UNKNOWN, THE GREAT, name given to Sir Walter Scott from withholding his name in publishing the Waverley novels.

UNTERWALDEN (27), a canton of Switzerland S. and E. of Lucerne, consisting of two parallel valleys 15 m. long running N. and S.; an entirely pastoral country, and exports articles of husbandry.

UNYANYEMBE, a district of German East Africa, with a town of the name, with a settlement of Arabs who cultivate the soil, the fruits of which they export.

UNYORO (1,500), a native State of Central Africa, between Lake Albert Nyanza and the territory of Uganda.

UPAN`ISHADS (Instructions), a voluminous heterogeneous collection of treatises connected with the Vedas, and the chief source of our knowledge of the early metaphysical speculations and ethical doctrines of the Hindus; they are to a great extent apocryphal, and are posterior to the rise of Buddhism.

UPAS TREE, a poison-yielding-tree, at one time fabled to exhale such poison that it was destructive to all animal and vegetable life for miles round it.

UPOLU (16), the principal island in the SAMOAN GROUP (q. v.), is 140 m. in circumference, and rises in verdure-clad terraces from a belt of low land on the shore, with Apia, the capital of the group, on the N. border.

UPPINGHAM, market-town in Rutland, with a famous public school.

UPSALA (21), the ancient capital of Sweden, on the Sala, 21 m.  NW. of Stockholm, the seat of the Primate, and of a famous university with 1900 students, and a library of 250,000 volumes; its cathedral, built of brick in the Gothic style, is the largest in Sweden, contains the tombs of Linnaeus and of Gustavus Vasa.

URAL, a river of Russia, which rises in the E. of the Urals and forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia, and falls after a course of 870 m. by a number of mouths into the Caspian Sea.

URALS, THE, a range of mountains rich in precious as well as useful metals, extending from the Arctic Sea to the Sea of Aral, and separating European from Asiatic Russia, and is 1330 m. in length, 60 m. in breadth, and 3000 ft. in average height.

URALSK (26), a town, a Cossack centre, on the Ural River, 280 m. from the Caspian Sea, and a place of considerable trade.

URANIA, the muse of astronomy, is represented with a globe in her hand, to which she points with a small rod.

URANUS, a planet, the outermost but one of the solar system, is 1770 millions of miles from the sun, takes 30,686 of our days, or 84 of our years, to revolve round it, has four times the diameter of the earth, and is accompanied by four moons; it was discovered in 1781 by Herschel, and called by him Georgium Sidus in honour of George III.

URANUS (Heaven), in the Greek mythology the son of Gaia (the Earth), and by her the father of the Titans; he hated his children, and at birth thrust them down to Tartarus, to the grief of Gaia, at whose instigation Kronos, the youngest born, unmanned him, and seized the throne of the Universe, to be himself supplanted in turn by his son Zeus.