Oaxaca or Oaxaca De Juarez

OAXACA or OAXACA DE JUAREZ (official title) (from Aztec Huaxyacac), capital of the Mexican State of Oaxaca. Pop. (1921) 27,792, largely Indians, most of whom are Mixtecas and Zapotecas. Oaxaca is connected with Puebla (211 m.) by the Mexican Southern railway. The city lies in a broad, picturesque valley 5,o85 ft. above sea-level, and has a mild temperate climate. It has a fine old cathedral in the Spanish Renaissance style and dating from 1553; rebuilt in 1702.

According to tradition the Aztec military post and town of Huaxyacac was founded in 1486. The date of the first Spanish settlement is uncertain, but it was probably between 1522 and 1528. The city suffered severely in the earthquakes of 1727 and 1787, the cathedral being greatly damaged in 1727. In war and revolution, it has been repeatedly captured.

OB

or OBI, river of Asiatic Russia, known to the Ostiaks as the As, Yag, Kolta and Yema ; to the Samoyedes as the Kolta or Kuay; and to the Tatars as the Omar or Umar. Its length is roughly 2,400 m. ; the area of its basin is considerably more than a million sq.m. and the navigable waters in its basin total more than 17,00o m. Its source is in the Altai mountains and its course is through hilly country to the Kirghiz steppe and thence it flows to its delta in the gulf of Ob, an inlet of the Arctic ocean 600 m. in length. In its middle course, south of its junction with the Irtysh, and extending between the two streams, are the Vasu igan swamps, named from the Vasuiga, a left bank tributary of the Ob. They extend for 1 oo,000 sq.m. and in summer are im passable marshes, with dense thickets of cedars, larches and pines. In spring they are flooded and are then known as the Vasuigan sea. In winter they become ice-bound and may be crossed. When drained the land proves fertile. North of the swamps the river flows through coniferous forest to Berezov, and passes Ob dorsk, where there is a Veterinary Institute for the help of the reindeer breeders and to which small sea-going vessels can pene trate.

After receiving its largest tributary, the Irtysh, the Ob divides into more than one arm and is of little use for navigation except for barges bringing fish from the delta in the autumn. Above the junction of the Irtysh, steamers and barges ply upon the Ob and its tributaries the Irtysh, the Tobol, the Tavda and the Tura in summer. In 1915 there were 35o steamers and several hundred barges chiefly carrying corn, flour, salt and timber, in addition to passengers. The east-west river traffic is giving place to railway communication, but the north-south route is still very important. The river is frozen from November to May or June ; floods, ice and floating timber impede navigation for some time after the thaw.

The fact that in its southern parts the Ob approaches so close to the Yenisei that short and easy portages link them, made the penetration of Siberia by the Cossacks an easy task. The Chulim, a tributary of the Ob, in its upper course is at one point only six m. from the Yenisei, but a canal link is impossible owing to the great difference in level, while the Ket river, another right bank tributary of the Ob has canal communication with the Kas, a tributary of the Yenisei.

The Irtysh, which is quite as important as the Ob, rises as the Black Irtysh, south of the Mongolian border, and flows through the Dzungarian gate into Russia, where it expands into Lake Zaisan, and then cuts its way across a spur of the Altai into the plains. There are lakes, many of which are salt and are rapidly drying ; flourishing villages stand on the site of what in the early part of last century was Lake Chany.