are many creameries in the county. Sumerous artesian wells
furnish the city with an ample supply of water of unusual
excellence. Albert Lea was settled in 1855 and received a
city charter in 1878. The city and the lake were named in
honour of Lieutenant Albert Miller Lea (1808--1801), a West
Point graduate (1831) who, on behalf of the United States
government, first surveyed the region and described it in
a report published in 1836. He was a lieutenant-colonel
of engineers in the Confederate army during the Civil War.
ALBERT NYANZA, a lake of Central Africa, the northern of
the two western reservoirs of the Nile, lying in the western
(A!bertine) rift-valley, near its north end. The southern
reservoir is Albert Edward Nyanza (q.v..) Lake Albert lies
between 1 deg. 9' and 2 deg. 17' N. and 30 deg. 30' and 31 deg. 35' E.,
at an elevation of about 2000 ft. above the sea. Its greatest
length is about 100 m., its greatest width 22 m., its area
being approximately 1640 sq. m., about the size of Lancashire,
England. South of the lake is a wide plain, traversed by the
Seniliki river, which enters the Nyanza through a swamp of tall
weeds, chiefly ambach and papyrus. Both east and west the
walls of the rift-valley are close to the lake,the waterin
many places washing the base of the cliffs. Elsewhere the
narrowforeshore is thicklywooded. The ascent to the plateaus
is generally by three tiers of hills rising one behind the
other. On the west side the mountains present many pointed
and conical summits; on the east the cliffs rise abruptly
1000 to 2000 ft. On either coast wild gorges and ravines,
densely wooded, break the outline of the mountains. Through
these gorges dash magnificent cascades, others leaping the
escarpments of the plateaus in waterfalls of great volume and
depth. Towards the north the hills recede from the coast and
on both sides flats extend for distances varying from 5 to 15
m. On the eastern side, 92 m. from the southern end of the
Nyanza, the Victoria Nile enters the lake, here not more
than 6 m. across, through a wilderness of woods, the delta
of the Nile extending over 4 m. The mouth of the main stream
is obstructed by a bar of its own formation; the current is
sluggish; there are many side channels, and the appearance
of the lake gives no hint that a great river has joined its
waters. For 5 or 6 m. north of the junction of the Victoria
Nile the lake suffers no material diminution in width. Then,
however, the eastern and western shores approach each other,
and a current is perceptible flowing north. The lake has
become the Bahr-el-Jebel, or Mountain river, as this section
of the Nile is called. Throughout its extent Albert Nyanza
is shallow; at its southern end the water for a considerable
distance is not more than 3 ft. deep. The deepest soundings
give only 50 to 55 ft., the average depth being 30 to 40 ft.
The Alberline Basin of the Nile.---Albert Nyanza receives the
whole of the drainage of Albert Edward Nyanza and the Semliki
river, and with them and its own basin forms the ``Albertine'' Nile
system. Its waters, as stated above, mingle with those of the
Victoria Nile, their united volume flowing north towards the
Mediterranean. A study of the changes going on in the riftvalley
in which the lakes lie leads, however, to the belief that
the Albert Edward and Albert Nyanzas are drying up, a process
which the nature of the drainage areas is helping to bring
about. That the Albert Edward Nyanza once covered a much
larger area than it does at present is certain. At that
time, recent from a geological standpoint, the valley to the
north, through which now flows the Semliki river, was blocked.
The removal of the block led to the shrinkage of the lake and
the formation.of the Semhki, which found its way to the more
northern lake-Albert Nyanza. Gradually the Semliki eroded
its bed, and consequently the level of Albert Edward Nyanza
continued to fall. The process continues but is checked by
the existence of the rock barrier which stretches across the
Semliki. This stream leaves Albert Edward Nyanza at its
N.W. end in 0 deg. 8' 30q S., and after a course of about 160
m. enters Albert Nyanza in 1 deg. 9' N. In its upper and in its
lower course the river flows either through high alluvial
plains, in which it has scored a deep channel, or across swamp
land. In the middle section, which has a length of some 75
m., the river runs in a deep narrow valley -covered with
the densest forest. On the west this valley is bounded by
the Congo mountains, which form the wall of the rift-valley,
on the east by the mighty range of Ruwenzori, whose heights
tower over 16,000 ft. above sea-level. In this length
of 75 m. the river falls in cataracts and rapids over 800
ft. This rocky barrier acts as a regulator for the water
received from Albert Edward Nyanza snd, by checking the
erosion of the river bed, tends to maintain the level of the
lake. When this bar wears away Albert Edward Nyanza will, in
all probability, disappear as a lake and will become a river, a
continuation of its present most southern affiuentj the Ruchuru.
Albert Nyanza, on the other hand, is threatened in the
distant future with destruction from another cause--the
filling of its bed by the alluvium poured into it by the
Semliki, the Victoria Nile and, in a lesser degree, by other
streams. The Semliki receives directly or indirectly the
whole of the drainage of Ruwenzori, and also that of the
eastern face of the Congo mountains as well as the drainage
basin of Albert Edward Nyanza. The amount of alluvial matter
carried is enormous; from Ruwenzori alone the detritus is very
great. Charged with all this matter, the Semhki, as it
emerges from the region of forest and cataracts (in which,
often closely confined by its mountain barriers, the stream
is deep and rapid), becomes sluggish, its slope flattens
out, and its waters, unable to carry their burden, deposit
much of it upon the land. This process, continually going
on, has formed a large plain at the south end of Albert
Nyanza, which has seriously encroached upon the lake. At
the northern end of the lake the sediment brought down by the
Victoria Nile is producing a similar effect. Albert Nyanza
has indeed shrunk in its dimensions during the comparatively
few years it has been known to Europeans. Thus at the S.W.
end, Nyamsasi, which was an island in 1889, has become a
peninsula. Islands which in 1876 were on the east coast
no longer exist; they now form part of the foreshore. On
the other hand, the shrinkage of the lake level caused the
appearance in 1885 of an island where in 1879 there had been
an expanse of shallow water. It seems probable that, in a
period geologically not very remote, the ``Albertine'' system
will consist of one great river, extending from the northern
slopes of the Rivu range, where the Ruchuru has its rise, to
the existing junction of the Victoria Nile with Albert Nyanza.
The combined drainage area, including the water surface of
Albert Edward Nyanza, the Semhki and Albert Nyanza, is some
16,600 sq. m. Throughout this area the rainfall is heavy (40
to 60 in. or more per annum), the volume of water entering
Albert Nyanza by the Semliki when in flood being not less
than 700 cubic metres per second. Of the water received
by Albert Nyanza annually (omitting the Victoria Nile from
the calculation) between 50 and 60% is lost by evaporation,
whilst 24,265,000,000 cubic metres are annually withdrawn
by the Bahr-el-Jebel. The ``Albertine'' system plays a
comparatively insignificant part in the annual llood rise
of the White Nile, but to its waters are due the maintenance
of a constant supply to this river throughout the year.
Discovery and Exploration.---Albert Nyanza was first reached
by Sir Samuel Baker on the 14th of March 1864 near Vacovia,
a small village of fishermen and salt-makers on the east
coast. From a granitic cliff 1500 ft. above the water he
looked out over a boundless horizon on the south and south-west,
and towards the west descried at a distance of 50 or 60 m.
mountains about 7000 ft. high. Albert Nyanza was consequently
entered on his map as a vast lake extending about 380 m. But
the circumnavigation of the lake by Gessi Pasha (1876), and
by Emin Pasha in 1884, showed that Baker had been deceived as
to the size of the lake. By the end of the 19th century the
topography of the lake region was known with fair accuracy.
The lake forms part of the (British) Uganda Protectorate,
but the north-west shores were leased in 1894 to the (iongo
Free State during the sovereignty of king Leopold II. of
Belgium. Of this leased area a strip 15 m. wide, giving
the Congo State a passage way to the lake, was to remain in
its possession after the determination of the lease. - See
Nile; Sir W. Garstin's Report upon the Basin of the Upper
Loile (Egypt, No. 2, 1904); Capt. H. G. Lyons' The
Physiography oj. the River Nelc and its Basin (Cairo, 1906),
and the authorities quoted in those works. (W. E. G.; F. R. C.)
ALBERTUS MAGNUS (ALBERT OF COLOGNE.? 1206-1280), count of
Bollstadt, scholastic philosopher, was born of the noble
family of Bollstadt at Lauingen in Suabia. The date of his
birth, generally given as 1193, is more probably 1206. He was
educated principally at Padua, where he received instruction
in Aristotle's writings. In 1223 (or 1221) he became a member
of the Dominican order, and studied theology under its rules
at Bologna and elsewhere. Selected to fill the position of
lecturer at Cologne, where the order had a house, he taught for
several years there, at Regensburg, Freiburg, Strassburg and
Hildesheim. In 1245 he went to Paris, received his doctorate
and taught for some time, in accordance with the regulations,
with great success. In 1254 he was made provincial of his
order, and fulfilled the arduous duties of the office with
great care and efficiency. During the time he held this office
he publicly defended the Dominicans against the university of
Paris, commented on St John, and answered the errors of the
Arabian philosopher, Averroes. In 1260 the pope made him
bishop of Regensburg, which office he resigned after three
years. The remainder of his life he spent partly in preaching
throughout Bavaria and the adjoining districts, partly in
retirement in the various houses of his order; in 1270 he
preached the eighth Crusade in Austria; almost the last of
his labours was the defence of the orthodoxy of his former
pupil, Thomas Aquinas. He died in 1280, aged seventy-four.
He was beatified in 1622, and he is commemorated on the 16th of
November. Albert's works (published in twenty-one folios by
the Dominican Pierre Jammy in 1651, and reproduced by the Abbe
Borgnet, Paris, 1890, 36 vols.) sufficiently attest his great
activity. He was the most widely read and most learned man
of his time. The whole of Aristotle's works, presented in the
Latin translations and notes of the Arabian commentators, were
by him digested, interpreted and systematized in accordance
with church doctrine. Albert's activity, however, was rather
philosophical than theological (see SCHOLASTICISM.) The
philosophical works, occupying the first six and the last
of the twenty-one volumes, are generally divided according
to the Aristotelian scheme of the sciences, and consist of
interpretations and condensations of Aristotle's relative
works, with supplementary discussions depending on the
questions then agitated, and occasionally divergences from the
opinions of the master. His principal theological works are a
