SZECHENYI, IsTVAN, Count, 1792-1860; b. Vienna, of a noble and wealthy Hun garian family. He served in the Austrian army in the wars with Napoleon, and afterward traveled through Europe. Clearly seeing the great need for reform and advance in the material and social status of the Hungarian people, he gave liberally of both time and money in bringing this about. Among his acts were the endowment of the Hungarian academy; the founding of a society for improvement in horse-breeding, a most important occupation in Hungary; and the establishment of schools of acting and music. To his exertions were due the erection of the great suspension bridge between Pesth and Ofeu, the removal of obstacles to navigation at the " Iron Gates," and the introduction of steamboats on the Danube. He became minister of public works. He opposed the revolutionary measures of Kossuth, and when the revolution of 1848 broke out, became insane, and though he recovered, continued to reside at the Dobling asylum, where he committed suicide after a domiciliary visit by the Austrian police.
(Four streams), a vast province of western China, and the largest of the 18. It has an area four times greater than that of England, but the population is scanty. The Kincha-Kiang, or "Golden sanded river," which rises in the southern slopes of the great Tibetan range, flows through Sze-chuen, and after receiving sev eral tributaries, it becomes, before leaving the province, the famous Yang-tse-Kiang. In its course, it passes at right angles and by narrow gorges, through a succession of ranges of hills, which have a direction from n. to south. The people of Szechuen can not always force a subsistence from their stubborn soil. Famines are when whole families are starved to death, and thousands subsist on a mixture of rice, roots, and common earth. Coal is abundant, but of inferior quality; seams of from 3 to 5 feet in thickness are laid bare in the gorges cut by the Yang-tse, and gold is found in small quantities.