[Kandahar], capital of Southern Afghanistan, near the Argandab River, 200 m. SW. of Kabul; a well-watered, regularly built town in the middle of orchards and vineyards; is of great political and commercial importance; a centre of trade with India, Persia, and Turkestan; it was held by the British through the war of 1839-41, and again in 1880-81; population variously estimated from 25,000 to 100,000.
[Kandy] (20), a town on a mountain lake in the middle of Ceylon, 75 m. NE. of Colombo; is a railway centre; has the ruins of the palace of the old native kings, and a temple with the famous tooth of Buddha.
[Kane, Elisha Kent], an American explorer, born in Philadelphia; bred to medicine; became a surgeon in the navy; acquired a taste for adventure; from his experiences in such accompanied, in 1850, the first Grinnell expedition to the Arctic seas, and commanded the second in 1853, after three years returning with many discoveries; he wrote accounts of both expeditions (1820-1857).
[Kane, Sir Robert], chemist, born in Dublin; originator of the Dublin Journal of Medical Science in 1832, and of the Irish Museum of Industry in 1846; was President of Queen's College, Cork, and President of the Royal Irish Academy in 1876; Published "Elements of Chemistry," and other works (1810-1890).
[Kansas] (1,427), the central State of the American Union; lies in the basin of the Kansas and Arkansas Rivers, between Nebraska on the N. and Oklahoma on the S., with Colorado on the W. and Missouri on the E. It is a rolling prairie, with a fine climate subject to occasional extremes, and a rainfall, except in some districts, sufficient; raises crops of grain and sugar, and affords excellent grazing ground. Pork and beef packing, flour-milling, and iron-founding industries are carried on. The State University is at Lawrence, an agricultural college at Manhattan, and good schools in every town. Previous to its admission to the Union in 1859 Kansas was the scene of violent conflicts between pro- and anti-slavery parties for five years. In the Civil War it joined the North. The capital is Topeka (31), and the largest other towns Kansas City (38) and Wichita (23).
[Kansas City], two contiguous towns on the S. bank of the Missouri River, 280 m. W. of St. Louis, are so called. The larger and more easterly one (164) is the second city of Missouri; an important railway centre, and distributes the agricultural products of a large region; has pork-packing industries and iron manufactures. The smaller, westerly city (51), is in Kansas, the largest town of that State; has a remarkable elevated railway.
[Kant, Immanuel], a celebrated German philosopher, born in Königsberg, the son of a saddler, of Scotch descent, and fortunate in both his parents; entered the university in 1740 as a student of theology; gave himself to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and physics; wrote an essay, his first literary effort, on "Motive Force" in 1747; settled at the University as a private lecturer on a variety of academic subjects in 1755; became professor of Logic and Metaphysics in 1770, when he was 46, and continued till his retirement, in 1797, from the frailties of age, spending the last 17 years of his life in a small house with a garden in a quiet quarter of the town; his great work, the "Kritic of Pure Reason," was published in 1781, and it was followed by the "Kritic of Practical Reason" in 1788, and the "Kritic of Judgment" in 1790; his works inaugurate a new era in philosophic speculation, and by the adoption of a critical method dealt a death-blow to speculative dogmatism on the one hand and scepticism on the other; it was, he says, the scepticism of Hume that first broke his dogmatic slumber, so that had Hume not been, he had not been, and the whole course of modern thought different; Kant by his critical method did for philosophy what Copernicus did for astronomy; he centralised the intelligence in the reason or soul, as the latter did the planetary system in the sun; Kant was a lean, little man, of simple habits, and was never wedded (1724-1804).
[Kaolin], a fine white clay, a hydrous silicate of alumina, which does not colour when fired; used in making porcelain; called also China clay.
[Kapellmeister], director of an orchestra or choir, more particularly of the band of a German prince.
[Kapila], the founder of the Sankhya system of [Hindu philosophy] (q. v.); was regarded as an incarnation of [Vishnu] (q. v.).