KINGSTOWN, a seaport of Co. Dublin, Ireland, in the south parliamentary division, at the south-eastern extremity of Dublin Bay, 6 m. S.E. from Dublin by the Dublin & South-Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 17,377. It is a large seaport and favourite watering-place, and possesses several fine streets, with electric trams, and terraces commanding picturesque sea views. The original name of Kingstown was Dunleary, which was exchanged for the present designation after the embarkation of George IV. at the port on his return from Ireland in 1821, an event which is also commemorated by a granite obelisk erected near the harbour. The town was a mere fishing village until the construction of an extensive harbour, begun in 1817 and finally completed in 1859. The eastern pier has a length of 3500 ft. and the western of 4950 ft., the total area enclosed being about 250 acres, with a varying depth of from 15 to 27 ft. Kingstown is the station of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company’s mail steamers to Holyhead in connexion with the London & North-Western railway. It has large export and import trade both with Great Britain and foreign countries. The principal export is cattle, and the principal imports corn and provisions. Kingstown is the centre of an extensive sea-fishery; and there are three yacht clubs: the Royal Irish, Royal St George and Royal Alfred.
KING-TÊ CHÊN, a town near Fu-liang Hien, in the province of Kiang-si, China, and the principal seat of the porcelain manufacture in that empire. Being situated on the south bank of the river Chang, it was in ancient times known as Chang-nan Chên, or “town on the south of the river Chang.” It is unwalled, and straggles along the bank of the river. The streets are narrow, and crowded with a population which is reckoned at a million, the vast majority of whom find employment at the porcelain factories. Since the Ch’in dynasty (557-589) this has been the great trade of the place, which was then called by its earlier name. In the reign of King-tê (Chên-tsung) of the Sung dynasty, early in the 11th century A.D., a manufactory was founded there for making vases and objects of art for the use of the emperor. Hence its adoption of its present title. Since the time of the Ming dynasty a magistrate has been specially appointed to superintend the factories and to despatch at regulated intervals the imperial porcelain to Peking. The town is situated on a vast plain surrounded by mountains, and boasts of three thousand porcelain furnaces. These constantly burning fires are the causes of frequent conflagrations, and at night give the city the appearance of a place on fire. The people are as a rule orderly, though they have on several occasions shown a hostile bearing towards foreign visitors. This is probably to be accounted for by a desire to keep their art as far as possible a mystery, which appears less unreasonable when it is remembered that the two kinds of earth of which the porcelain is made are not found at King-tê Chên, but are brought from K’i-mun in the neighbouring province of Ngan-hui, and that there is therefore no reason why the trade should be necessarily maintained at that place. The two kinds of earth are known as pai-tun-tsze, which is a fine fusible quartz powder, and kaolin, which is not fusible, and is said to give strength to the ware. Both materials are prepared in the shape of bricks at K’i-mun, and are brought down the Chang to the seat of the manufacture.
KINGUSSIE, a town of Inverness-shire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 987. It lies at a height of 750 ft. above sea-level, on the left bank of the Spey, here crossed by a bridge, 46½ m. S. by S.E. of Inverness by the Highland railway. It was founded towards the end of the 18th century by the duke of Gordon, in the hope of its becoming a centre of woollen manufactures. This expectation, however, was not realized, but in time the place grew popular as a health resort, the scenery in every direction being remarkably picturesque. On the right bank of the river is Ruthven, where James Macpherson was born in 1736, and on the left bank, some 2½ m. from Kingussie, is the house of Belleville (previously known as Raitts) which he acquired from Mackintosh of Borlum and where he died in 1796. The mansion, renamed Balavil by Macpherson’s great-grandson, was burned down in 1903, when the fine library (including some MSS. of Sir David Brewster, who had married the poet’s second daughter) was destroyed. Of Ruthven Castle, one of the residences of the Comyns of Badenoch, only the ruins of the walls remain. Here the Jacobites made an ineffectual rally under Lord George Murray after the battle of Culloden.
KING WILLIAM’S TOWN, a town of South Africa, in the Cape province and on the Buffalo River, 42 m. by rail W.N.W. of the port of East London. Pop. (1904), 9506, of whom 5987 were whites. It is the headquarters of the Cape Mounted Police. “King,” as the town is locally called, stands 1275 ft. above the sea at the foot of the Amatola Mountains, and in the midst of a thickly populated agricultural district. The town is well laid out and most of the public buildings and merchants’ stores are built of stone. There are manufactories of sweets and jams, candles, soap, matches and leather, and a large trade in wool, hides and grains is done with East London. “King” is also an important entrepôt for trade with the natives throughout Kaffraria, with which there is direct railway communication. Founded by Sir Benjamin D’Urban in May 1835 during the Kaffir War of that year, the town is named after William IV. It was abandoned in December 1836, but was reoccupied in 1846 and was the capital of British Kaffraria from its creation in 1847 to its incorporation in 1865 with Cape Colony. Many of the colonists in the neighbouring districts are descendants of members of the German legion disbanded after the Crimean War and provided with homes in Cape Colony; hence such names as Berlin, Potsdam, Braunschweig, Frankfurt, given to settlements in this part of the country.
KINKAJOU (Cercoleptes caudivolvulus or Potos flavus), the single species of an aberrant genus of the raccoon family (Procyonidae). It has been split up into a number of local races. A native of the forests of the warmer parts of South and Central America, the kinkajou is about the size of a cat, of a uniform pale, yellowish-brown colour, nocturnal and arboreal in its habits, feeding on fruit, honey, eggs and small birds and mammals, and is of a tolerably gentle disposition and easily tamed. (See [Carnivora].)