KEENE, a city and the county-seat of Cheshire county, New Hampshire, U.S.A., on the Ashuelot river, about 45 m. S.W. of Concord, N.H., and about 92 m. W.N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1900), 9165, of whom 1255 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 10,068. Area, 36.5 sq. m. It is served by the Boston & Maine railroad and by the Fitchburg railroad (leased by the Boston & Maine). The site is level, but is surrounded by ranges of lofty hills—Monadnock Mountain is about 10 m. S.E. Most of the streets are pleasantly shaded. There are three parks, with a total area of about 219 acres; and in Central Square stands a soldiers’ and sailors’ monument designed by Martin Milmore and erected in 1871. The principal buildings are the city hall, the county buildings and the city hospital. The Public Library had in 1908 about 16,300 volumes. There are repair shops of the Boston & Maine railroad here, and manufactures of boots and shoes, woollen goods, furniture (especially chairs), pottery, &c. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,690,967. The site of Keene was one of the Massachusetts grants made in 1733, but Canadian Indians made it untenable and it was abandoned from 1746 until 1750. In 1753 it was incorporated and was named Keene, in honour of Sir Benjamin Keene (1697-1757), the English diplomatist, who as agent for the South Sea Company and Minister in Madrid, and as responsible for the commercial treaty between England and Spain in 1750, was in high reputation at the time; it was chartered as a city in 1874.
KEEP, ROBERT PORTER (1844-1904), American scholar, was born in Farmington, Connecticut, on the 26th of April 1844. He graduated at Yale in 1865, was instructor there for two years, was United States consul at the Piraeus in Greece in 1869-1871, taught Greek in Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Massachusetts, in 1876-1885, and was principal of Norwich Free Academy, Norwich, Conn., from 1885 to 1903, the school owing its prosperity to him hardly less than to its founders. In 1903 he took charge of Miss Porter’s school for girls at Farmington, Conn., founded in 1844 and long controlled by his aunt, Sarah Porter. He died in Farmington on the 3rd of June 1904.
KEEP (corresponding to the French donjon), in architecture the inmost and strongest part of a medieval castle, answering to the citadel of modern times. The arrangement is said to have originated with Gundulf, bishop of Rochester (d. 1108), architect of the White Tower. The Norman keep is generally a very massive square tower. There is generally a well in a medieval keep, ingeniously concealed in the thickness of a wall or in a pillar. The most celebrated keeps of Norman times in England are the White Tower in London, those at Rochester Arundel and Newcastle, Castle Hedingham, &c. When the keep was circular, as at Conisborough and Windsor, it was called a “shell-keep” (see [Castle]). The verb “to keep,” from which the noun with its particular meaning here treated was formed, appears in O.E. as cépan, of which the derivation is unknown; no words related to it are found in cognate languages. The earliest meaning (c. 1000) appears to have been to lay hold of, to seize, from which its common uses of to guard, observe, retain possession of, have developed.
KEEWATIN, a district of Canada, bounded E. by Committee Bay, Fox Channel, and Hudson and James bays, S. and S.W. by the Albany and English rivers, Manitoba, Lake Winnipeg, and Nelson river, W. by the 100th meridian, and N. by Simpson and Rae straits and gulf and peninsula of Boothia; thus including an area of 445,000 sq. m. Its surface is in general barren and rocky, studded with innumerable lakes with intervening elevations, forest-clad below 60° N., but usually bare or covered with moss or lichens, forming the so-called “barren lands” of the north. With the exception of a strip of Silurian and Devonian rocks, 40 to 80 m. wide, extending from the vicinity of the Severn river to the Churchill, and several isolated areas of Cambrian and Huronian, the district is occupied by Laurentian rocks. The principal river is the Nelson, which, with its great tributary, the Saskatchewan, is 1450 m. long; other tributaries are the Berens, English, Winnipeg, Red and Assiniboine. The Hayes, Severn and Winisk also flow from the south-west into Hudson Bay, and the Ekwan, Attawapiskat and Albany, 500 m. long, into James Bay. The Churchill, 925 m., Thlewliaza, Maguse, and Ferguson rivers discharge into Hudson Bay on the west side; the Kazan, 500 m., and Dubawnt, 660 m., into Chesterfield Inlet; and Back’s river, rising near Aylmer Lake, flows north-eastwards 560 m. to the Arctic Ocean. The principal lakes are St Joseph and Seul on the southern boundary; northern part of Lake Winnipeg, 710 ft. above the sea; Island; South Indian; Etawney; Nueltin; Yathkyed, at an altitude of 300 ft.; Maguse; Kaminuriak; Baker, 30 ft.; Aberdeen, 130 ft.; and Garry. The principal islands are Southampton, area 17,800 sq. m.; Marble Island, the usual wintering place for whaling vessels; and Bell and Coats Islands, in Hudson Bay; and Akimiski, in James Bay.
A few small communities at the posts of the Hudson Bay Company constitute practically the whole of the white population. In 1897 there were 852 Indians in the Churchill and Nelson rivers district, but no figures are available for the district as a whole. The principal posts in Keewatin are Norway House, near the outlet of Lake Winnipeg; Oxford House, on the lake of the same name; York Factory, at the mouth of Hayes river; and Forts Severn and Churchill, at the mouths of the Severn and Churchill rivers respectively. In 1905 the district of Keewatin was included in the North-West Territories and the whole placed under an administrator or acting governor. The derivation of the name is from the Cree—the “north wind.”