PORT ELIZABETH (25), the third largest town and chief trading centre of Cape Colony; stands on Algoa Bay, 85 m.  SW. of Grahamstown; it has magnificent public buildings, parks, and squares, a college, library, and museum.  It is the chief port in the E. of the colony and for Natal, the principal exports being wools, hides, and ostrich feathers.

PORT GLASGOW (15), a Renfrewshire seaport on the S. shore of the Firth of Clyde, 3 m.  E. of Greenock and 20 W. of Glasgow; was founded by the magistrates of Glasgow in 1668 as a port for that city before the deepening of the river was projected.  In the beginning of the 18th century it was the chief port on the Clyde, but has since been surpassed by Greenock and Glasgow itself.  There are shipbuilding, iron and brass founding industries, and extensive timber ponds.

PORT LOUIS (62), capital of Mauritius, on the NW. coast; is the chief port of the colony, with an excellent harbour, and contains the British government buildings, a Protestant and a Roman Catholic cathedral, barracks, and military store-houses.  It is a naval coaling-station.

PORT ROYAL, a convent founded in 1204, 8 m.  SW. of Versailles, and which in the 17th century became the head-quarters of JANSENISM (q. v.), and the abode of Antoine Lemaitre, Antoine Arnauld, and others, known as the “Solitaires of the Port Royal.”  They were distinguished for their austerity, their piety, and their learning, in evidence of which last they established a school of instruction, in connection with which they prepared a series of widely famous educational works.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (20), on the W. coast of Hayti, on Port-au-Prince Bay, is the capital; a squalid town; exports coffee, cocoa, logwood, hides, and mahogany.

PORTCULLIS, a strong grating resembling a harrow hanging over the gateway of a fortress, let down in a groove of the wall in the case of a surprise.

PORTE, SUBLIME, or simply the Porte, is a name given to the Turkish Government.

PORTEOUS MOB, the name given a mob that collected in the city of Edinburgh on the night of the 7th September 1736, broke open the Tolbooth jail, and dragged to execution in the Grassmarket one Captain Porteous, captain of the City Guard, who on the occasion of a certain riot had ordered his men to fire on the crowd to the death of some and the wounding of others, and had been tried and sentenced to death, but, to the indignation of the citizens, had been respited.  The act was one for which the authorities in the city were held responsible by the Government, and the city had to pay to Porteous’ widow L1500.

PORTER, JANE, English novelist, born in Durham; her most famous novels were “Thaddeus of Warsaw” (1803) and “The Scottish Chiefs” (1810), both highly popular in their day, the latter particularly; it induced Scott to go on with Waverley; died at Bristol (1776-1850).

PORTER, NOAH, American philosophical writer, born at Farmington, Connecticut, educated at Yale; was a Congregationalist minister 1836-46, then professor of Moral Philosophy at Yale, and afterwards President of the college; Edinburgh University granted him the degree of D.D. in 1886; among his works are “The Human Intellect” and “Books and Reading”; b. 1811.