EL PASO, a city, port of entry, and the county-seat of El Paso county, Texas, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Rio Grande, in the extreme W. part of the state, at an altitude of 3710 ft. Pop. (1880) 736; (1890) 10,338; (1900) 15,906, of whom 6309 were foreign-born and 466 were negroes; (1910 census) 39,279. Many of the inhabitants are of Mexican descent. El Paso is an important railway centre and is served by the following railways: the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, of which it is the S. terminus; the El Paso & South-Western, which connects with the Chicago, Rock Island & El Paso (of the Rock Island system); the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio, of which it is the W. terminus; the Mexican Central, of which it is the N. terminus; the Texas & Pacific, of which it is the W. terminus; a branch of the Southern Pacific, of which it is the E. terminus; and the short Rio Grande, Sierra Madre & Pacific, of which it is the N. terminus. The city is regularly laid out on level bottom lands, stretching to the table-lands and slopes to the N.E. and N.W. of the city. Opposite, on the W. bank of the river, is the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez (until 1885 known as Paso del Norte), with which El Paso is connected by bridges and by electric railway. The climate is mild, warm and dry, El Paso being well known as a health resort, particularly for sufferers from pulmonary complaints. Among the city’s public buildings are a handsome Federal building, a county court house, a city hall, a Y.M.C.A. building, a public library, a sanatorium for consumptives, and the Hotel Dieu, a hospital maintained by Roman Catholics. El Paso is the seat of St Joseph’s Academy and of the El Paso Military Institute. Three miles E. of the city limits is Fort Bliss, a U.S. military post, with a reservation of about 2 sq. m. El Paso’s situation on the Mexican frontier gives it a large trade with Mexico; it is the port of entry of the Paso del Norte customs district, one of the larger Mexican border districts, and in 1908 its imports were valued at $2,677,784 and its exports at $5,661,901. Wheat, boots and shoes, mining machinery, cement, lime, lumber, beer, and denatured alcohol are among the varied exports; the principal imports are ore, sugar, cigars, oranges, drawn work and Mexican curios. El Paso has extensive manufactories, especially railway car shops, which in 1905 employed 34.5% of the factory wage-earners. Just outside the city limits are important lead smelting works, to which are brought ores for treatment from western Texas, northern Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona. Among the city’s manufactures are cement, denatured alcohol, ether, varnish, clothing and canned goods. The value of the city’s total factory product in 1905 was $2,377,813, 96% greater than that in 1900. El Paso lies in a fertile agricultural valley, and in 1908 the erection of an immense dam was begun near Engle, New Mexico (100 m. above El Paso), by the U.S. government, to store the flood waters of the Rio Grande for irrigating this area. Before the Mexican War, following which the first United States settlement was made, the site of El Paso was known as Ponce de Leon Ranch, the land being owned by the Ponce de Leon family. El Paso was first chartered as a city in 1873, and in 1907 adopted the commission form of government.
ELPHINSTONE, MOUNTSTUART (1779-1859), Indian statesman and historian, fourth son of the 11th Baron Elphinstone in the peerage of Scotland, was born in 1779. Having received an appointment in the civil service of the East India Company, of which one of his uncles was a director, he reached Calcutta in the beginning of 1796. After filling several subordinate posts, he was appointed in 1801 assistant to the British resident at Poona, at the court of the peshwa, the most powerful of the Mahratta princes. Here he obtained his first opportunity of distinction, being attached in the capacity of diplomatist to the mission of Sir Arthur Wellesley to the Mahrattas. When, on the failure of negotiations, war broke out, Elphinstone, though a civilian, acted as virtual aide-de-camp to General Wellesley. He was present at the battle of Assaye, and displayed such courage and knowledge of tactics throughout the whole campaign that Wellesley told him he had mistaken his profession, and that he ought to have been a soldier. In 1804, when the war closed, he was appointed British resident at Nagpur. Here, the times being uneventful and his duties light, he occupied much of his leisure in reading classical and general literature, and acquired those studious habits which clung to him throughout life. In 1808 he was appointed the first British envoy to the court of Kabul, with the object of securing a friendly alliance with the Afghans; but this proved of little value, because Shah Shuja was driven from the throne by his brother before it could be ratified. The most valuable permanent result of the embassy was the literary fruit it bore several years afterwards in Elphinstone’s great work on Kabul. After spending about a year in Calcutta arranging the report of his mission, Elphinstone was appointed in 1811 to the important and difficult post of resident at Poona. The difficulty arose from the general complication of Mahratta politics, and especially from the weak and treacherous character of the peshwa, which Elphinstone rightly read from the first. While the mask of friendship was kept up Elphinstone carried out the only suitable policy, that of vigilant quiescence, with admirable tact and patience; when in 1817 the mask was thrown aside and the peshwa ventured to declare war, the English resident proved for the second time the truth of Wellesley’s assertion that he was born a soldier. Though his own account of his share in the campaign is characteristically modest, one can gather from it that the success of the British troops was chiefly owing to his assuming the command at an important crisis during the battle of Kirkee.
The peshwa being driven from his throne, his territories were annexed to the British dominions, and Elphinstone was nominated commissioner to administer them. He discharged the responsible task with rare judgment and ability. In 1819 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Bombay and held this post till 1827, his principal achievement being the compilation of the “Elphinstone code.” He may fairly be regarded as the founder of the system of state education in India, and he probably did more than any other Indian administrator to further every likely scheme for the promotion of native education. His connexion with the Bombay presidency was appropriately commemorated in the endowment of the Elphinstone College by the native communities, and in the erection of a marble statue by the European inhabitants.
Returning to England in 1829, after an interval of two years’ travel, Elphinstone retained in his retirement and enfeebled health an important influence on public affairs. He twice refused the offer of the governor-generalship of India. Long before his return he had made his reputation as an author by his Account of the Kingdom of Cabul and its Dependencies in Persia and India (1815). Soon after his arrival in England he commenced the preparation of a work of wider scope, a history of India, which was published in 1841. It embraces the Hindu and Mahommedan periods, and is still a work of high authority. He died on the 20th of November 1859.
See J.S. Cotton, Mountstuart Elphinstone (“Rulers of India” series), (1892); T.E. Colebrooke, Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884); and G.W. Forrest, Official Writings of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884).
ELPHINSTONE, WILLIAM (1431-1514), Scottish statesman and prelate, founder of the university of Aberdeen, was born in Glasgow, and educated at the university of his native city, taking the degree of M.A. in 1452. After practising for a short time as a lawyer in the church courts, he was ordained priest, becoming rector of St Michael’s church, Trongate, Glasgow, in 1465. Four years later he went to continue his studies at the university of Paris, where he became reader in canon law, and then, proceeding to Orleans, became lecturer in the university there. Before 1474 he had returned to Scotland, and was made rector of the university, and official of the see of Glasgow. Further promotion followed, but soon more important duties were entrusted to Elphinstone, who was made bishop of Ross in 1481. He was a member of the Scots parliament, and was sent by King James III. on diplomatic errands to Louis XI. of France, and to Edward IV. of England; in 1483 he was appointed bishop of Aberdeen, although his consecration was delayed for four years; and he was sent on missions to England, both before and after the death of Richard III. in 1485. Although he attended the meetings of parliament with great regularity he did not neglect his episcopal duties, and the fabric of the cathedral of Aberdeen owes much to his care. Early in 1488 the bishop was made lord high chancellor, but on the king’s death in the following June he vacated this office, and retired to Aberdeen. As a diplomatist of repute, however, his services were quickly required by the new king, James IV., in whose interests he visited the kings of England and France, and the German king, Maximilian I. Having been made keeper of the privy seal in 1492, and having arranged a dispute between the Scotch and the Dutch, the bishop’s concluding years were mainly spent in the foundation of the university of Aberdeen. The papal bull for this purpose was obtained in 1494, and the royal charter which made old Aberdeen the seat of a university is dated 1498. A small endowment was provided by the king, and the university, modelled on that of Paris and intended principally to be a school of law, soon became the most famous and popular of the Scots seats of learning, a result which was largely due to the wide experience and ripe wisdom of Elphinstone and of his friend, Hector Boece, the first rector. The building of the college of the Holy Virgin in Nativity, now King’s College, was completed in 1506, and the bishop also rebuilt the choir of his cathedral, and built a bridge over the Dee. Continuing to participate in public affairs he opposed the policy of hostility towards England which led to the disaster at Flodden in September 1513, and died in Edinburgh on the 25th of October 1514. Elphinstone was partly responsible for the introduction of printing into Scotland, and for the production of the Breviarium Aberdonense. He may have written some of the lives in this collection, and gathered together materials concerning the history of Scotland; but he did not, as some have thought, continue the Scotichronicon, nor did he write the Lives of Scottish Saints.
See Hector Boece, Murthlacensium et Aberdonensium episcoporum vitae, edited and translated by J. Moir (Aberdeen, 1894); Fasti Aberdonenses, edited by C. Innes (Aberdeen, 1854); and A. Gardyne, Theatre of Scottish Worthies and Lyf of W. Elphinston, edited by D. Laing (Aberdeen, 1878).