COLUMBIA, BRITISH (100), the most westerly province in Canada, lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, the United States and Alaska, and is four times the size of Great Britain.  It is a mountainous country, rugged and picturesque, containing the highest peaks on the continent, Mount Hooker, 15,700 ft., and Mount Brown, 16,000 ft, with a richly indented coast-line, off which lie Queen Charlotte Islands and Vancouver.  The chief river is the Frazer, which flows from the Lake region southwards through the centre and then westward to the Gulf of Georgia; the upper waters of the Columbia flow southward through the E. of the State.  The climate resembles that of northern England, but is in some parts very rainy.  The chief industries are lumbering—­the forests are among the finest in the world, fishing—­the rivers abound in salmon and sturgeon, and mining—­rich deposits of gold, silver, iron, copper, mercury, antimony, and many other valuable minerals are found; there are great coal-fields in Vancouver.  In Vancouver and in the river valleys of the mainland are extensive tracts of arable and grazing land; but neither agriculture nor manufactures are much developed.  Made a Crown colony in 1858, it joined the Dominion as a province in 1871.  The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 joined it to the eastern provinces.  The capital is Victoria (17), in the S. of Vancouver.

COLUMBUS (125), capital of Ohio, U.S., a manufacturing town.

COLUMBUS, BARTHOLOMEW, cosmographer, brother of Christopher Columbus; accompanied him to St. Domingo, and became governor; d. 1514.

COLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER, discoverer of America, on Oct. 12, 1492, after two months of great peril and, in the end, mutiny of his men, born in Genoa; went to sea at 14; cherished, if he did not conceive, the idea of reaching India by sailing westward; applied in many quarters for furtherance; after seven years of waiting, was provided with three small vessels and a crew of 120 men; first touched land at the Bahamas, visited Cuba and Hayti, and returned home with spoils of the land; was hailed and honoured as King of the Sea; he made three subsequent visits, and on the third had the satisfaction of landing on the mainland, which Sebastian Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci had reached before him; he became at last the victim of jealousy, and charges were made against him, which so cut him to the heart that he never rallied from the attack, and he died at Valladolid, broken in body and in soul; Carlyle, in a famous passage, salutes him across the centuries:  “Brave sea-captain, Norse sea-king, Columbus my hero, royalist sea-king of all” (1438-1506).

COLUMELLA, JUNIUS, a Latin writer of the 1st century, born at Cadiz; author of “De Re Rustica,” in 12 books, on the same theme as Virgil’s “Georgics,” viz., agriculture and gardening; he wrote also “De Arboribus,” on trees.

COLU`THUS, a Greek epic poet of 6th century, born in Egypt; wrote the “Rape of Helen.”