following
year Otto, in conjunction with Duke Adolf of Holstein, wasted the
dominions of the Danophil Abodrites. The war continued intermittently
till 1201, when Duke Valdemar, Canute's younger brother, conquered the
whole of Holstein, and Duke Adolf was subsequently captured at Hamburg
and sent in chains to Denmark. North Albingia, as the district between
the Eider and the Elbe was then called, now became Danish territory.
Canute died on the 12th of November 1202. Undoubtedly he owed the
triumphs of his reign very largely to the statesmanship of Absalon and
the valour of Valdemar. But he was certainly a prudent and circumspect
ruler of blameless life, possessing, as Arnold of Lubeck (c. 1160-1212)
expresses it, "the sober wisdom of old age even in his tender youth."

See _Danmarks Riges Historic. Oldtiden og den aeldre Middelalder_
(Copenhagen, 1897-1905), pp. 721-735. (R. N. B.)

CANVAS, a stout cloth which probably derives its name from _cannabis_,
the Latin word for hemp. This would appear to indicate that canvas was
originally made from yarns of the hemp fibre, and there is some ground
for the assumption. This fibre and that of flax have certainly been used
for ages for the production of cloth for furnishing sails, and for
certain classes of cloth used for this purpose the terms "sailcloth" and
"canvas" are synonymous. Warden, in his _Linen Trade_, states that the
manufacture of sailcloth was established in England in 1590, as appears
by the preamble of James I., cap. 23:--"Whereas the cloths called
_Mildernix_ and _Powel Davies_, whereof sails and other furniture for
the navy and shipping are made, were heretofore altogether brought out
of France and other parts beyond sea, and the skill and art of making
and weaving of the said sailcloths never known or used in England until
about the thirty-second year of the late Queen Elizabeth, about what
time and not before the perfect art or skill of making or weaving of the
said cloths was attained to, and since practised and continued in this
realm, to the great benefit and commodity thereof." But this, or a
similar cloth of the same name had been used for centuries before this
time by the Egyptians and Phoenicians. Since the introduction of the
power loom the cloth has undergone several modifications, and it is now
made both from flax, hemp, tow, jute and cotton, or a mixture of these,
but the quality of sailcloth for the British government is kept up to