VICTORIA

city, seat (1836) of Victoria County, southern Texas, U.S. It lies along the Guadalupe River, 85 miles (137 km) northeast of Corpus Christi. Founded in 1824 by Spanish settlers under Martn de Len, it was named to honour both Nuestra Seora de Guadalupe de Jesus Victoria (Our Lady of Guadalupe) and Guadalupe Victoria, the first Mexican president. Actively involved in the Texas Revolution, it was incorporated (1839) as a city in the Republic of Texas. It developed as a cattle centre and became a rendezvous for trail drivers moving northward. Since the 1940s Victoria has become a hub for oil, gas, and petrochemical production of the Texas Gulf Coast. The city's industrial growth was stimulated by completion (1963) of the 35-mile- (56-kilometre-) long Victoria Barge Canal to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Institutions in the city include Victoria College (1925), the University of Houston at Victoria (1973), and a museum. Pop. (1990) city, 55,076; Victoria MSA, 74,361. town and capital of the Republic of Seychelles, located on the northeastern coast of Mah Island, the largest island in the Seychelles group. Victoria is the only port of the archipelago and the only town of any size in Seychelles. Three-fourths of the people of Mah Island live in Victoria. The port has deep water for large ships and is capable of accommodating four ships at one time. An inner harbour provides facilities for smaller craft. An international airport was built near Victoria in 1971, subsidized by British funds in compensation for the temporary removal of certain islands from Seychelles hegemony. As the business and cultural centre for the country, the town has modern facilities including a hospital and a teacher-training college. Victoria is connected by paved roads to major points on Mah Island. Pop. (1980 est.) 23,880. densely populated urban area in Hong Kong (q.v.), a special administrative region of China. It lies on the north shore of Hong Kong Island, across a strait from Kowloon on the Chinese mainland, with which it is connected by ferry and by automobile and mass transit railway tunnels. Victoria is the chief administrative, commercial, and cultural centre of Hong Kong and is the headquarters for numerous international banks and corporations. Pop. (1981) 590,771. capital of British Columbia, Canada, on the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, overlooking Juan de Fuca Strait. One of the province's oldest communities, it was founded in 1843 as a Hudson's Bay Company fur-trading post known as Fort Camosun, which was later renamed Fort Victoria to honour the English queen. Victoria, which retains a distinct transplanted English atmosphere, served as capital of the colony of Vancouver Island from 1848, before becoming the administrative centre of the united colony of British Columbia in 1868. The city was associated with the gold rush of the 1860s; it is now one of the largest commercial and distribution centres of the province and, because of its equable climate, a popular tourist resort and retirement community. A major Pacific-coast port, with a naval base and dockyard, Victoria is connected to mainland Canada and the United States by air and ferry service and to the remainder of the island by rail and highway. Manufacturing is centred on the forest-products industry but also includes shipbuilding and food processing. The city is the site of Victoria University (1963; formerly Victoria College, established in 1902), an armed forces training college (Royal Roads), The British Columbia Provincial Museum (1886), and an astrophysical observatory. The Victorian-style Parliament Buildings (seat of the provincial legislative assembly) overlook the Inner Harbour and yacht basin. Included in Victoria's metropolitan area are the communities of Esquimalt, Oak Bay, and Saanich. Inc. 1862. Pop. (1991) city, 71,228; metropolitan area, 287,897. Australia state of southeastern Australia, occupying a mountainous coastal region of the continent. Victoria is separated from New South Wales to the north by the Murray River for a length of 1,065 miles (1,714 km) and by an additional boundary of 110 miles (176 km), linking Cape Howe and the nearest source of the Murray River. The western boundary is with South Australia, and the southern coastline on the Tasman Sea and the Antarctic Ocean stretches for 1,045 miles (1,681 km) and includes the shoreline of Port Phillip Bay. Melbourne, the state capital, is at the head of the bay off Bass Strait. Victoria covers an area of 87,900 square miles (227,600 square km). The population in 1991 was estimated at 4,243,719. born Nov. 21, 1840, London, Eng. died Aug. 5, 1901, Schloss Friedrichshof, Kronberg, Ger. formally Empress Frederick, original name Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, German Kaiserin Friedrich, or Viktoria Adelheid Maria Luise consort of the German emperor Frederick III and eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Great Britain. Well-educated and multilingual from childhood (spent largely at Windsor and Buckingham Palace), Victoria remained all her life strongly devoted to England and, even after her marriage to the Prussian crown prince, Frederick William, in 1858, spoke English habitually in her German household. Her English liberalism came to be shared by her husband (whom she tended to dominate) but was scorned by the conservative Prussians, especially the old emperor, William I, and Otto von Bismarck, with whom a mutual resentment developed. Within the constraints of her position, however, she encouraged philanthropic causes and the arts. When her husband developed throat cancer and died only 99 days after becoming emperor (as Frederick III) in 1888, she lost all possibility of influencing a change of political climate. She was again subjected to estrangement, for her son, the new emperor William II, was thoroughly Prussianized. Although later somewhat reconciled to him, she semiretired to Kronberg in the Taunus hills, where she built a palatial country seat, Schloss Friedrichshof. She died there of cancer, outliving her mother by only six months.