V0ITURE, Nicolas Auguste (vwah'-tewr), South American explorer, born in Santiago, Chili, about 1764 ; died in Lima, Peru, in 1821. He was the son of a French merchant of Santiago, received his early education in Chili, and finished his studies in Paris, where he was a journalist during the revolution, but in 1794, after the fall of the Girondists, returned to South America. Inheriting an independent fortune by the death of his father, he began to travel, and at the suggestion of a German hunter, who had travelled through Patagonia and could speak some of the Indian dialects, resolved to visit that country. He left Montevideo in December, 1801, but, after frequent landings on the desolate coast of Patagonia, abandoned his idea of visiting the interior. He made valuable nautical observations on the coast and at the entrance to the Strait of Magellan, visited Tierra del Fuego, doubled Cape Horn, and anchored at Valparaiso in October, 1803. Soon afterward he removed to Lima, and devoted his later years to literature and science. He published "Ensayo sobre el arte de navegar" (Lima, 1809); "Journal d'un voyage aux cotes de Patagonie, dans le detroit de Magellan, la Terre de Feu, et a la cote de Chili" (3 vols., Paris, 1812); "Ensayo sobre la Patagonia" (Lima, 1814); and "Histoire litteraire de l'Amerique du Sud" (2 vols., Paris, 1818).V0LK, Leonard Wells, sculptor, born in Wells-town (now Wells), Hamilton County, New York, 7 November, 1828. At the age of sixteen he began the trade of marble-cutting in his father's shop at Pittsfield, Massachusetts In 1848 he went to St. Louis, Missouri, and in the following year he undertook modelling in clay and drawing without instructors. He was subsequently engaged in business. In 1855 Stephen A. Douglas, who was his wife's cousin, aided him to go to Italy for study. Volk remained there until 1857, when he settled in Chicago. His first sitter for a portrait-bust--the first that was ever modelled in that city--was his patron, and he subsequently, in 1858, made a life-size statue of Mr. Douglas in marble. In 1860 he executed a portrait-bust of Abraham Lincoln, the original marble of which was burnt in the Historical society building during the great fire of 1871. He revisited Italy for study in 1868-'9 and 1871-'2. He was elected an academician of the Chicago academy in 1867, and was for eight years its president. His principal works are the Douglas monument in Chicago, several soldiers' monuments, the statuary for the Henry Keep mausoleum at Watertown, New York, life-size statues of Lincoln and Douglas in the state house, Springfield, Illinois (1876), and portrait-busts of Henry Clay, Zachariah Chandler, Dr. Daniel Brainard, Bishop Charles H. Fowler. David Davis, Thomas B. Bryan, Leonard Swett, Elihu B. Washburne, and many others.--His son, Stephen Arnold Douglas (known as DOUGLAS), artist, born in Pittsfield Mass., 23 February, 1856, studied in Italy during 1871-'3, and was the pupil of Jean L. Gerome, in Paris, in 1873-'5 and again in 1876-'8. In 1875 he exhibited at the salon "In Brittany," and his "Vanity" was at the Philadelphia centennial exhibition of 1876. His other important works are "In the Studio " (1880) ; "The Puritan Maiden" (1.881) ; "The Puritan Captives" (1882) : "Accused of Witchcraft" (1884) ; and "The Bride" (1886). In 1880 he was elected a member of the Society of American artists, and he is organizing the Minneapolis school of fine arts, of which he is director.