanish-American revolutionists (1818) and of the Greek insurgents (1824). From 1825 to 1829 he served as secretary of state in President John Quincy Adams’s cabinet, and in 1831 he was elected to the United States Senate, where he served until 1842, and again from 1849 until his death.
From the beginning of his career he was in favour of internal improvements as a means of opening up the fertile but inaccessible West, and was opposed to the abuse of official patronage known as “the spoils system.” The most important of the national questions with which Clay was associated, however, were the various phases of slavery politics and protection to home industries. The most prominent characteristics of his public life were his predisposition to “compromises” and “pacifications” which generally failed of their object, and his passionate patriotic devotion to the Union.
His earliest championship of protection was a resolution introduced by him in the Kentucky legislature (1808) which favoured the wearing by its members of home-made clothes; and one in the United States Senate (AprilHis career as a Protectionist.1810), on behalf of home-grown and home-made supplies for the United States navy, but only to the point of making the nation independent of foreign supply. In 1816 he advocated the Dallas tariff, in which the duties ranged up to 35% on articles of home production, the supply of which could satisfy the home demand; the avowed purpose being to build up certain industries for safety in time of war. In 1824 he advocated high duties to relieve the prevailing distress, which he pictured in a brilliant and effective speech. Although the distress was caused by the reactionary effect of a disordered currency and the inflated prices of the war of 1812, he ascribed it to the country’s dependence on foreign supply and foreign markets. Great Britain, he said, was a shining example of the wisdom of a high tariff. No nation ever flourished without one. He closed his principal speech on the subject in the House of Representatives with a glowing appeal in behalf of what he called “The American System.” In spite of the opposition of Webster and other prominent statesmen, Clay succeeded in enacting a tariff which the people of the Southern states denounced as a “tariff of abominations.” As it overswelled the revenue, in 1832 he vigorously favoured reducing the tariff rates on all articles not competing with American products. His speech in behalf of the measure was for years a protection text-book; but the measure itself reduced the revenue so little and provoked such serious threats of nullification and secession in South Carolina, that, to prevent bloodshed and to forestall a free trade measure from the next Congress, Clay brought forward in 1833 a compromise gradually reducing the tariff rates to an average of 20%. To the Protectionists this was “like a crash of thunder in winter”; but it was received with such favour by the country generally, that its author was hailed as “The Great Pacificator,” as he had been thirteen years before at the time of the Missouri Compromise (see below). As, however, the discontent with the tariff in the South was only a symptom of the real trouble there—the sensitiveness of the slave-power,—Clay subsequently confessed his serious doubts of the policy of his interference.
He was only twenty-two, when, as an opponent of slavery, he vainly urged an emancipation clause for the new constitution of Kentucky, and he never ceased regretting that its failure put his state, in improvements and progress, behind its free neighbours. In 1820 he congratulated the new South American republics on having abolished slavery, but the same year the threats of the Southern states to destroy the Union led him to advocate the “Missouri Compromise,” which, while keeping slavery out of all the rest of the territory acquired by the “Louisiana Purchase” north of Missouri’s southern boundary line, permitted it in that state. Then, greeted with the title of “The Great Pacificator” as a reward for his success, he retired temporarily to private life, with a larger stock of popularity than he had ever had before. Although at various times he had helped to strengthen the law for the recovery of fugitive slaves, declining as secretary of state to aid Great Britain in the further suppression of the slave trade, and demanding the return of fugitives from Canada, yet he heartily supported the colonizing of the slaves in Africa, because slavery was the “deepest stain upon the character of the country,” opposition to which could not be repressed except by “blowing out the moral lights around,” and “eradicating from the human soul the light of reason and the law of liberty.” When the slave power became more aggressive, in and after the year 1831, Clay defended the right of petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and opposed Calhoun’s bill forbidding the use of the mails to “abolition” newspapers and documents. He was luke-warm toward recognizing the independence of Texas, lest it should aid the increase of slave territory, and generally favoured the freedom of speech and press as regards the question of slavery; yet his various concessions and compromises resulted, as he himself declared, in the abolitionists denouncing him as a slaveholder, and the slaveholders as an abolitionist. In 1839, only twelve months after opposing the pro-slavery demands, he prepared an elaborate speech, in order “to set himself right with the South,” which, before its delivery, received pro-slavery approval. While affirming that he was “no friend of slavery” he held abolition and the abolitionists responsible for the hatred, strife, disruption and carnage that menaced the nation. In response, Calhoun extended to him a most hearty welcome, and assigned him to a place on the bench of the penitents. Being a candidate for the presidency Clay had to take the insult without wincing. It was in reference to this speech that he made the oft-quoted remark that he “would rather be right than be president.” While a candidate for president in 1844, he opposed in the “Raleigh letter” the annexation of Texas on many grounds except that of its increasing the slave power, thus displeasing both the men of anti-slavery and those of pro-slavery sentiments. In 1847, after the conquest of Mexico, he made a speech against the annexation of that country or the acquiring of any foreign territory for the spread of slavery. Although in 1849 he again vainly proposed emancipation in Kentucky, he was unanimously elected to the United States Senate, where in 1850 he temporarily pacified both sections of the country by successfully offering, for the sake of the “peace, concord and harmony of these states,” a measure or series of measures that became known as the “Compromise of 1850.” It admitted California as a free state, organized Utah and New Mexico as Territories without reference to slavery, and enacted a more efficient fugitive slave law. In spite of great physical weakness he made several earnest speeches in behalf of these measures to save the Union.
Another conspicuous feature of Clay’s public career was his absorbing and rightful, but constantly ungratified, ambition to be president of the United States. His name in connexion therewith was mentioned comparatively early, and in 1824, with W.H. Crawford, Andrew Jackson, and John Quincy Adams, he was a candidate for that office. There being no choice by the people, and the House of Representatives having elected Adams, Clay was accused by Jackson and his friends of making a corrupt bargain whereby, in payment of his vote and influencefor Adams, he was appointed secretary of state. This made Jackson Clay’s lifelong enemy, and ever after kept Clay busy explaining and denying the allegation. In 1832 Clay was unanimously nominated for the presidency by the National Republicans; Jackson, by the Democrats. The main issue was the policy of continuing the United States Bank, which in 1811 Clay had opposed, but in 1816 and always subsequently warmly favoured. A majority of the voters approved of Jackson’s fight against what Clay had once denounced as a dangerous and unconstitutional monopoly. Clay made the mistake of supposing that he could arouse popular enthusiasm for a moneyed corporation in its contest with the great military “hero of New Orleans.” In 1839 he was a candidate for the Whig nomination, but by a secret ballot his enemies defeated him in the party convention, held in December of that year, and nominated William Henry Harrison. The result threw Clay into paroxysms of rage, and he violently complained that his friends always used him as their candidate when he was sure to be defeated, and betrayed him when he or any one could have been elected. In 1844 he was nominated by the Whigs against James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate. By an audacious fraud that represented him as an enemy, and Polk as a friend of protection, Clay lost the vote of Pennsylvania; and he lost the vote of New York by his own letter abating the force of his previous opposition to the annexation of Texas. Even his enemies felt that his defeat by Polk was almost a national calamity. In 1848, Zachary Taylor, a Mexican War hero, and hardly even a convert to the Whig party, defeated Clay for the nomination, Kentucky herself deserting her “favourite son.”
Clay’s quick intelligence and sympathy, and his irreproachable conduct in youth, explain his precocious prominence in public affairs. In his persuasiveness as an orator and his charming personality lay the secret of his power. He had early trained himself in the art of speech-making, in the forest, the field and even the barn, with horse and ox for audience. By contemporaries his voice was declared to be the finest musical instrument that they ever heard. His eloquence was in turn majestic, fierce, playful, insinuating; his gesticulation natural, vivid, large, powerful. In public he was of magnificent bearing, possessing the true oratorical temperament, the nervous exaltation that makes the orator feel and appear a superior being, transfusing his thought, passion and will into the mind and heart of the listener; but his imagination frequently ran away with his understanding, while his imperious temper and ardent combativeness hurried him and his party into disadvantageous positions. The ease, too, with which he outshone men of vastly greater learning lured him from the task of intense and arduous study. His speeches were characterized by skill of statement, ingenious grouping of facts, fervent diction, and ardent patriotism; sometimes by biting sarcasm, but also by superficial research, half-knowledge and an unwillingness to reason a proposition to its logical results. In private, his never-failing courtesy, his agreeable manners and a noble and generous heart for all who needed protection against the powerful or the lawless, endeared him to hosts of friends. His popularity was as great and as inexhaustible among his neighbours as among his fellow-citizens generally. He pronounced upon himself a just judgment when he wrote: “If any one desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public life, the preservation of this Union will furnish him the key.”
See Calvin Colton,The Works of Henry Clay(6 vols., New York, 1857; new ed., 7 vols., New York, 1898), the first three volumes of which are an account of Clay’s “Life and Times”; Carl Schurz,Henry Clay(2 vols., Boston, 1887), in the “American Statesmen” series; and the life by T. Hart Clay (1910).
See Calvin Colton,The Works of Henry Clay(6 vols., New York, 1857; new ed., 7 vols., New York, 1898), the first three volumes of which are an account of Clay’s “Life and Times”; Carl Schurz,Henry Clay(2 vols., Boston, 1887), in the “American Statesmen” series; and the life by T. Hart Clay (1910).
(C. S.)
CLAY(from O. Eng.claeg, a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger.Klei), commonly defined as a fine-grained, almost impalpable substance, very soft, more or less coherent when dry, plastic and retentive of water when wet; it has an “earthy” odour when breathed upon or moistened, and consists essentially of hydrous aluminium silicate with various impurities. Of clay are formed a great number of rocks, which collectively are known as “clay-rocks” or “pelitic rocks” (from Gr.πηλός, clay),e.g.mudstone, shale, slate: these exhibit in greater or less perfection the properties above described according to their freedom from impurities. In nature, clays are rarely free from foreign ingredients, many of which can be detected with the unaided eye, while others may be observed by means of the microscope. The commonest impurities are:— (1) organic matter, humus, &c. (exemplified by clay-soils with an admixture of peat, oil shales, carbonaceous shales); (2) fossils (such as plants in the shales of the Lias and Coal Measures, shells in clays of all geological periods and in fresh water marls); (3) carbonate of lime (rarely altogether absent, but abundant in marls, cement-stones and argillaceous limestones); (4) sulphide of iron, as pyrite or marcasite (when finely diffused, giving the clay a dark grey-blue colour, which weathers to brown—e.g.London Clay; also as nodules and concretions,e.g.Gault); (5) oxides of iron (staining the clay bright red when ferric oxide, red ochre; yellow when hydrous,e.g.yellow ochre); (6) sand or detrital silica (forming loams, arenaceous clays, argillaceous sandstones, &c.). Less frequently present are the following:—rock salt (Triassic clays, and marls of Cheshire, &c.); gypsum (London Clay, Triassic clays); dolomite, phosphate of lime, vivianite (phosphate of iron), oxides of manganese, copper ores (e.g.Kupferschiefer), wavellite and amber. As the impurities increase in amount the clay rocks pass gradually into argillaceous sands and sandstones, argillaceous limestones and dolomites, shaly coals and clay ironstones.
Natural clays, even when most pure, show a considerable range of composition, and hence cannot be regarded as consisting of a single mineral; clay is arock, and has that variability which characterizes all rocks. Of the essential properties of clay some are merely physical, and depend on the minute size of the particles. If any rock be taken (even a piece of pure quartz) and crushed to a very fine powder, it will show some of the peculiarities of clays; for example, it will be plastic, retentive of moisture, impermeable to water, and will shrink to some extent if the moist mass be kneaded, and then allowed to dry. It happens, however, that many rocks are not disintegrated to this extreme degree by natural processes, and weathering invariably accompanies disintegration. Quartz, for example, has little or no cleavage, and is not attacked by the atmosphere. It breaks up into fragments, which become rounded by attrition, but after they reach a certain minuteness are borne along by currents of water or air in a state of suspension, and are not further reduced in size. Hence sands are more coarse grained than clays. A great number of rock-forming minerals, however, possess a good cleavage, so that when bruised they split into thin fragments; many of these minerals decompose somewhat readily, yielding secondary minerals, which are comparatively soft and have a scaly character, with eminently perfect cleavages, which facilitate splitting into exceedingly thin plates. The principal substances of this description are kaolin, muscovite and chlorite. Kaolin and muscovite are formed principally after felspar (and the felspars are the commonest minerals of all crystalline rocks); also from nepheline, leucite, scapolite and a variety of other rock-forming minerals. Chlorite arises from biotite, augite and hornblende. Serpentine, which may be fibrous or scaly, is a secondary product of olivine and certain pyroxenes. Clays consist essentially of the above ingredients (although serpentine is not known to take part in them to any extent, it is closely allied to chlorite). At the same time other substances are produced as decomposition goes on. They are principally finely divided quartz, epidote, zoisite, rutile, limonite, calcite, pyrites, and very small particles of these are rarely absent from natural clays. These fine-grained materials are at first mixed with broken and more or less weathered rock fragments and coarser mineral particles in the soil and subsoil, but by the action of wind and rain they are swept away and deposited in distant situations. “Loess” is a fine calcareous clay, which has been wind-borne, and subsequently laid down on the margins of dry steppes and deserts. Most clays are water-borne, having been carried from the surface of the land byrain and transported by the brooks and rivers into lakes or the sea. In this state the fine particles are known as “mud.” They are deposited where the currents are checked and the water becomes very still. If temporarily laid down in other situations they are ultimately lifted again and removed. A little clay, stirred up with water in a glass vessel, takes hours to settle, and even after two or three days some remains in suspension; in fact, it has been suggested that in such cases the clay forms a sort of “colloidal solution” in the water. Traces of dissolved salts, such as common salt, gypsum or alum, greatly accelerate deposition. For these reasons the principal gathering places of fine pure clays are deep, still lakes, and the sea bottom at considerable distances from the shore. The coarser materials settle nearer the land, and the shallower portions of the sea floor are strewn with gravel and sand, except in occasional depressions and near the mouths of rivers where mud may gather. Farther out the great mud deposits begin, extending from 50 to 200 m. from the land, according to the amount of sediment brought in, and the rate at which the water deepens. A girdle of mud accumulations encircles all the continents. These sediments are fine and tenacious; their principal components, in addition to clay, being small grains of quartz, zircon, tourmaline, hornblende, felspar and iron compounds. Their typical colour is blackish-blue, owing to the abundance of sulphuretted hydrogen; when fresh they have a sulphurous odour, when weathered they are brown, as their iron is present as hydrous oxides (limonite, &c). These deposits are tenanted by numerous forms of marine life, and the sulphur they contain is derived from decomposing organic matter. Occasionally water-logged plant débris is mingled with the mud. In a few places a red colour prevails, the iron being mostly oxidized; elsewhere the muds are green owing to abundant glauconite. Traced landwards the muds become more sandy, while on their outer margins they grade into the abysmal deposits, such as the globigerina ooze (seeOcean and Oceanography). Near volcanoes they contain many volcanic minerals, and around coral islands they are often in large part calcareous.
Microscopic sections of some of the more coherent clays and shales may be prepared by saturating them with Canada balsam by long boiling, and slicing the resultant mass in the same manner as one of the harder rocks. They show that clay rocks contain abundant very small grains of quartz (about 0.01 to 0.05 mm. in diameter), with often felspar, tourmaline, zircon, epidote, rutile and more or less calcite. These may form more than one-third of an ordinary shale; the greater part, however, consists of still smaller scales of other minerals (0.01 mm. in diameter and less than this). Some of these are recognizable as pale yellowish and white mica; others seem to be chlorite, the remainder is perhaps kaolin, but, owing to the minute size of the flakes, they yield very indistinct reactions to polarized light. They are also often stained with iron oxide and organic substances, and in consequence their true nature is almost impossible to determine. It is certain, however, that the finer-grained rocks are richest in alumina, and in combined water; hence the inference is clear that kaolin or some other hydrous aluminium silicate is the dominating constituent. These results are confirmed by the mechanical analysis of clays. This process consists in finely pulverizing the soil or rock, and levigating it in vessels of water. A series of powders is obtained progressively finer according to the time required to settle to the bottom of the vessel. The clay is held to include those particles which have less than 0.005 mm. diameter, and contains a higher percentage of alumina than any of the other ingredients.
As might be inferred from the differences they exhibit in other respects, clay rocks vary greatly in their chemical composition. Some of them contain much iron (yellow, blue and red clays); others contain abundant calcium carbonate (calcareous clays and marls). Pure clays, however, may be found almost quite free from these substances. Their silica ranges from about 60 to 45%, varying in accordance with the amount of quartz and alkali-felspar present. It is almost always more than would be the case if the rock consisted of kaolin mixed with muscovite. Alumina is high in the finer clays (18 to 30%), and they are the most aluminous of all sediments, except bauxite. Magnesia is never absent, though its amount may be less than 1%; it is usually contained in minerals of the chlorite group, but partly also in dolomite. The alkalis are very interesting; often they form 5 or 10% of the whole rock; they indicate abundance of white micas or of undecomposed particles of felspar. Some clays, however, such as fireclays, contain very little potash or soda, while they are rich in alumina; and it is a fair inference that hydrated aluminous silicates, such as kaolin, are well represented in these rocks. There are, in fact, a few clays which contain about 45% of alumina, that is to say, more than in pure kaolin. It is probable that these are related to bauxite and certain kinds of laterite.
A few of the most important clay rocks, such as china-clay, brick-clay, red-clay and shale, may be briefly described here.
China-clayis white, friable and earthy. It occurs in regions of granite, porphyry and syenite, and usually occupies funnel-shaped cavities of no great superficial area, but of considerable depth. It consists of very fine scaly kaolin, larger, shining plates of white mica, grains of quartz and particles of semi-decomposed felspar, tourmaline, zircon and other minerals, which originally formed part of the granite. These clays are produced by the decomposition of the granite by acid vapours, which are discharged after the igneous rock has solidified (“fumarole or pneumatolytic action”). Fluorine and its compounds are often supposed to have been among the agencies which produce this change, but more probably carbonic acid played the principal role. The felspar decomposes into kaolin and quartz; its alkalis are for the most part set free and removed in solution, but are partly retained in the white mica which is constantly found in crude china-clays. Semi-decomposed varieties of the granite are known as china-stone. The kaolin may be washed away from its original site, and deposited in hollows or lakes to form beds of white clay, such as pipe-clay; in this case it is always more or less impure. Yellow and pinkish varieties of china-clay and pipe-clay contain a small quantity of oxide of iron. The best known localities for china-clay are Cornwall, Limoges (France), Saxony, Bohemia and China; it is found also in Pennsylvania, N. Carolina and elsewhere in the United States.
Fire-claysinclude all those varieties of clay which are very refractory to heat. They must contain little alkalis, lime, magnesia and iron, but some of them are comparatively rich in silica. Many of the clays which pass under this designation belong to the Carboniferous period, and are found underlying seams of coal. Either by rapid growth of vegetation, or by subsequent percolation of organic solutions, most of the alkalis and the lime have been carried away.
Any argillaceous material, which can be used for the manufacture of bricks, may be called abrick-clay. In England, Kimmeridge Clay, Lias clays, London Clay and pulverized shale and slate are all employed for this purpose. Each variety needs special treatment according to its properties. The true brick-clays, however, are superficial deposits of Pleistocene or Quaternary age, and occur in hollows, filled-up lakes and deserted stream channels. Many of them are derived from the glacial boulder-clays, or from the washing away of the finer materials contained in older clay formations. They are always very impure.
Thered-clayis an abysmal formation, occurring in the sea bottom in the deepest part of the oceans. It is estimated to cover over fifty millions of square miles, and is probably the most extensive deposit which is in course of accumulation at the present day. In addition to the reddish or brownish argillaceous matrix it contains fresh or decomposed crystals of volcanic minerals, such as felspar, augite, hornblende, olivine and pumiceous or palagonitic rocks. These must either have been ejected by submarine volcanoes or drifted by the wind from active vents, as the fine ash discharged by Krakatoa was wafted over the whole globe. Larger rounded lumps of pumice, found in the clay, have probably floated to their present situations, and sank when decomposed, all their cavities becoming filledwith sea water. Crystals of zeolites (phillipsite) form in the red-clay as radiate, nodular groups. Lumps of manganese oxide, with a black, shining outer surface, are also characteristic of this deposit, and frequently encrust pieces of pumice or animal remains. The only fossils of the clay are radiolaria, sharks’ teeth and the ear-bones of whales, precisely those parts of the skeleton of marine creatures which are hardest and can longest survive exposure to sea-water. Their comparative abundance shows how slowly the clay gathers. Small rounded spherules of iron, believed by some to be meteoric dust, have also been obtained in some numbers. Among the rocks of the continents nothing exactly the same as this remarkable deposit is known to occur, though fine dark clays, with manganese nodules, are found in many localities, accompanied by other rocks which indicate deep-water conditions of deposit.
Another type of red-clay is found in caves, and is known ascave-earthorred-earth(terra rossa). It is fine, tenacious and bright red, and represents the insoluble and thoroughly weathered impurities which are left behind when the calcareous matter is removed in solution by carbonated waters. Similar residual clays sometimes occur on the surface of areas of limestone in hollows and fissures formed by weathering.
Boulder-clayis a coarse unstratified deposit of fine clay, with more or less sand, and boulders of various sizes, the latter usually marked with glacial striations.
Some clay rocks which have been laid down by water are very uniform through their whole thickness, and are calledmud-stones. Others split readily into fine leaflets or laminae parallel to their bedding, and this structure is accentuated by the presence of films of other materials, such as sand or vegetable debris. Laminated clays of this sort are generally known asshales; they occur in many formations but are very common in the Carboniferous. Some of them contain much organic debris, and when distilled yield paraffin oil, wax, compounds of ammonia, &c. In these oil-shales there are clear, globular, yellow bodies which seem to be resinous. It has been suggested that the admixture of large quantities of decomposed fresh-water algae among the original mud is the origin of the paraffins. In New South Wales, Scotland and several parts of America such oil-shales are worked on a commercial scale. Many shales contain great numbers of ovoid or rounded septarian nodules of clay ironstone. Others are rich in pyrites, which, on oxidation, produces sulphuric acid; this attacks the aluminous silicates of the clay and forms aluminium sulphate (alum shales). The lias shales of Whitby contain blocks of semi-mineralized wood, or jet, which is black with a resinous lustre, and a fibrous structure. The laminated structure of shales, though partly due to successive very thin sheets of deposit, is certainly dependent also on the vertical pressure exerted by masses of super-incumbent rock; it indicates a transition to the fissile character of clay slates.
(J. S. F.)
CLAY CROSS, an urban district in the Chesterfield parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, near the river Amber, on the Midland railway, 5 m. S. of Chesterfield. Pop. (1901) 8358. The Clay Cross Colliery and Ironworks Company, whose mines were for a time leased by George Stephenson, employ a great number of hands.
CLAYMORE(from the Gaelicclaidheamh mòr, “great sword”), the old two-edged broadsword with cross hilt, of which the guards were usually turned down, used by the Highlanders of Scotland. The name is also wrongly applied to the single-edged basket-hilted sword adopted in the 16th century and still worn as the full-dress sword in the Highland regiments of the British army.
CLAYS, PAUL JEAN(1819-1900), Belgian artist, was born at Bruges in 1819, and died at Brussels in 1900. He was one of the most esteemed marine painters of his time, and early in his career he substituted a sincere study of nature for the extravagant and artificial conventionality of most of his predecessors. When he began to paint, the sea was considered by continental artists as worth representing only under its most tempestuous aspects. Artists cared only for the stirring drama of storm and wreck, and they clung still to the old-world tradition of the romantic school. Clays was the first to appreciate the beauty of calm waters reflecting the slow procession of clouds, the glories of sunset illuminating the sails of ships or gilding the tarred sides of heavy fishing-boats. He painted the peaceful life of rivers, the poetry of wide estuaries, the regulated stir of roadsteads and ports. And while he thus broke away from old traditions he also threw off the trammels imposed on him by his master, the marine painter Theodore Gudin (1802-1880). Endeavouring only to give truthful expression to the nature that delighted his eyes, he sought to render the limpid salt atmosphere, the weight of waters, the transparence of moist horizons, the gem-like sparkle of the sky. A Fleming in his feeling for colour, he set his palette with clean strong hues, and their powerful harmonies were in striking contrast with the rusty, smoky tones then in favour. If he was not a “luminist” in the modern use of the word, he deserves at any rate to be classed with the founders of the modern naturalistic school. This conscientious and healthy interpretation, to which the artist remained faithful, without any important change, to the end of an unusually long and laborious career, attracted those minds which aspired to be bold, and won over those which were moderate. Clays soon took his place among the most famous Belgian painters of his generation, and his pictures, sold at high prices, are to be seen in most public and private galleries. We may mention, among others, “The Beach at Ault,” “Boats in a Dutch Port,” and “Dutch Boats in the Flushing Roads,” the last in the National Gallery, London. In the Brussels gallery are “The Port of Antwerp,” “Coast near Ostend,” and a “Calm on the Scheldt”; in the Antwerp museum, “The Meuse at Dordrecht”; in the Pinakothek at Munich, “The Open North Sea”; in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, New York, “The Festival of the Freedom of the Scheldt at Antwerp in 1863”; in the palace of the king of the Belgians, “Arrival of Queen Victoria at Ostend in 1857”; in the Bruges academy, “Port of Feirugudo, Portugal.” Clays was a member of several Academies, Belgian and foreign, and of the Order of Leopold, the Legion of Honour, &c.
See Camille Lemonnier,Histoire des Beaux-Arts(Brussels, 1887).
See Camille Lemonnier,Histoire des Beaux-Arts(Brussels, 1887).
(O. M.*)
CLAYTON, JOHN MIDDLETON(1796-1856), American politician, was born in Dagsborough, Sussex county, Delaware, on the 24th of July 1796. He came of an old Quaker family long prominent in the political history of Delaware. He graduated at Yale in 1815, and in 1819 began to practise law at Dover, Delaware, where for a time he was associated with his cousin, Thomas Clayton (1778-1854), subsequently a United States senator and chief-justice of the state. He soon gained a large practice. He became a member of the state House of Representatives in 1824, and from December 1826 to October 1828 was secretary of state of Delaware. In 1829, by a combination of anti-Jackson forces in the state legislature, he was elected to the United States Senate. Here his great oratorical gifts gave him a high place as one of the ablest and most eloquent opponents of the administration. In 1831 he was a member of the Delaware constitutional convention, and in 1835 he was returned to the Senate as a Whig, but resigned in the following year. In 1837-1839 he was chief justice of Delaware. In 1845 he again entered the Senate, where he opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, but advocated the active prosecution of the latter once it was begun. In March 1849 he became secretary of state in the cabinet of President Zachary Taylor, to whose nomination and election his influence had contributed. His brief tenure of the state portfolio, which terminated on the 22nd of July 1850, soon after Taylor’s death, was notable chiefly for the negotiation with the British minister, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (q.v.). He was once more a member of the Senate from March 1853 until his death at Dover, Delaware, on the 9th of November 1856. By his contemporaries Clayton was considered one of the ablest debaters and orators in the Senate.
See the memoir by Joseph P. Comegys in thePapersof the Historical Society of Delaware, No. 4 (Wilmington, 1882).
See the memoir by Joseph P. Comegys in thePapersof the Historical Society of Delaware, No. 4 (Wilmington, 1882).
CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY, a famous treaty between the United States and Great Britain, negotiated in 1850 by John M. Clayton and Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer (Lord Dalling), in consequence of the situation created by the project of an interoceanic canal across Nicaragua, each signatory being jealous of the activities of the other in Central America. Great Britain had large and indefinite territorial claims in three regions—Belize or British Honduras, the Mosquito Coast and the Bay Islands.1On the other hand, the United States, without territorial claims, held in reserve, ready for ratification, treaties with Nicaragua and Honduras, which gave her a certain diplomatic vantage with which to balance thede factodominion of Great Britain. Agreement on these points being impossible and agreement on the canal question possible, the latter was put in the foreground. The resulting treaty had four essential points. It bound both parties not to “obtain or maintain” any exclusive control of the proposed canal, or unequal advantage in its use. It guaranteed the neutralization of such canal. It declared that, the intention of the signatories being not only the accomplishment of “a particular object”—i.e.that the canal, then supposedly near realization, should be neutral and equally free to the two contracting powers—“but also to establish a general principle,” they agreed “to extend their protection by treaty stipulation to any other practicable communications, whether by canal or railway, across the isthmus which connects North and South America.” Finally, it stipulated that neither signatory would ever “occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast or any part of Central America,” nor make use of any protectorate or alliance, present or future, to such ends.
The treaty was signed on the 19th of April, and was ratified by both governments; but before the exchange of ratifications Lord Palmerston, on the 8th of June, directed Sir H. Bulwer to make a “declaration” that the British government did not understand the treaty “as applying to Her Majesty’s settlement at Honduras, or its dependencies.” Mr Clayton made a counter-declaration, which recited that the United States did not regard the treaty as applying to “the British settlement in Honduras commonly called British-Honduras ... nor the small islands in the neighbourhood of that settlement which may be known as its dependencies”; that the treaty’s engagements did apply to all the Central American states, “with their just limits and proper dependencies”; and that these declarations, not being submitted to the United States Senate, could of course not affect the legal import of the treaty. The interpretation of the declarations soon became a matter of contention. The phraseology reflects the effort made by the United States to render impossible a physical control of the canal by Great Britain through the territory held by her at its mouth—the United States losing the above-mentioned treaty advantages,—just as the explicit abnegations of the treaty rendered impossible such control politically by either power. But great Britain claimed that the excepted “settlement” at Honduras was the “Belize” covered by the extreme British claim; that the Bay Islands were a dependency of Belize; and that, as for the Mosquito Coast, the abnegatory clauses being wholly prospective in intent, she was not required to abandon her protectorate. The United States contended that the Bay Islands were not the “dependencies” of Belize, these being the small neighbouring islands mentioned in the same treaties; that the excepted “settlement” was the British-Honduras of definite extent and narrow purpose recognized in British treaties with Spain; that she had not confirmed by recognition the large, indefinite and offensive claims whose dangers the treaty was primarily designed to lessen; and that, as to the Mosquito Coast, the treaty was retrospective, and mutual in the rigour of its requirements, and as the United States had node factopossessions, while Great Britain had, the clause binding both not to “occupy” any part of Central America or the Mosquito Coast necessitated the abandonment of such territory as Great Britain was already actually occupying or exercising dominion over; and the United States demanded the complete abandonment of the British protectorate over the Mosquito Indians. It seems to be a just conclusion that when in 1852 the Bay Islands were erected into a British “colony” this was a flagrant infraction of the treaty; that as regards Belize the American arguments were decidedly stronger, and more correct historically; and that as regards the Mosquito question, inasmuch as a protectorate seems certainly to have been recognized by the treaty, to demand its absolute abandonment was unwarranted, although to satisfy the treaty Great Britain was bound materially to weaken it.
In 1859-1860, by British treaties with Central American states, the Bay Islands and Mosquito questions were settled nearly in accord with the American contentions.2But by the same treaties Belize was accorded limits much greater than those contended for by the United States. This settlement the latter power accepted without cavil for many years.
Until 1866 the policy of the United States was consistently for inter-oceanic canals open equally to all nations, and unequivocally neutralized; indeed, until 1880 there was practically no official divergence from this policy. But in 1880-1884 a variety of reasons were advanced why the United States might justly repudiate at will the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty.3The new policy was based on national self-interest. The arguments advanced on its behalf were quite indefensible in law and history, and although the position of the United States in 1850-1860 was in general the stronger in history, law and political ethics, that of Great Britain was even more conspicuously the stronger in the years 1880-1884. In 1885 the former government reverted to its traditional policy, and the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1902, which replaced the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, adopted the rule of neutralization for the Panama Canal.