fine view westward of the bay and rock of St Michel. At the
foot of the hill flows the river See, which at high tide is navigable from
the sea. The town is surrounded by avenues, which occupy the site of the
ancient ramparts, remains of which are to be seen on the north side.
Avranches was from 511 to 1790 a bishop's see, held at the end of the 17th
century by the scholar Daniel Huet; and its cathedral, destroyed as
insecure in the time of the first French Revolution, was the finest in
Normandy. Its site is now occupied by an open square, one stone remaining
to mark the spot where Henry II. of England received absolution for the
murder of Thomas Becket. The churches of Notre-Dame des Champs and St
Saturnin are modern buildings in the Gothic style. The ancient episcopal
palace is now used as a court of justice; a public library is kept in the
hotel de ville. In the public gardens there is a statue of General Jean
Marie Valhubert, killed at Austerlitz. Avranches is seat of a sub-prefect
and has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college.
Leather-dressing is the chief industry; steam-sawing, brewing and dyeing
are also carried on, and horticulture flourishes in the environs. Trade is
in cider, cattle, butter, flowers and fruit, and there are salmon and other
fisheries.

Avranches, an important military station of the Romans, was in the middle
ages chief place of a county of the duchy of Normandy. It sustained several
sieges, the most noteworthy of which, in 1591, was the result of its
opposition to Henry IV. In 1639 Avranches was the focus of the peasant
revolt against the salt-tax, known as the revolt of the Nu-pieds.

AWADIA and FADNIA, two small nomad tribes of pure Arab blood living in the
Bayuda desert, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, between the wells of Jakdul and
Metemma. They are often incorrectly classed as Ja'alin. They own numbers of
horses and cattle, the former of the black Dongola breed. At the battle of
Abu Klea (17th of January 1885) they were conspicuous for their courage in
riding against the British square.

See _Anglo-Egyptian Sudan_, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905).

AWAJI, an island belonging to Japan, situated at the eastern entrance of
the Inland Sea, having a length of 32 m., an extreme breadth of 16 m., and
an area of 218 sq. m., with a population of about 190,000. It is separated
on the south from the island of Shikoku by the Naruto channel, through
which, in certain conditions of the t