THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
ELEVENTH EDITION
FIRST edition, published in three volumes, 1768—1771.
SECOND ten 1777—1784.
THIRD eighteen 1788—1797.
FOURTH twenty 1801 — 1810.
FIFTH twenty 1815—1817.
SIXTH twenty 1823 — 1824.
SEVENTH twenty-one 1830—1842.
EIGHTH twenty-two 1853—1860.
NINTH twenty-five 1875—1889.
TENTH ninth edition and eleven
supplementary volumes, 1902 — 1903.
ELEVENTH ,, published in twenty-nine volumes, 1910 — 1911.
COPYRIGHT
in all countries subscribing to the
Bern Convention
by
THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
All rights reserved
THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
DICTIONARY
OF
ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL
INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME XXV
SHUVALOV to SUBLIMINAL SELF
Cambridge, England:
at the University Press
New York, 35 West 3 2nd Street
1911
R
Copyright, in the United States of America, 1911,
by
The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company
INITIALS USED IN VOLUME XXV. TO IDENTIFY INDIVIDUAL
CONTRIBUTORS,1 WITH THE HEADINGS OF THE
ARTICLES IN THIS VOLUME SO SIGNED.
A. B. G. REV. ALEXANDER BALLOCH GROSART, LL.D., D.D. /Stirling, William Alexander,
See the biographical article: GROSART, ALEXANDER BALI.OCH. \ Earl ol (in part).
A. C. McG. ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGnrjERT, M.A., PH.D., D.D. f Socrates (Church Historian)
Professor of Church History, Union Theological Seminary, New York. Author of I / . . ,\ .
History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age; &c. Editor of the Historic. Ecclesia] ^ *jT,f \
of Eusebius. I Sozomen (in part).
A. D. HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON, LL.D., D.C.L. / steele> Slr Richard (in part);
See the biographical article: DOBSON, H. AUSTIN. \Sterne, Laurence (in part).
A. De. ARTHUR DENDV, D.Sc., F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S. f
Professor of Zoology in King's College, London. Zoological Secretary of the J Snonees
Linnean Society of London. Author of memoirs on systematic zoology, com- 1
parative anatomy, embryology, &c.
A. E. H. A. E. HOUGHTON.
Formerly Correspondent of the Standard in Spain. Author of Restoration of the! Spain: History (in part).
Bourbons in Spain.
A. E. S. ARTHUR EVERETT SHIPLEY, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S. J Sipunculoidea;
Master of Christ's College, Cambridge. Reader in Zoology, Cambridge University, "j Smith, William Robertson.
Joint-editor of the Cambridge Natural History.
A. F. E. ALLEN F. EVERETT. J Signal: Marine Signalling
Commander, R.N. Formerly Superintendent of the Signal School, H. M.S. "Victory, " 1 un parf\
Portsmouth.
A. F. P. ALBERT FREDERICK POLLARD, M.A., F.R.HiST.Soc.
Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Professor of English History in the Uni- I Somerset, Edward Seymour,
versity of London. Assistant Editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, -| Dlllw of
1893-1901. Author of England under the Protector Somerset; Life of Thomas
Cranmer; &c. L
A. Go.* REV. ALEXANDER GORDON, M.A. / _ .
Lecturer in Church History in the University of Manchester. \ *' mus-
A. Ha. ADOLF HARNACK, D.PH. J So°rat«s
See the biographical article: HARNACK, ADOLF. (tn
[ Sozomen (in part).
A. H. S. Rev. ARCHIBALD HENRY SAYCE, LITT.D., LL.D. f
See the biographical article: SAYCE, A. H. "[ Sippara.
A. J. G. REV. ALEXANDER JAMES GRIEVE, M.A., B.D. r
Professor of New Testament and Church History at the United Independent College, J Smyth John
Bradford. Sometime Registrar of Madras University and Member of Mysore 1
Educational Service. I
A. Ma. ALEXANDER MACALISTER, M.A., LL.D., M.D., D.Sc., F.R.S. f
Professor of Anatomy in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St John's J
College. Formerly Professor of Zoology in the University of Dublin. Author of 1
Text-Book of Human Anatomy; &c. I
A. Mel. ARTHUR MELLOR. f Silk: Spinning of "Silk
Of Messrs J. & T. Brocklehurst & Sons, Silk Manufacturers, Macclesfield. \ Waste."
A. M. C. AGNES MARY CLERKE. f Smyth, Charles Piazzi;
See the biographical article: CLERKE, AGNES M. \ Stone, Edward James.
A. M. F.* ARTHUR MOSTYN FIELD, F.R.S., F.R.A.S., F.R.G.S., F.R.MET.S. f
Vice-Admiral, R.N. Admiralty Representative on Port of London Authority. -I Bounding.
Hydrographer of the Royal Navy, 1904-1909. I
1 A complete list, showing all individual contributors, appears in the final volume.
V
1994
vi INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
A. M.-Fa. ALFRED MOREL-FATIO. f .. ,
Professor of Romance Languages at the College de France, Paris. Member of the I Spam: Language (tn part),
Institute of France; Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Secretary of the Ecole 1 and Literature (in part).
des Charles, 1885-1906; &c. Author of L'Espagne au XVI' et au XVII' sticks. I
r Siskin; Skimmer; Skua;
A. N. ALFRED NEWTON, F.R.S. J Snake-bird; Snipe; Sparrow:
See the biographical article: NEWTON, ALFRED. I Spoonbill; Stilt; Stork.
A. P. H. ALFRED PETER HILLIER, M.D., M.P.
Author of South African Studies; The Commonweal; &c. Served in Kaffir War, cnllti, Afripa-
1878-1879. Partner with Dr L. S. Jameson in medical practice in South Africa \ oo"111 " !~
till 1896. Member of Reform Committee, Johannesburg, and Political Prisoner at \ln port).
Pretoria, 1895-1896. M.P. for Hitchin division of Herts, 1910. L
A. S.* ARTHUR SCHUSTER, F.R.S. , PH.D., D.Sc. f
Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, 1888-1907. President of ^he I
International Association of Seismology. Author of Theory of Optics and papers in | Spectroscopy.
the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society. L
A. So. ALBRECHT SOCIN, PH.D. (1844-1899). [ .... T, D.-/./.-../
Formerly Professor of Semitic Philology in the Universities of Leipzig and Tubingen. i
Author of Arabische Grammatik ; &c. L SttUt.
A. S. E. ARTHUR STANLEY EDDINGTQN, M.A., M.Sc., F.R.A.S.
Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Fellow of Trinity College, j Star.
Cambridge.
A. S. P.-P. ANDREW SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L. f
Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. Gifford I
Lecturer in the University of Aberdeen, 1911. Fellow of the British Academy. |
Author of Man's Place in the Cosmos ; The Philosophical Radicals ; &c.
A. W. H.* ARTHUR WILLIAM HOLLAND. f oMmmith Viscount
Formerly Scholar of St John's College, Oxford. Bacon Scholar of Gray's Inn, 1900. \ ol
A. W. P. ALFRED WALLIS PAUL, C.I.E.
Member of the Indian Civil Service, 1870-1895. Political Officer, Sikkim Expedition. J Sikkim.
British Commissioner under Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890. Deputy Com- I
missioner of Darjeeling.
f Signal: Army Signalling (in
B. B, A. BRAMAN BLANCHARD ADAMS. 4 part), and Railway Signal-
Associate Editor of the Railway Age Gazette, New York. L /jw» Un parf)
B. K.* BENJAMIN KIDD, D.C.L. f Sociology.
Author of Social Evolution ; Principles of Western Civilization ; &c. L
B. W. G. BENEDICT WILLIAM GINSBURG, M.A., LL.D. [
St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Barrister-at-Law of the Inner Temple. I Steamship Lines.
Formerly Editor of the Navy, and Secretary of the Royal Statistical Society. |
Author of Hints on the Legal Duties of Shipmasters ; &c. L
C. A. G. B. SIR CYPRIAN ARTHUR GEORGE BRIDGE, G.C.B. f c._ .. •., . ,-,. „.
Admiral R.N. Commander-in-Chief, China Station, 1901-1904. Director of J Sl8nal- Marine Signalling
Naval Intelligence, 1889-1894. Author of The Art of Naval Warfare; Sea-Power (in part),
and other Studies ; &c.
C. B.* CHARLES BEMONT, LITT.D. (Oxon.). / Sorel, Albert.
See the biographical article: BEMONT, CHARLES. \
C. D. W. HON. CARROLL DAVIDSON WRIGHT. f Strikes and Lock-outs:
See the biographical article: WRIGHT, HON. CARROLL DAVIDSON. I United, States.
C. F. A. CHARLES FRANCIS ATKINSON. f Spanish Succession, War of
Formerly Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford. Captain, 1st City of London (RoyaH /:„ j.nrl)
Fusiliers). Author of The Wilderness and Cold Harbor.
C. H.* SIR CHARLES HOLROYD, LITT. D. f strang, William.
See the biographical article: HOLROYD, SIR CHARLES. I
C. H. Ha. CARLTON HUNTLEY HAYES, A.M., PH.D. f Sixtus IV.;
Assistant Professor of History in Columbia University, New York. Member of •} Stilichot Flavius.
the American Historical Association. \.
C. L. K. CHARLES LETHBRIDGE KINGSFORD, M.A., F.R.HiST. Soc., F.S. A. f Somerset, Edmund Beaufort,
Assistant Secretary to the Board of Education. Author of Life of Henry V. Editor -! jjuke of
of Chronicles of London and Stow's Survey of London. [
C. P.* CARL PULFRICH, PH.D. f
On the staff of the Carl Zeiss Factory, Jena. Formerly Privatdozent at the -i Stereoscope.
University of Bonn. Member of the Astronomical Societies of Brussels and Paris. L
C. Pa. CESARE PAOLI. / „,._«
See the biographical article: PAOLI, CESARE. \ Sl ina
C. ft. CHRISTIAN PFISTER, D. ES L. f
Professor at the Sorbonne, Paris. Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Author of J Sigebert, King.
Eludes sur le regne de Robert le Pieux; Le Duche merovingien d' Alsace et la legende |
de Sainte-Odile. \.
C. R. B. CHARLES RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A., D.LiTT., F.R.G.S., F.R.Hisi.S. f
Professor of Modern History in the University of Birmingham. Formerly Fellow I Simon of St Quentin;
of Merton College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in the History of Geography, i sindbad the Sailor Voyages of.
Lothian Prizeman, Oxford, 1889. Lowell Lecturer, Boston, 1908. Author of
Henry the Navigator; The Dawn of Modern Geography; &c.
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
Vll
c. s. s.
c. w. w.
D. F. T.
D. G. H.
CHARLES SCOTT SHERRINGTON, M.A., D.Sc., M.D., F.R.S., LL.D. f
Professor of Physiology in the University of Liverpool. Author of The Integrative \ Spinal Cord' Phvsioloev
Action of the Nervous System. |_ ""
SIR CHARLES WILLIAM WILSON, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., F.R S. (1836-1907). f
Major-General, Royal Engineers. Secretary to the North American Boundary
Commission, 1858-1862. British Commissioner on the Servian Boundary Com- J „. , .
mission. Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, 1886-1894. Director-General] "lvas \in
of Military Education, 1895-1898. Author of From Korti to Khartoum; Life of
Lord Clive; &c. [
DONALD FRANCIS TOVEY.
Author of Essays in Musical Analysis, comprising The Classical Concerto, The
Goldberg Variations, and analyses of many other classical works.
DAVID GEORGE HOGARTH, M.A. [ Side; Sis;
Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. J Sivas (in part)-
Fellow of the British Academy. Excavated at Paphos, 1888; Naucratis, 1899 and ] qmvrna !•!„ 4,n'rf\-
1903; Ephesus, 1904-1905; Assiut, 1906-1907. Director, British School at Athens,
1897-1900. Director, Cretan Exploration Fund, 1899. [SOU (Asia Minor).
I Sonata Forms;
1 Spohr, Ludwig.
D. H.
D. M. W.
E. A.
E. A. F.
E. C. B.
E. G.
E. H. M.
Ed. M.
E. Ma.
E. M. S.
E. M. T.
E.O.*
E. Pr.
E. W. H.
F. A. B.
DAVID HANNAY.
Formerly British Vice-Consul at Barcelona.
Navy ; Life of Emilia Castelar ; &c.
Author of Short History of the Royal .
SIR DONALD MACKENZIE WALLACE, K.C.I.E., K.C.V.O.
Extra Groom of the Bedchamber to H.M. King George V. Director of the Foreign
Department of The Times, 1891-1899. Member of Institut de Droit International
and Officier de 1'Instruction Publique of France. Joint-editor of the New Volumes
(loth ed.) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Author of Russia; Egypt and the
Egyptian Question ; The Web of Empire ; &c.
EDWARD ARBER, D.Lrrr., F.S.A. f
See the biographical article: ARBER, EDWARD.
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN, LL.D., D.C.L.
See the biographical article: FREEMAN, E. A.
Rx. REV. EDWARD CUTHBERT BUTLER, O.S.B., M.A., D.LITT.
Abbot of Downside Abbey, Bath. Author of " The Lausiac History of Palladius '
in Cambridge Texts and Studies.
EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D.
See the biographical article: GOSSE, EDMUND.
Sluys, Battle of;
Spain: History (in part);
Spanish Succession, War of:
Naval and Military Opera-
tions;
Spinola, Ambrose.
Shuvalov, Count.
Smith, John (1579-1631).
| Sicily: History (in part).
, J Silvestrines;
[ Simeon Stylites, St.
Song (Literary);
I Stanley, Thomas;
j Stevenson, Robert Louis;
[ Style.
ELLIS HOVELL MINNS, M.A. f Slavs;
University Lecturer in Palaeography, Cambridge. Lecturer and Assistants Slovaks;
Librarian at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Formerly Fellow of Pembroke College. I Slovenes; Sorbs
EDUARD MEYER, PH.D., D.LITT., LL.D. f
Professor of Ancient History in the University of Berlin. Author of Geschichte des •! Smerdis.
Alterthums; Geschichte des alien Aegyptens; Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstdmme. [_
EDWARD MANSON.
Barrister-at-Law. Joint-editor of the Journal of Comparative Legislation. Author
of Law of Trading Companies; Practical Guide to Company Law; &c.
ELEANOR MILDRED SIDGWICK (MRS HENRY SIDGWICK), D.LITT., LL.D.
Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, 1892-1910. Hon. Secretary to the
Society for Psychical Research. Author of Papers in the Proceedings of the Society
for Psychical Research.
Stocks and Shares.
•| Spiritualism.
SIR EDWARD MAUNDE THOMPSON, G.C.B., I.S.O., D.C.L., LITT.D., LL.D.
Director and Principal Librarian, British Museum, 1898-1909. Sandars Reader
in Bibliography, Cambridge University, 1895-1896. Hon. Fellow of University
College, Oxford. Author of Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography. Editor erf
the Chronicon Angliae. Joint-editor of publications of the Palaeographical Society
the New Palaeographical Society, and of the Facsimile of the Laurentian Sophocles!
EDMUND OWEN, F.R.C.S., LL.D., D.Sc.
Consulting Surgeon to St Mary's Hospital, London, and to the Children's Hospital,
Great Ormond Street, London. Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Author of
A Manual of Anatomy for Senior Students.
EDGAR PRESTAGE.
Special Lecturer in Portuguese Literature in the University of Manchester. Com-
mendador, Portuguese Order of S. Thiago. Corresponding Member of Lisbon Royal
Academy of Sciences and Lisbon Geographical Society ; &c.
ERNEST WILLIAM HOBSON, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S., F.R.A.S.
Fellow and Tutor in Mathematics, Christ's College, Cambridge. Stokes Lecturer in
Mathematics in the University.
FRANCIS ARTHUR BATHER, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S., F.R.G.S.
Assistant Keeper of Geology, British Museum. Rolleston Prizeman, Oxford, 1892. ,
Author of " Echinoderma ' in A Treatise on Zoology; Triassic Echinoderms of
Bakony; &c.
j Stichometry.
(Skull: Cranial Surgery
Spinal Cord (Surgery) ;
Stomach.
(Silva, Antonio J. da;
Sousa, Luiz de.
-j Spherical Harmonics.
f
Starfish.
viii INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
F. C. S. S. FERDINAND CANNING SCOTT SCHILLER, M.A., D.Sc. f
Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Author of Riddles of the -| Spencer, Herbert.
Sphinx; Studies in Humanism; &c-
F. G. M. B. FREDERICK GEORGE MEESON BECK, M.A. f Sigurd;
Fellow and Lecturer in Classics, Clare College, Cambridge. \ Strathelyde.
F. G. P. FREDERICK GYMER PARSONS, F.R.C.S., F.Z.S., F.R.ANTHROP.INST. Skeleton;
Vice-President, Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Lecturer onj Skin and Exoskeleton;
Anatomy at St Thomas's Hospital and the London School of Medicine for Women, 1 Skull;
London. Formerly Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. [ Spinal Cord (in part).
F. J. H. FRANCIS JOHN HAVERFIELD, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A. f
Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford. Fellow of silures*
Brasenose College. Formerly Censor, Student, Tutor and Librarian of Christ -\ '
Church. Ford's Lecturer, 1906-1907. Fellow of the British Academy. Author of Spain: History, Ancient.
Monographs on Roman History, especially Roman Britain ; &c.
F. J. S. FREDERICK JOHN SNELL, M.A. f „„„ „ M_. . , . .,
Balliol College, Oxford. Author of The Age of Chaucer; &c. I Spenser, Edmund (in part).
F. LI. G. FRANCIS LLEWELLYN GRIFFITH, M.A., PH.D., F.S.A. r
Reader in Egyptology, Oxford University. Editor of the Archaeological Survey and .
Archaeological Reports of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Fellow of Imperial -i Sphinx (in part).
German Archaeological Institute. Author of Stories of the High Priests of Memphis ;
&c.
F. L. L. LADY LUGARD.
See the biographical article: LUGARD, SIR F. J. D.
F. N. M. COLONEL FREDERIC NATUSCH MAUDE, C.B.
Lecturer in Military History, Manchester University. Author of War and ihe\ Strategy.
World's Policy; The Leipzig Campaign; The Jena Campaign.
F. Po. SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, BART., LL.D., D.C.L. f c*«i,h«n ci, t w
See the biographical article : POLLOCK : Family. \ stePnen» 5Ir J- F-«
Siwa; Sobat (in part);
F. R. C. FRANK R. CANA.
Author of South Africa from the Great Trek to the Union.
Somali land;
South Africa: Geography and
Statistics; History (in part),
and Bibliography;
Stanley, Sir Henry.
F. W.* FRANK WARNER. r
President of the Silk Association of Great Britain and Ireland ; Hon. Secretary J _... / . •>
of the Ladies' National Silk Association. Chairman of the Silk Section, London 1 &IIK <•"* P^t).
Chamber of Commerce, and of the Council of the Textile Institute. [
F. W. R.* FREDERICK WILLIAM RUDLER, I.S.O., F.G.S. f Sinter;
Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology, London, 1879-1902.-^ Spinel;
President of the Geologists' Association, 1887-1889. [ Spodumene.
G. A. C.* REV. GEORGE ALBERT COOKE, D.D. r
Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, Oxford, and Fellow of
Oriel College. Canon of Rochester. Hon. Canon of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh
Author of Text-Book of North Semitic Inscriptions ; &c.
G. A. Gr. GEORGE ABRAHAM GRIERSON, C.I.E., PH.D., D.Lrrr.
Member of the Indian Civil Service, 1873-1903. In charge of the Linguistic
Survey of India, 1898-1902. Gold Medallist, Royal Asiatic Society, 1909. Vice- ^ Sindhi and Lahnda.
President of the Royal Asiatic Society. Formerly Fellow of Calcutta University.
Author of The Languages of India ; &c.
G. C. L. GEORGE COLLINS LEVEY, C.M.G.
Member of the Board of Advice to the Agent-General of Victoria. Formerly
Editor and Proprietor of the Melbourne Herald. Secretary, Colonial Committee of
Royal Commission to Paris Exhibition, 1900. Secretary, Adelaide Exhibition, -
1887. Secretary, Royal Commission, Hobart Exhibition, 1894-1895. Secretary to
Commissioners for Victoria at the Exhibitions in London, Paris, Vienna, Phila-
delphia and Melbourne.
Stawell, Sir William.
G. C. W. GEORGE CHARLES WILLIAMSON, Lrrr.D. C
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Author of Portrait Miniatures ; Life of Richard J qmar* inhn
Cosway, R.A.; George Engleheart; Portrait Drawings; &c. Editor of new edition 1 a
of Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. I
G. E. H. GEORGE ELLERY HALE, LL.D., Sc.D. [
Director of the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washing-
ton at Pasadena, California. Director of the Yerkes Observatory, Chicago, 1895- I SpectrohelioTaph.
1905. Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. Inventor of the Spectro- j
heliograph. Author of Papers on solar and stellar physics in the Astrophysical
Journal; &c. [
G. G. B. VERY REV. GEORGE GRANVILLE BRADLEY, D.D. /Stanley, Dean (in part).
See the biographical article: BRADLEY, GEORGE GRANVILLE. \
G. G. C. GEORGE GOUDIE CHISHOLM, M.A. f oj-nv r *i, A
Lecturer on Geography in the University of Edinburgh. Secretary of the Royal J £' '.... l,?n
Scottish Geographical Society. Author of Handbook of Commercial Geography.] Statistics (in part).
Editor of Longman's Gazetteer of the World. I
G. G. S. GEORGE GREGORY SMITH, M.A. [ Stirling, William Alexander,
Professor of English Literature, Queen's University of Belfast. Author of The -j Earl of (in part)
Days of James IV.; The Transition Period; Specimens of Middle Scots; &c. L
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES ix
G. J. T. GEORGE JAMES TURNER.
Barrister-at-Law, Lincoln's Inn. Editor of Select Pleas of the Forests for the Selden -j SOK6.
Society.
G. Mo. GAETANO MOSCA. / Sicily: Geography and Statistics
Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Turin. I (in part).
G. Sa. GEORGE SAINTSBURY, D.C.L., LL.D. J stagl maaame fle
See the biographical article: SAINTSBURY, GEORGE E. B.
G. W. T. REV. GRIFFITHES WHEELER THATCHER, M.A., B.D. J _.,,,„...
Warden of Camden College, Sydney, N.S.W. Formerly Tutor in Hebrew and Old ] Slbawaihi.
Testament History at Mansfield College, Oxford.
H. Br. HENRY BRADLEY, M.A., PH.D. f
Fellow of the British Academy. Joint-editor of the New English Dictionary •(
(Oxford). Author of The Story of the Goths; The Making of English; &c.
H. Cl. SIR HUGH CHARLES CLIFFORD, K.C.M.G.
Colonial Secretary, Ceylon. Fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute. Formerly) Singapore;
Resident, Pahang. Colonial Secretary, Trinidad and Tobago, 1903-1907. Author 1 o,raif,
of Studies in Brown Humanity; Further India, &c. Joint-author of A Dictionary
of the Malay Language.
H. E. S.* HORACE ELISHA SCUDDER (d. 1902).
Formerly Editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Author of Life of James Russell Lowell; ~\ otowe, Mrs Beecner.
History of the United States ; &c. I _ _
H. F. G. HANS FRIEDRICH GADOW, M.A., F.R.S., PH.D. f . ;. 'n, „• ,
Strickland Curator and Lecturer on Zoology in the University of Cambridge.-^
Author of " Amphibia and Reptiles " in the Cambridge Natural History; &c. I Spnenodon.
H. H. F. H. HAMILTON FYFE. f
Special Correspondent of the Daily Mail; Dramatic critic of The World. Author of J Slepniak, Sergius.
A Modern Aspasia; The New Spirit in Egypt; &c. |_
H. Ja. HENRY JACKSON, M.A., LITT.D., LL.D., O.M. f Socrates;
Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity I Sophists'
College. Fellow of the British Academy. Author of Texts to illustrate the History *
of Greek Philosophy from Tholes to Aristotle. - SpeusippUS.
H. M. R. HUGH MUNRO Ross. f Signal: Army Signalling (in
Formerly Exhibitioner of Lincoln College, Oxford. Editor of The Times Engineering -( part) and Railway Signalling
Supplement. Author of British Railways. (jn parl).
H. M. Wo. HAROLD MELLOR WOODCOCK, D.Sc.
Assistant to the Professor of Proto-Zoology, London University. Fellow of Uni- J gporozoa
versity College, London. Author of " Haemoflagellates " in Sir E. Ray Lankester's
Treatise of Zoology, and of various scientific papers.
H. 0. F. HENRY OGG FORBES, LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S.
Director of Museums to the Corporation of Liverpool. Reader in Ethnography in
the University of Liverpool. Explorer of Mount Owen Stanley, New Guinea, J Sokotra (in part).
Chatham Islands and Sokotra. Author of A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern
Archipelago; Editor and part-author of Natural History of Sokotra and Abd-el-
Kuri; &c.
H. R. T. HENRY RICHARD TEDDER, F.S.A. J~ Societies, Learned.
Secretary and Librarian of the Athenaeum Club, London. I.
H. St. HENRY STURT, M.A. J Space and Time.
Author of Idola Theatri; The Idea of a Free Church; Personal Idealism. \_
H. S. J. HENRY STUART JONES, M.A. f
Formerly Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford, and Director of the British I gtrabo.
School at Rome. Member of the German Imperial Archaeological Institute. |
Author of The Roman Empire; &c.
H. W. C. D. HENRY WILLIAM CARLESS DAVIS, M.A. f simpon of Durham-
Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, ,™ ° °K|1_ f p' ,and
1895-1902. Author of England under the Normans and Angevins; Charlemagne. I ^P11611' KmS OI *nc*»ii«ti«n.
College, London. Member of Society of Architects. Member of Institute of Junior 1
Engineers. I Stone.
J. C. Br. JOHN CASPER BRANNER, PH.D., LL.D., F.G.S. r
Vice- President and Professor of Geology in Leland Stanford University, California.
Director of the Branner-Agassiz Expedition to Brazil, 1899. State Geologist of-< South America.
Arkansas, 1887-1893. Author of numerous works on the geology of Brazil, Arkansas
and California.
J. D. B. JAMES DAVID BOURCHIER, M.A., F.R.G.S. fSilistria'
King's College, Cambridge. Correspondent of The Times in South-Eastern Europe. J c0na. '
Commander of the Orders of Prince Danilo of Montenegro and of the Saviour of 1 *
Greece, and Officer of the Order of St Alexander of Bulgaria. 1. Stambolov, Stefan.
J. F.-K. JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY, Lrrr.D., F.R.Hisi.S. f
Gilmour Professor of Spanish Language and Literature, Liverpool University. Spaln: Language (in part), and
Norman McColl Lecturer, Cambridge University. Fellow of the British Academy. -{ , .. . f- . Z
Member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Knight Commander of the Order of ^terature (in part).
Alphonso XII. Author of A History of Spanish Literature; &c.
J. G. C. A. JOHN GEORGE CLARK ANDERSQN, M.A. f
Censor and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford. Formerly Fellow of Lincoln College. ^ Sinope.
Craven Fellow, Oxford, 1896. Conington Prizeman, 1893. [
J. G. M. JOHN GRAY MCKENDRICK, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.,F.R.S. (Edin.). f Sleep;
Emeritus Professor of Physiology in the University of Glasgow. Professor of Physi- -j gmell
ology, 1876-1906. Author of Life in Motion; Life of Helmholtz; &c. I
J. H. A. H. JOHN HENRY ARTHUR HART, M.A. f cihviiinB orapips
Fellow, Theological Lecturer and Librarian, St John's College, Cambridge. \ B1Dyl11
J. H. P. JOHN HENRY POYNTING, D.Sc., F.R.S. r
Professor of Physics and Dean of the Faculty of Science in the University of |
Birmingham. Formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Joint-author of *i Sound.
Text-Book of Physics.
3. H. R. JOHN ^RACE ROUND, M.A., LL.D. r Stafford: Family
Balliol College, Oxford. Author of Feudal England; Studies in Peerage and J c*anio.,. p •; /•-
Family History; Peerage and Pedigree; &c. \ Stanley- P«**9 (*»
3. HI. R. JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, M.A., Lrrr.D. r
Christ's College, Cambridge. Lecturer on Modern History to the Cambridge J Sieyes, Emmanuel Joseph;
University Local Lectures Syndicate. Author of Life of Napoleon I. ; Napoleonic "] Stein, Baron.
Studies; The Development of the European Nations; The Life of Pitt; &c.
3. H. van't H. JACOBUS HENDRICUS VAN'T HOFF, LL.D., D.Sc., f _.
See the biographical article VAN'T HOFF, JACOBUS HENDRICUS. nensm.
J. K. I. JOHN KEIXS INGRAM, LL.D. i Slavery (in part);
See the biographical article: INGRAM, JOHN ,KELLS. -} Smith, Adam (in part).
J. L. M. JOHN LINTON MYRES, M.A., F.S.A.
Wykeham Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of f
Magdalen College. Formerly Gladstone Professor of Greek and Lecturer in Ancient J Soli (Cyprus).
Geography in the University of Liverpool, and Lecturer on Classical Archaeology
in the University of Oxford.
J. L. H. J. LANE-NOTTER, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.MED. f
Colonel (retired), Royal Army Medical Corps. Formerly Professor of Military J cn;i- c,,7i „„.> r>;,*,
Hygiene, Army Medical School at Netley. Author of The Theory and Practice of]
Hygiene; &c. [_
3. M. SIR JOHN MACDONELL, C.B., M.A., LL.D. ,-
Master of the Supreme Court, London. Formerly Counsel to the Board of Trade
and the London Chamber of Commerce. Quain Professor of Comparative Law, J Sovereignty;
and Dean of the Faculty of Law, University College, London. Editor of State ] Spheres of Influence.
Trials; Civil Judicial Statistics; &c. Author of Survey of Political JLconomy;
The Land Question ; &c. I
J. M. M. JOHN MALCOLM MITCHELL. f Solon;
Sometime Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford. Lecturer in Classics, East London J Sphinx (in part) ;
College (University of London). Joint-editor of Grote's History of Greece. StrategUS.
J. 0. N. REV. JAMES OKEY NASH, M.A. r
Hertford College, Oxford. Headmaster of St John's College, Johannesburg. J Sisterhoods.
Formerly Missionary of the S.P.G. in Johannesburg.
J. Pe. JOHN PERCIVAL, M.A. r
St. John's College, Cambridge. Professor of Agricultural Botany at University -| Soil.
College, Reading. Author of Text-Book of Agricultural Botany; &c.
J. P. E. JEAN PAUL HIPPOLYTE EMMANUEL ADHEMAR ESMEIN. r
Professor of Law in the University of Paris. Officer of the Legion of Honour. J ctatoc rpnoral-
Member of the Institute of France. Author of Cours elementaire d'histoire du droit 1
fran$ais; &c. L
J. S. F. JOHN SMITH FLETT, D.Sc., F.G.S. r «,,,.
Petrographer to the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. Formerly Lecturer J
on Petrology in Edinburgh University. Neill Medallist of the Royal Society of 1 5late:
Edinburgh. Bigsby Medallist of the Geological Society of London. [ Spherulites.
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES xi
J. S. R. JAMES SMITH REID, M.A., LL.M., LITT.D., LL.D. f
Professor of Ancient History in the University of Cambridge and Fellow and Tutor J »
of Gonville and Caius College. Hon. Fellow, formerly Fellow and Lecturer, of | Statius.
Christ's College. Editor of Cicero's Academica; De Amtcitia; &c.
{Siberia (in part);
Simbirsk (in part);
Qmnlanclr (S* *>nrt\-
omoienss \y* pan),
Stavropol (in part).
J. V. B. JAMES VERNON BARTLET, M.A., D.D. [
Professor of Church History, Mansfield College, Oxford. Author of The Apostolic^ Stephen, St.
Age; &c. L
J. W. JAMES WILLIAMS, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D. f
All Souls' Reader in Roman Law in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Lincoln -! Statute.
College. Barrister-at-Law of Lincoln's Inn. Author of Law of the Universities ; &c. [
J. W. G. JOHN WALTER GREGORY, D.Sc., F.R.S.
Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Professor of Geology and J c ,. . .-a--..,.. /-. ,
Mineralogy in the University of Melbourne, 1900-1904. Author of The Dead Heart] Soutl1 Australia. Geology,
of Australia; &c. L
J. W. He. JAMES WYCLIFFE HEADLAM, M.A.
Staff Inspector of Secondary Schools under the Board of Education. Formerly 1
Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Greek and Ancient History at H Stephan, Heinrieh von.
Queen's College, London. Author of Bismarck and the Foundation of the German
Empire; &c. L
K. G. J. KINGSLEY GARLAND JAYNE. f g { Qeoerat^ and
Sometime Scholar of Wadham College, Oxford. Matthew Arnold Prizeman, 1903.-! p ' * * y
Author of Vasco da Gama and his Successors. L Statistics.
K. L. REV. KIRSOPP LAKE, M.A. j"
Lincoln College, Oxford. Professor of Early Christian Literature and New Testa- J onHon TTormonn »«n
ment Exegesis in the University of Leiden. Author of The Text of the New Testa- 1 ooaen> M mann von-
ment ; The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ ; &c. L
K. S. KATHLEEN SCHLESINGER. foi**, ,. Cn«i;n«. c-:-«
Editor of the Portfolio of Musical Archaeology. Author of The Instruments of the < &lslrum» • Q°> bpmet,
Orchestra. [ Stringed Instruments.
L. C. REV. LEWIS CAMPBELL, D.C.L., LL.D. f c . ,
See the biographical article : CAMPBELL, LEWIS. \ &°Pn( Iles'
L. D.* Louis DUCHESNE. f Siricius;
See the biographical article: DUCHESNE, Louis M. O. LSixtus I -III
L. J. S. LEONARD JAMES SPENCER, M.A. Sillimanite; Smaltite;
Assistant in Department of Mineralogy, British Museum. Formerly Scholar of J Sodalite; Sphene' Stannite;
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Harkness Scholar. Editor of the Mineralo- | ««ifcJLi*.
gical Maeazine. Staurolite; Stephamte;
Istibnite; Stilbite; Strontianite.
L. W. Ch. LAURENCE WENSLEY CHUBB. f
Secretary of the Coal Smoke Abatement Society, and of the Commons and Foot- J Smoke (in part).
paths Preservation Society.
M. Ca. MORITZ CANTOR, PH.D. r
Honorary Professor of Mathematics in the University of Heidelberg. Hofrat of the -{ stevinus Simon.
German Empire. Author of Vorlesungen uber die Geschichte der Mathematik ; &c.
M. G. MOSES CASTER, PH.D. f
Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic Communities of England. Ilchester Lecturer at
Oxford on Slavonic and Byzantine Literature, 1886 and 1891. President of the -j gturdza (family)
Folk-lore Society of England. Vice-President, Anglo-Jewish Association. Author
of History of Rumanian Popular Literature ; &c.
H. Ja. MORRIS JASTROW, PH.D. r
Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Pennsylvania. Author of Religion -I Sin (Moon-god),
of the Babylonians and Assyrians; &c.
M. M. MAX ARTHUR MACAULIFFE. r
Formerly Divisional Judge in the Punjab. Author of The Sikh Religion: its Gurus, J Sikh;
Sacred Writings and Authors; &c. Editor of Life of Guru Nanak, in the Punjabi] Sikhism.
language. L
M. N. T. MARCUS NIEBUHR TOD, M.A. r
Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College, Oxford. University Lecturer in Epigraphy, -j Sparta.
Joint-author of Catalogue of the Sparta Museum.
M. 0. B. C. MAXIMILIAN OTTO BISMARCK CASPARI, M.A. f
Reader in Ancient History at London University. Lecturer in Greek at Birming- J Sicyon.
ham University, 1905-1908.
H. M. NORMAN MCLEAN, M.A. c
Lecturer in Aramaic, Cambridge University. Fellow and Hebrew Lecturer, Christ's J Stephen Bar Sudhaile.
College, Cambridge. Joint-editor of the larger Cambridge Septuagint.
0. A. OSMUND AIRY, M.A., LL.D. r
H.M. Divisional Inspector of Schools and Inspector of Training Colleges, Board of J Sidney, Algernon;
Education, London. Author of Louis XIV. and the English Restoration; Charles | Somers, Lord.
//. ; &c. Editor of the Lauderdale Papers ; &c.
0. H. DAVID ORME MASSON, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S.
Professor of Chemistry, Melbourne University. Author of papers on chemistry in -I Smoke (in part).
the transactions of various learned societies.
xii INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
0. T. OLDFIELD THOMAS, F.R.S., F.Z.S. I"
Senior Assistant, Natural History Department of the British Museum. Author of -j Skunk (in part).
Catalogue of Marsupialia in the British Museum. I
P. A. A. PHILIP A. ASHWORTH, M.A., D. JURIS. f
New College, Oxford. Barrister-at-Law. Translator of H. R. von Gneist's History \ Simson, Martin E. von.
of the English Constitution. \_
{ Siberia (in part);
P. A. K. PRINCE PETER ALEXEIVITCH KROPOTKIN. ] Simbirsk (in •bart) •
See the biographical article : KROPOTKIN, PRINCE P. A. 1 Smolensk V' * /)'•
[Stavropol (in part).
P. C. M. PETER CHALMERS MITCHELL, M.A., F.R.S., F.Z.S., D.Sc., LL.D.
Secretary of the Zoological Society of London. University Demonstrator in J
Comparative Anatomy and Assistant to Linacre Professor at Oxford, 1888-1891. 1 Species.
Author of Outlines of Biology ; &c. I
P. C. Y. PHILIP CHESNEY YORKE, M.A. f „
Magdalen College, Oxford. Editor of Letters of Princess Elizabeth of England \ atranor(»-
P. S. PHILIP SCHIDROWITZ, PH.D., F.C.S. f
Member of the Council, Institute of Brewing; Member of the Committee of Society J Spirits
of Chemical Industry. Author of numerous articles on the Chemistry anal
Technology of Brewing, Distilling, &c.
P. Vi. PAUL VINOGRADOFF, D.C.L., LL.D. isocaee
See the biographical article: VINOGRADOFF, PAUL. \
R. LORD RAYLEIGH. f
See the biographical article: RAYLEIGH, 3RD BARON. \ "*?•
R. A. S. M. ROBERT ALEXANDER STEWART MACALISTER, M.A., F.S.A. [
St John's College, Cambridge. Director of Excavations for the Palestine Ex- -| Sodom and Gomorrah.
ploration Fund. [
R. D. H. ROBERT DREW HICKS, M.A. f „. .
Fellow, formerly Lecturer in Classics, Trinity College, Cambridge. "j_
R. H. C. REV. ROBERT HENRY CHARLES, M.A., D.D., D.Lrrr. r
Grinfield Lecturer, and Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Oxford, and Fellow of Merton
College. Fellow of the British Academy. Formerly Professor of Biblical Greek, -< Solomon, The Psalms of.
Trinity College, Dublin. Author of Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life;
Book of Jubilees; &c. I
R. H. L. ROBIN HUMPHREY LEGGE. f
Principal Musical Critic for the Daily Telegraph. Author of Annals of the Norwich •< Strauss, Richard.
Festivals; &c.
R. H. V. ROBERT HAMILTON VETCH, C.B. r
Colonel R.E. Employed on the defences of Bermuda, Bristol Channel, Plymouth
Harbour and Malta, 1861-1876. Secretary of R.E. Institute, Chatham, 1877-1883. I ,. .
Deputy Inspector-General of Fortifications, 1889-1894. Author of Gordon 's 1 ottatnnairn, Lord.
Campaign in China; Life of Lieutenant-General Sir Gerald Graham. Editor of the
R.E. Journal, 1877-1884.
R. I. P. REGINALD INNES POCOCK, F.Z.S. / c -H
Superintendent of the Zoological Gardens, London. \ aP1Qers-
R. J. M. RONALD JOHN MCNEILL, M.A.
Christ Church, Oxford. Barrister-at-Law. Formerly Editor of the St James's
Sidney, Sir Henry;
Simnel, Lambert;
Smith, Sir Henry;
Somerset, Earls and Dukes of;
Stone, Archbishop.
R. L.* RICHARD LYDEKKER, F.R.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S. f Sifaka; Sirenia;
Member of the Staff of the Geological Survey of India, 1874-1882. Author of J Skunk (in part);
Catalogue of Fossil Mammals, Reptiles and Birds in the British Museum ; The Deer 1 Souslik; Squirrel;
of all Lands ; The Game Animals of Africa ; &c. [ Squirrel Monkey.
R. Mu. ROBERT MUNRO, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. (Edin.).
Dalrymple Lecturer on Archaeology in the University of Glasgow for 1910. Rhind
Lecturer on Archaeology, 1888. Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, J Stonenenge;
1888-1899. Founder of the Munro Lectureship on Anthropology and Prehistoric 1 Stone Monuments.
Archaeology in the University of Edinburgh. Author of The Lake-dwellings of
Europe ; Prehistoric Scotland, and its place in European Civilization ; &c.
R. M. B. F. K. RICHARD MAKDOUGALL BRISBANE FRANCIS KELLY, D.S.O. f
Colonel R.A. Commanding R.G.A., Southern Defences, Portsmouth. Served J Sights
through the South African War, 1899-1902. Chief Instructor at the School of 1
Gunnery, 1904-1908. L
Sigismund L, II. and III. of
Poland;
Skarga, Piotr; Skram, Peder;
Skrzynecki, Jan Zygmunt;
R. N. B. ROBERT NISBET BAIN (d. 1909).
Assistant Librarian, British Museum, 1883-1909. Author of Scandinavia: The
Political History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, 1513-1900; The First Romanovs,
1613-1725 ; Slavonic Europe: The Political History of Poland and Russia from
1469 to 1706 ; &c.
Sophia Aleksyeevna;
Sprengtporten, Count Goran;
Sprengtporten, Jakob;
Stanislaus I. and II. of Poland;
Stephen I. and V. of Hungary;
Stephen Bathory;
Struensee, Johan F.;
Sture (family).
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
x
R. P. S.
R. Sn.
R. S. C.
S. A. C.
S. Bl.
S. F. M.
St G. S.
S.N.
T.As.
T. A. A.
T. A. C.
T. Ba.
T. F. C.
T.Se.
T. W.-D.
T. W. F.
T. W. R. D.
V. W.
W. A. B. C.
W. A. G.
W. A. J. F.
R. PHENE SPIERS, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A. f
Formerly Master of the Architectural School, Royal Academy, London. Past! Stair;
President of the Architectural Association. Associate and Fellow of King's College, | Staircase: Architecture;
London. Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. Editor of Fergusson's Spire.
e. {
History of Architecture. Author of Architecture: East and West; &c.
CHEx?mine°7n Silk Throwing and Spinning for the City and Guilds of London Institute
ROBERT SEYMOUR CONWAY, M.A., D.Lixx. f
Professor of Latin and Indo-European Philology in the University of Manchester. I QIBI.I«
Formerly Professor of Latin in University College, Cardiff; and Fellow of Gonville | BICUU
and Caius College, Cambridge. Author of The Italic Dialects. I
STANLEY ARTHUR COOK.
Lecturer in Hebrew and Syriac, and formerly Fellow, Gonville and Caius College, J Simeon;
Cambridge. Editor for the Palestine Exploration Fund. Author of Glossary of~) Solomon
Aramaic Inscriptions; The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi; Critical
Notes on Old Testament History; Religion of Ancient Palestine; &c.
SIGFUS BLONDAL.
Librarian of the University of Copenhagen.
SIR SHIRLEY FORSTER MURPHY, F.R.C.S.
Medical Officer of Health for the County of London.
ST GEORGE STOCK, M.A.
Pembroke College, Oxford. Lecturer in Greek in the University of Birmingham.
SIMON NEWCOMB, D.Sc., LL.D.
See the biographical article: NEWCOMB, SIMON.
Silk: Trade and Commerce.
,
~)
l
I
/ oiffurf>sson jAn
I blgur °n' J0n>
f
\ Slaughter-house
f simon MO,,,,,
\ OI
f -. . Stubbs, William.
English Church, 597-1666; The Church of England in the Middle Ages; &c. [
WILLIAM LEE CORBIN, A.M. f Sparks, Jared.
Associate Professor of English, Wells College, Aurora, New York State. I
WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT, M.A. f
Professor of Colonial History, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. Formerly I Strathcona and Mount Royal,
Beit Lecturer in Cojonial History, Oxford University. Editor of Acts of the Privy 1 Lord.
Council (Canadian Series).
WILLIAM MINTO, M.A.
See the biographical article: MINTO, WILLIAM.
SIR WILLIAM MACCORMAC, BART.
See the biographical article: MACCORMAC, SIR WILLIAM, BART.
WILLIAM McDouGALL, M.A.
Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford,
of St John's College, Cambridge.
WILLIAM MATTHEW FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S., D.C.L., LITT.D.
See the biographical article: PETRIE, W. M. FLINDERS.
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.
See the biographical article: ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL.
SIR WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY, LL.D., D.C.L., D.LITT.
See the biographical article: RAMSAY, SIR W. MITCHELL.
WILLIAM NAPIER SHAW, M.A., LL.D., D.Sc., F.R.S.
Director of the Meteorological Office, London. Reader in Meteorology in the
University of London. President of Permanent International Meteorological
Committee. Member of Meteorological Council, 1897-1905. Hon. Fellow of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Fellow of Emmanuel College, 1877-1906; Senior
Tutor, 1890-1899. Joint author of Text Book of Practical Physics; &c.
WILLIAM WARDE FOWLER, M.A.
Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Sub-rector, 1881-1904. Gifford Lecturer,
Edinburgh University, 1908. Author of The City-State of the Greeks and Romans;
The Roman Festivals of the Republican Period ; &c.
f Spenser, Edmund (in part);
•< Steele, Sir Richard (in part) ;
[ Sterne, Laurence (in part).
-! Simon, Sir John.
Formerly Fellow 4 Subliminal Self.
| Sinai: The Peninsula.
I Signorelli, Luca;
I Sodoma, II.
•[ Smyrna (in part).
Squall.
' Silvanus.
PRINCIPAL UNSIGNED ARTICLES
Sibyls.
Sierra Leone.
Sign-board.
Sikh Wars.
Silesia.
Silicon.
Silver.
Simony.
Sind.
Skating.
Ski.
Skin Diseases.
Skye.
Sligo.
Smallpox.
Smithsonian Institution.
Snail.
Soap.
Sodium.
Soissons.
Solanaceae.
Solicitor.
Solomon Islands.
Somersetshire.
Somme.
Somnambulism.
Sorbonne.
Southampton.
South Carolina.
South Dakota.
South Sea Bubble.
Southwark.
Sowing.
Spalato.
Spanish-American War.
Spanish Reformed Church.
Speaker.
Spectacles.
Speranski, Count.
Sphere.
Spitsbergen.
Springfield.
Staff.
Stafford.
Staffordshire.
Stalactites.
Stamford.
Stammering.
Stamp.
Starch.
Star- Chamber.
Staten Island.
State Rights.
Steenkirk,
Stem.
Stettin.
Stickleback.
Stirling.
Stirlingshire.
Stockholm.
Stoichiometry.
Stolen Goods.
Strassburg.
Stratford-on-Avon.
Straw and Straw Manufactures.
Strawberry.
Strontium.
Strophanthus.
Strychnine.
Sturgeon.
Stuttgart.
Styria.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME XXV
SHUVALOV (sometimes written SCHOUVALOFF), PETER
ANDREIVICH, COUNT (1827-1889), Russian diplomatist, was
born in 1827 of an old Russian family which rose to distinction
and imperial favour about the middle of the i8th century.
Several of its members attained high rank in the army and the
civil administration, and one of them may be regarded as the
founder of the Moscow University and the St Petersburg Academy
of the Fine Arts. As a youth Count Peter Andreivich showed
no desire to emulate his distinguished ancestors. He studied
just enough to qualify for the army, and for nearly twenty years
he led the agreeable, commonplace life of a fashionable officer
of the Guards. In 1864 Court influence secured for him the
appointment of Governor-General of the Baltic Provinces, and
in that position he gave evidence of so much natural ability and
tact that in 1866, when the revolutionary fermentation in the
younger section of the educated classes made it advisable to
place at the head of the political police a man of exceptional
intelligence and energy, he was selected by the emperor for the
post. In addition to his regular functions, he was entrusted by
his Majesty with much work of a confidential, delicate nature,
including a mission to London in 1873. The ostensible object
of this mission was to arrange amicably certain diplomatic
difficultiesXcreated by the advance of Russia in Central Asia,
but he was instructed at the same time to prepare the way for
the marriage of the grand duchess Marie Alexandrovna with the
duke of Edinburgh, which took place in January of the following
year. At that time the emperor Alexander II. was anxious
to establish cordial relations with Great Britain, and he thought
this object might best be attained by appointing as his diplo-
matic representative at the British Court the man who had con-
ducted successfully the recent matrimonial negotiations. Count
Shuvalov was accordingly appointed ambassador to London;
and he justified his selection by the extraordinary diplomatic
ability he displayed during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78
and the subsequent negotiations, when the relations between
Russia and Great Britain were strained almost to the point of
rupture. After the publication of the treaty of San Stefano,
which astonished Europe and seemed to render a conflict inevit-
able, he concluded with Lord Salisbury a secret convention
which enabled the two powers to meet in congress and find
a pacific solution for all the questions at issue. In the delibera-
tions and discussions of the congress he played a leading part,
and defended the interests of his country with a dexterity which
excited the admiration of his colleagues; but when it became
known that the San Stefano arrangements were profoundly
modified by the treaty of Berlin, public opinion in Russia con-
xxv. i
demned him as too conciliatory, and reproached him with having
needlessly given up many of the advantages secured by the war.
For a time Alexander II. resisted the popular clamour, but in
the autumn of 1879, when Prince Bismarck assumed an attitude
of hostility towards Russia, Count Shuvalov, who had been
long regarded as too amenable to Bismarckian influence, was
recalled from his post as ambassador in London; and after
living for nearly ten years in retirement, he died at St Petersburg
in 1889. (D. M. W.)
SHUYA, a town in the government of Vladimir, 68 m. by rail
N.E. of the town of Vladimir. It is one of the chief centres of
the cotton and linen industries in middle Russia. It is built on
the high left bank of the navigable Teza, a tributary of the
Klyazma, with two suburbs on the right bank. Annalists men-
tion princes of Shuya in 1403. Its first linen manufactures were
established in 1755; but in 1800 its population did not exceed
1300. In 1882 it had 19,560 inhabitants, and 18,968 in 1897.
Tanneries, especially for the preparation of sheepskins — widely
renowned throughout Russia — still maintain their importance,
although this industry has migrated to a great extent to the
country 'districts. The cathedral (1799) is a large building, with
five gilt cupolas. Nearly every village in the vicinity has a
specialty of its own — bricks, pottery, wheels, toys, packing-
boxes, looms and other weaving implements, house furniture,
sieves, combs, boots, gloves, felt goods, candles, and so on. The
manufacture of linen and cotton in the villages, as well as the
preparation and manufacture of sheepskins and rough gloves,
occupies about 40,000 peasants. The Shuya merchants carry
on an active trade in these products all over Russia, and in corn,
spirits, salt and other food stuffs, imported.
SH WEBO, a town and district in the Sagaing division of Upper
Burma. The town is situated in the midst of a rice plain, 53 m.
by rail N.E. from Mandalay: pop. (1901) 9626. It is of historic
interest as the birthplace and [capital of Alompra, the founder
of the last Burmese dynasty. After British annexation it became
an important military cantonment; but only the wing of a
European regiment is now stationed here. The area of the
district is 5634 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 286,891, showing an increase
of 24% in the decade. It lies between the Katha, Upper and
Lower Chindwin and Mandalay districts. The Irrawaddy forms
the dividing line on the east. The physical features of the
district vary considerably. The Minwun range runs down
the whole eastern side, skirting the Irrawaddy. In the north
it is a defined range, but at Sheinmaga, in the south, it sinks
to an undulation. West of the Mu river, in the centre of the
district, there is a gradual ascent to the hills which divide
5
SIALKOT— SIAM
Sagaing from the Upper Chindwin. Between these ranges and
on both sides of the Mu is a plain, unbroken except for some
isolated hills in the north and north-east and the low Sadaung-gyi
range in the south-east. The greater part of this plain is a rice-
growing tract, but on the sloping ground maize, millets, sesamum,
cotton and peas are raised. A good deal of sugar is also produced
from groves of the tari palm. The Mu river is navigable for
three months in the year, from June to August, but in the dry
season it can be forded almost anywhere. A good deal of salt
is produced in a line which closely follows the railway. Coal
has been worked at Letkokpin, near the Irrawaddy.
The Ye-u reserved forests are much more valuable than those
to the east on the Minwun and the Mudein. Extensive irrigation
works existed in Shwebo district, but they fell into disrepair
in King Thibaw's time. Chief of these was the Mahananda Lake.
The old works have recently been in process of restoration, and
in 1906 the main canal was formally opened. The rainfall
follows the valleys of the Mu and the Irrawaddy, and leaves the
rest of the district comparatively dry. It varies from an average
of 29 to 49 in. The average temperature is 90° in the hot season,
and falls to 60° or 61° in the cold season, the maximum and
minimum readings being 104° and 56°.
SIALKOT, or SEALKOTE, a town and district of British India,
in the Lahore division of the Punjab. The town, which has a
station on the North-Western railway, is 7 2 m. N.E. of Lahore.
Pop. (1901) S7,9S6- It is a military cantonment, being the
headquarters of a brigade in the 2nd division of the northern
army. There are remains of a fort dating from about the loth
century; but the mound on which they stand is traditionally
supposed to mark the site of a much earlier stronghold, and some
authorities identify it with the ancient Sakala or Sagal. Other
ancient buildings are the shrine of Baba Nanak, the first Sikh
Guru, that of the Mahommedan Imam Ali-ul-hakk and Raja
Tej Singh's temple. The town has an extensive trade, and
manufactures of sporting implements, boots, paper, cotton,
cloth and shawl-edging. There are Scottish and American
missions, a Scottish mission training institution and an arts
college.
The DISTRICT of SIALKOT has an area of 1991 sq. m. It is
an oblong tract of country occupying the submontane portion
of the Rechna (Ravi-Chenab) Doab, fringed on either side by a
line of fresh alluvial soil, above which rise the high banks that
form the limits of the river-beds. The Degh, which rises in the
Jammu hills, traverses the district parallel to the Ravi, and is
likewise fringed by low alluvial soil. The north-eastern boundary
is 20 m. distant from the outer line of the Himalayas; bjit about
midway between the Ravi and the Chenab is a high dorsal tract,
extending from beyond the border and stretching far into the
district. Sialkot is above the average of the Punjab in fertility.
The upper portion is very productive; but the southern portion,
farther removed from the influence of the rains, shows a marked
decrease of fertility. The district is also watered by numerous
small torrents; and several swamps or jhils, scattered over the
face of the country, are of considerable value as reservoirs of
surplus water for purposes of irrigation. Sialkot is reputed to
be healthy; it is free from excessive heat, judged by the common
standard of the Punjab; and its average annual rainfall varies
from 35 in. near the hills to 22 in. in the parts farthest from them.
The population in 1901 was 1,083,909, showing a decrease of 3 %
as against an increase of 1 1 % in the previous decade. This is
explained by the fact that Sialkot contributed over 100,000
persons to the Chenab colony (.!>.). The principal crops are
wheat, barley, maize, millets and sugar-cane. The district
is crossed by a branch of the North-Western railway from
Wazirabad to Jammu.
The early history of Sialkot is closely interwoven with that of
the rest of the Punjab. It was annexed by the British after the
second Sikh war in 1849; since then its area has been consider-
ably reduced, assuming its present proportions in 1867. During
the Mutiny of 1857 the native troops plundered the treasury
and destroyed all the records, when most of the European
residents took refuge in the fort.
SIAM (known to its inhabitants as Muang Thai), an inde-
pendent kingdom of the Indo-Chinese peninsula or Further
India. It lies between 4° 20' and 20° 15' N. and between 96° 30'
and 106° E., and is bounded N. by the British Shan States and
by the French Laos country, E. by the French Laos country
and by Cambodia, S. by Cambodia and by the Gulf of Siam,
and W. by the Tenasserim and Pegu divisions of Burma. A part
of Siam which extends down the Malay Peninsula is bounded
E. by the Gulf of Siam and by the South China Sea, S. by British
Malaya and W. by the lower part of the Bay of Bengal. The
total area is about 220,000 sq. m. (For map, see INDO-CHINA.)
The country may be best considered geographically in four
parts: the northern, including the drainage area of the four
rivers which unite near Pak-Nam Po to form the Menam Chao
Phaya; the eastern, including the drainage area of the Nam Mun
river and its tributaries; t,he central, including the drainage
area of the Meklong, the Menam Chao Phaya and the Bang
Pakong rivers; and the southern, including that part of the
country which is situated in the Malay Peninsula. Northern
Siam is about 60,000 sq. m. in area. In general appearance
it is a series of parallel ranges of hills, lying N. and S., merely
gently sloping acclivities in the S., but rising into precipitous
mountain masses in the N. Between these ranges flow the
rivers Meping, Mewang, Meyom and Menam, turbulent shallow
streams in their upper reaches, but slow-moving and deep where
they near the points of junction. The longest of them is over
250 m. from its source to its mouth. The Meping and Mewang
on the W., rising among the loftiest ranges, are rapid and
navigable only for small boats, while the Meyom and Menam,
the eastern pair, afford passage for large boats at all seasons
and for deep draught river-steamers during the flood-time. The
Menam is the largest, deepest and most sluggish of the four,
and in many ways resembles its continuation, the Menam Chao-
Phaya lower down. On the W. the river Salween and its tributary
the Thoung Yin form the frontier between the Siam and Burma for
some distance, draining a part of northern Siam, while in the
far north-east, for a few miles below Chieng Sen, the Mekong
does the same. The districts watered by the lower reaches of
the four rivers are fertile and are inhabited by a considerable
population of Siamese. Farther north the country is peopled
by Laos, scattered in villages along all the river banks, and by
numerous communities of Shan, Karen, Kamoo and other tribes
living in the uplands and on the hilltops.
Eastern Siam, some 70,000 sq. m. in area, is encircled by
well-defined boundaries, the great river Mekong dividing it
clearly from French Laos on the N. and E., the Pnom Dang Rek
hill range from Cambodia on the S. and the Dom Pia Fai range
from central Siam on the W. The right bank of the Mekong
being closely flanked by an almost continuous hill range, the
whole of this part of Siam is practically a huge basin, the bottom
of which is a plain lying from 200 to 300 ft. above sea-level, and
the sides hill ranges of between 1000 and 2000 ft. elevation.
The plain is for the most part sandy and almost barren, subject
to heavy floods in the rainy season, and to severe drought in the
dry weather. The hills are clothed with a thin shadeless growth
of stunted forest, which only here and there assumes the character-
istics of ordinary jungle. The river Nam Mun, which is perhaps
200 m. long, has a large number of tributaries, chief of which
is the Nam Si. The river flows eastward and falls into the Mekong
at 15° 20' N. and 105° 40' E. A good way farther north two
small rivers, the Nam Kum and the Nam Song Kram, also
tributaries of the Mekong, drain a small part of eastern Siam.
Nearly two million people, mixed Siamese, Lao and Cambodian,
probably among the poorest peasantry in the world, support
existence in this inhospitable region.
Central Siam, estimated at 50,000 sq. m. in area, is the heart
of the kingdom, the home of the greater part of its population,
and the source of nine-tenths of its wealth. In general appear-
ance it is a great plain flanked by high mountains on its western
border, inclining gently to the sea in the S. and round the inner
Gulf of Siam, and with a long strip of mountainous sea-board
stretching out to the S.E. The mountain range on the W. is a
SIAM
continuation of one of the ranges of northern Siam, which,
extending still farther southward, ultimately forms the backbone
of the Malay Peninsula. Its ridge is the boundary between
central Siam and Burma. The highest peak hereabouts is
Mogadok, 5000 ft., close to the border. On the E. the Dom
Pia Fai throws up a point over 4000 ft., and the south-eastern
range which divides the narrow, littoral, Chantabun and Krat
districts from Cambodia, has the Chemao, Saidao and Kmoch
heights, between 3000 and 5000 ft. The Meklong river, which
drains the western parts of central Siam, rises in the western
border range, follows a course a little E. of S., and runs into the
sea at the western corner of the inner gulf, some 200 m. distant
from its source. It is a rapid, shallow stream, subject to sudden
rises, and navigable for small boats only. The Bang Pakong
river rises among the Wattana hills on the eastern border,
between the Battambong province of Cambodia and Siam. It
flows N., then W., then S., describing a semicircle through the
fertile district of Pachim, and falls into the sea at the north-east
corner of the inner gulf. The whole course of this river is about
100 m. long; its current is sluggish, but that of its chief tributary,
the Nakhon Nayok river, is rapid. The Bang Pakong is navi-
gable for steamers of small draught for about 30 m. The Menam
Chao Phaya, the principal river of Siam, flows from the point
where it is formed by the junction of the rivers of northern Siam
almost due S. for 154 m., when it empties itself into the inner
gulf about midway between the Meklong and Bang Pakong
mouths. In the neighbourhood of Chainat, 40 m. below Paknam
Poh, it throws off three branches, the Suphan river and the
Menam Noi on the right, and the Lopburi river on the left bank.
The latter two rejoin the parent stream at points considerably
lower down, but the Suphan river remains distinct, and has an
outlet of its own to the sea. At a point a little more than half-
way down its course, the Menam Chao Phaya receives the waters
of its only tributary, the Nam Sak, a good-sized stream which
rises in the east of northern Siam and waters the most easterly
part (the Pechabun valley) of that section of the country. The
whole course of the Menam Chao Phaya lies through a perfectly
flat country. It is deep, fairly rapid, subject to a regular rise
and flood every autumn, but not to sudden freshets, and is
affected by the tide 50 m. inland. For 20 m. it is navigable
for vessels of over 1000 tons, and were it not for the enormous
sand bar which lies across the mouth, ships of almost any size
could lie at the port of Bangkok about that distance from the
sea (see BANGKOK). Vessels up to 300 tons and 12 ft. draught
can ascend the river 50 m. and more, and beyond that point
large river-boats and deep-draught launches can navigate for
many miles. The river is always charged with a great quantity
of silt which during flood season is deposited over the surrounding
plain to the great enhancement of its fertility. There is prac-
tically no forest growth in central Siam, except on the slopes of
the hills which bound this section. The rest is open rice-land,
alternating with great stretches of grass, reed jungle and bamboo
scrub, much of which is under water for quite three months of
the year.
Southern Siam, which has an area of about 20,000 sq. m.,
consists of that part of the Malay Peninsula which belongs to the
Siamese kingdom. It extends from 10° N. southwards to
6° 35' N. on the west coast of the peninsula, and to 6° 25' N. on
the east coast, between which points stretches the frontier of
British Malaya. It is a strip of land narrow at the north end
and widening out towards the south, consisting roughly of the
continuation of the mountain range which bounds central Siam
on the W., though the range appears in certain parts as no more
than a chain of hillocks. The inhabitable part of the land
consists of the lower slopes of the range with the valleys and
small alluvial plains which lie between its spurs. The remainder
is covered for the most part with dense forest containing several
kinds of valuable timber. The coast both east and west is. much
indented, and is studded with islands. The rivers are small
and shallow. The highest mountain is Kao Luang, an almost
isolated projection over 5000 ft. high, round the base of which
lie the most fertile lands of this section, and near which are
situated the towns of Bandon, Nakhon Sri Tammarat (Lakhon)
and Patalung, as well as many villages.
Geology.1 — Very little is known of the geology of Siam. It appears
to be composed chiefly of Palaeozoic rocks, concealed, in the plains,
by Quaternary, and possibly Tertiary, deposits. Near Luang
Prabang, just beyond the border, in French territory, limestones
with Productus and Schwagerina, like the Productus limestone of
the Indian Salt Range, have been found; also red clays and grau-
wacke with plants similar to those of the Raniganj beds; and violet
clays with Dicynodon, supposed to be the equivalents of the Panche
series of India. , All these beds strike from north-east to south-west
and must enter the northern part of Siam. Farther south, at Vien-
Tiane, the Mekong passes through a gorge cut in sandstone, arkose
and schists with a similar strike; while at Lakhon there are steeply
inclined limestones which strike north-west.
Climate. — Although enervating, the climate of Siam, as is natural
from the position of the country, is not one of extremes. The wet
season — May to October — corresponds with the prevalence of the
south-west monsoon in the Bay of Bengal. The full force of the
monsoon is, however, broken by the western frontier hills; and
while the rainfall at Mergui is over 180, and at Moulmein 240 in.,
that of Bangkok seldom exceeds 54, and Chiengmai records an
average of about 42 in. Puket and Chantabun, being both on a iee
shore, in this season experience rough weather and a heavy rainfall ;
the latter, being farther from the equator, is the worse off in this
respect. At this period the temperature is generally moderate,
65 to 75° F. at night and 75° to 85° by day ; but breaks in the
rains occur which are hot and steamy. The cool season begins with
the commencement of the north-east monsoon in the China Sea in
November. While Siam enjoys a dry climate with cool nights (the
thermometer at night often falling to 40° — 50° F., and seldom being
over 90° in the shade by day), the eastern coast of the Malay Penin-
sula receives the full force of the north-easterly gales from the sea.
This lasts into February, when the northerly current begins to lose
strength, and the gradual heating of the land produces local sea
breezes from the gulf along the coast-line. Inland, the thermometer
rises during the day to over 100° F., but the extreme continental
heats of India are not known. The comparative humidity of the
atmosphere, however, makes the climate trying for Europeans.
Flora. — In its flora and fauna Siam combines the forms of Burma
and the Shan States with those of Malaya, farther south, and of
Cambodia to the south-east. The coast region is characterized by
mangroves, Pandanus, rattans, and similar palms with long flexible
stems, and the middle region by the great rice-fields, the coco-nut
and areca palms, and the usual tropical plants of culture. In the
temperate uplands of the interior, as about Luang Prabang, Hima-
layan and Japanese species occur — oaks, pines, chestnuts, peach
and great apple trees, raspberries, honeysuckle, vines, saxifrages,
Cichoraceae, anemones and Violaceae; there are many valuable
timber trees — teak, sappan, eagle- wood, wood-oil (Hopea), and
other Dipterocarpaceae, Cedrelaceae, Pterocarpaceae, Xylia, iron-
wood and other dye-woods and resinous trees, these last forming
in many districts a large proportion of the more open forests, with
an undergrowth of bamboo. The teak tree grows all over the hill
districts north of latitude 15°, but seems to attain its best develop-
ment on the west, and on the east does not appear to be found
south of 17°. Most of the so-called Burma teak exported from
Moulmein is floated down from Siamese territory. Among other
valuable forest products are thingan wood (Hopea odorata), largely
used for boat-building; damar oil, taken throughout Indo-China
from the Dipterccarpus levis; agilla wood, sapan, rosewood, iron-
wood, ebony, rattan. Among the chief productions of the plains
are rice (the staple export of the country); pepper (chiefly from
Chantabun); sirih, sago, sugar-cane, coco-nut and betel, Palmyra or
sugar and attap palms; many forms cf banana and other fruit,
such as durian, orange-pommelo, guava, bread-fruit, mango, jack
fruit, pine-apple, custard-apple and mangosteen.
Fauna. — Few countries are so well stocked with big game as is
Siam. Chief of animals is the elephant, which roams wild in large
numbers, and is extensively caught and tamed by the people for
transport. The tiger, leopard, fishing-cat, leopard-cat, and other
species of wild-cat, as well as the honey-bear, large sloth-bear, and
one- and two-horned rhinoceros, occur. Among the great wild
cattle are the formidable gaur, or seladang, the banting, and the
water-buffalo. The goat antelope is found, and several varieties
of deer. Wild pig, several species of rats, and many bats — one of
the commonest being the flying-fox, and many species of monkey —
especially the gibbon — are also met with. Of snakes, 56 species are
known, but only 12 are poisonous, and of these 4 are sea-snakes.
The waters of Siam are particularly rich in fish. The crocodile is
common in many of the rivers and estuaries of Siam, and there are
many lizards. The country is rich in birds, a large number of which
appear to be common to Burma and Cambodia.
1 See E. Joubert in F. Gamier, Voyage d' exploration en Indo-
Chine (Paris, 1873), vol. ii. ; Counillon, Documents pour seruir A
I' etude geologique des environs de Luang Prabang ( Coch inching) ,
Comptes rendus (1896), cxxiii. 1330-1333.
SIAM
Inhabitants. — A census of the rural population was taken for
the first time in 1905. The first census of Bangkok and its
suburbs was taken in 1909. Results show the total population
of the country to be about 6,230,000. Of this total about
3,000,000 are Siamese, about 2,000,000 Laos, about 400,000
Chinese, 115,000 Malay, 80,000 Cambodian and the rest Burmese,
Indian, Mohn, Karen, Annamite, Kache, Lawa and others. Of
Europeans and Americans there are between 1300 and 1500,
mostly resident in Bangkok. Englishmen number about 500;
Germans, 190; Danes, 160; Americans, 150, and other nation-
alities are represented in smaller numbers. The Siamese inhabit
central Siam principally, but extend into the nearer districts
of all the other sections. The Laos predominate in northern
and eastern Siam, Malays mingle with the Siamese in southern
Siam, and the Chinese are found scattered all over, but keeping
mostly to the towns. Bangkok, the capital, with some 650,000
inhabitants, is about one-third Chinese, while in the suburbs are
to be found settlements of Mohns, Burmese, Annamites and
Cambodians, the descendants of captives taken in ancient wars.
The Eurasian population of Siam is very small compared with
that of other large cities of the East. Of the tribes which occupy
the mountains of Siam some are the remnants of the very ancient
inhabitants of the country, probably of the Mohn-Khmer family,
who were supplanted by a later influx of more civilized Khmers
from the south-east, the forerunners and part-ancestors of the
Siamese, and were still farther thrust into the remoter hills
when the Lao-Tai descended from the north. Of these the
principal are the Lawa, Lamet, Ka Hok, Ka Yuen and Kamoo,
the last four collectively known to the Siamese as Ka. Other
tribes, whose presence is probably owing to immigration at
remote or recent periods, are the Karens of the western frontier
range, the Lu, Yao, Yao Yin, Meo and Musur of northern Siam.
The Karens of Siam number about 20,000, and are found as
far south as 13° N. They are mere offshoots from the main
tribes which inhabit the Burma side of the boundary range,
and are supposed by some to be of Burmo-Tibetan origin. The
Lu, Yao, Yao Yin, Meo and Musur have Yunnanese charac-
teristics, are met with in the Shan States north of Siam and in
Yun-nan, and are supposed to have found their way into northern
Siam since the beginning of the igth century. In the mountains
behind Chantabun a small tribe called Chong is found, and in
southern Siam the Sakei and Semang inhabit the higher ranges.
These last three have Negrito characteristics, and probably
represent a race far older even than the ancient Ka.
The typical Siamese is of medium height, well formed, with
olive complexion, darker than the Chinese, but fairer than the
Malays, eyes well shaped though slightly inclined to the oblique,
nose broad and flat, lips prominent, the face wide across the
cheek-bones and the chin short. A thin moustache is common,
the beard, if present, is plucked out, and the hair of the head is
black, coarse and cut short. The lips are usually deep red and
the teeth stained black from the habit of betel-chewing. The
children are pretty but soon lose their charm, and the race,
generally speaking, is ugly from the European standpoint.
The position of women is good. Polygamy is permitted, but is
common only among the upper classes, and when it occurs the
first wife is acknowledged head of the household. In disposition
the Siamese are mild-mannered, patient, submissive to authority,
kindly and hospitable to strangers. They are a light-hearted,
apathetic people, little given to quarrelling or to the commission
of violent crime. Though able and intelligent cultivators they
do not take kindly to any form of labour other than agricultural,
with the result that most of the industries and trades of the
country are in the hands of Chinese.
The national costume of the Siamese is the panune, a piece of
cloth about I yd. wide and 3 yds. long. The middle of it is passed
round the body, which it covers from the waist to the knees, and is
hitched in front so that the two ends hang down in equal length
before; these being twisted together are passed back between the
legs, drawn up and tucked into the waist at the middle of the back.
The panung is common to both sexes, the women supplementing it
with a scarf worn round the body under the arms. Among the better
classes both sexes wear also a jacket buttoned to the throat, stockings
and shoes, and all the men, except servants, wear hats.
The staple food of the Siamese is rice and fish. Meat is eaten,
but, as the slaughter of animals is against Buddhist tenets, is not
often obtainable, with the exception of pork, killed by Chinese.
The men smoke, but the women do not. Everybody chews betel.
The principal pastimes are gambling, boat-racing, cock- and fish-
fighting and kite-flying, and a kind 01 football.
Slavery, once common, has been gradually abolished by a series of
laws, the last of which came into force in 1905. No such thing as
caste exists, and low birth is no insuperable bar to the attainment of
the highest dignities. There are no hereditary titles, those in use being
conferred foi' life only and being attached to some particular office.
Towns. — There are very few towns with a population of over
10,000 inhabitants in Siam, the majority being merely scattered
townships or clusters of villages, the capitals of the provinces
(muang) being often no more than a few houses gathered round the
market-place, the offices and the governor's residence. The more
important places of northern Siam include Chieng Mai (q.v.), the
capital of the north, Chieng Rai, (near the northern frontier;
Lampun, also known as Labong (originally Haribunchai), the first
Lao settlement in Siam; Lampangr, Tern, Nan and Pre, each the
seat of a Lao chief and of |a Siamese commissioner; Utaradit,
Pichai, Pichit, Pechabun and Raheng, the last of importance as a
timber station, with Phitsnulok, Sukhotai, Swankalok, Kampeng
Pet and Nakhon Sawan, former capitals of Khmer- Siamese king-
doms, and at present the headquarters of provincial governments.
In eastern Siam the only towns of importance are Korat and Ubon,
capitals of divisions, and Nong Kai, an ancient place on the Mekong
river. In central Siam, after Bangkok and Ayuthia, places of im-
portance on the Menam Chao Phaya are Pak-Nam at the river
mouth, the seat of a governor, terminus of a railway and site of
modern fortifications; Paklat, the seat of a governor, a town of
Mohns, descendants of refugees from Pegu ; Nontaburi, a few miles
above Bangkok, the seat of a governor and possessing a large market ;
Pratoomtani, Angtong, Prom, Inburi, Cnainat and Saraburi, all
administrative centres; and Lopburi, the last capital before Ayuthia
and the residence of kings during the Ayuthia period, a city of ruins
now gradually reawakening as a centre of railway traffic. To the
west of the Menam Chao Phaya lie Suphanburi and Ratburi, ancient
cities, now government headquarters; Pechaburi (the Piply of
early travellers), the terminus of the western railway; and Phrapa-
toom, with its huge pagoda on the site of the capital of Sri Wichaiya,
a kingdom of 2000 years ago, and now a place of military, agricultural
and other schools. To the east, in the Bang Pakong river-basin
and down the eastern shore of the gulf, are Pachim, a divisional
headquarters; Petriou (q.v.); Bang Plasoi, a fishing centre, with
Rayong, Chantabun (q.v.) and Krat, producing gems and pepper.
In southern Siam the chief towns are Chumpon; Bandon, with a
growing timber industry; Nakhon Sri Tammarat (q.v.); Singora
(q.v.) ; Puket (q.v.) ; Patani.
Communications. — Central Siam is supplied with an exceptionally
complete system of water communications; for not only has it the
three rivers with their tributaries and much-divided courses, but all
three are linked together by a series of canals which, running in
parallel lines across the plain from E. to W., make the farthest
corners of this section of the kingdom easily accessible from the
capital. The level of the land is so low, the soil so soft, and stone
suitable for metal so entirely absent, that the making and upkeep of
roads would here be ruinously expensive. Former rulers have
realized this and have therefore confined themselves to canal making.
Some of the canals are very old, others are of comparatively recent
construction. In the past they were often allowed to fall into dis-
repair, but in 1903 a department of government was formed to
control their upkeep, with the result that most of them were soon
furnished with new locks, deepened, and made thoroughly service-
able. The boat traffic on them is so great that the collection of a
small toll more than suffices to pay for all maintenance expenses.
In northern and southern Siam, where the conditions are different,
roads are being slowly made, but natural difficulties are great, and
travelling in those distant parts is still a matter of much discomfort.
In 1909 there were 640 miles of railway open. All but 65 miles
was under state management. The main line from Bangkok to the
north had reached Pang Tone Phung, some distance north of
Utaradit and 10 m. south of Meh Puak, which was selected as
the terminus for the time being, the continuation to Chieng Mai,
the original objective, being postponed pending the construction of
another and more important line. This latter was the continuation
through southern Siam of the line already constructed from Bangkok
south-west to Petchaburi (no m.), with funds borrowed, under a
recent agreement, from the Federated (British) Malay States
government, wh'ich work, following upon surveys made in 1907,
was begun in 1909 under the direction of a newly constituted
southern branch of the Royal Railways department. From Ban
Paji on the main line a branch extends north-eastwards no m. to
Korat. To the east of Bangkok the Bangkok- Petriew line (40 m.)
was completed and open for traffic.
The postal service extends to all parts of the country and is fairly
efficient. Siam joined the Postal Union in 1885. The inland tele-
graph is also widely distributed, and foreign lines communicate with
Saigon, the Straits Settlements and Moulmein.
Agriculture. — The cultivation of paddi (unhusked rice) forms the
SIAM
occupation of practically the whole population of Siam outside the
capital. Primitive methods obtain, but the Siamese are efficient
cultivators and secure good harvests nevertheless. The sowing and
planting season is from June to August, and the reaping season
from December to February. Forty or fifty varieties of paddi are
grown, and Siam rice is of the best in the world. Irrigation is
rudimentary, for no system exists for raising the water of the in-
numerable canals on to the fields. Water-supply depends chiefly,
therefore, on local rainfall. In 1905 the government started pre-
liminary surveys for a system of irrigation. Tobacco, pepper,
coco-nuts and maize are other agricultural products. Tobacco of
good quality supplies local requirements but is not exported ; pepper,
grown chiefly in Chantabun and southern Siam, annually yields
about 900 tons for export. From coco-nuts about 10,000 tons of
copra are made for export each year, and maize is used for local
consumption only. Of horned cattle statistical returns show over
two million head in the whole country.
Mining. — The minerals of Siam include gold, silver, rubies,
sapphires, tin, copper, iron, zinc and coal. Tin-mining is a flourish-
ing industry near Puket on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula,
and since 1905 much prospecting and some mining has been done
on the east coast. The export of tin in 1908 exceeded 5000 tons,
valued at over £600,000. Rubies and sapphires are mined in the
Chantabun district in the south-east. The Mining Department of
Siam is a well-organized branch of the government, employing
several highly-qualified English experts.
Timber. — The extraction of teak from the forests of northern Siam
employs a large number of people. The industry is almost entirely
in the hands of Europeans, British largely predominating. The
number of teak logs brought out via the Salween and Menam Chao
Phaya rivers average 160,000 annually, Siam being thus the largest
teak-producing country of the world. A Forest Department, in
which experienced officers recruited from the Indian Forest Service
are employed, has for many years controlled the forests of Siam.
Technology. — The government has since 1903 given attention to
sericulture, and steps have been taken to improve Siamese silk with
the aid of scientists borrowed from the Japanese Ministry of
Agriculture. Surveying and the administration of the land have
for a long time occupied the attention of the government. A
Survey Department, inaugurated about 1887, has completed the
general survey of the whole country, and has made a cadastral
survey of a large part of the thickly inhabited and highly cultivated
districts of central Siam. A Settlement Commission, organized in
1901, decided the ownership of lands, and, on completion, handed
over its work to a Land Registration Department. Thus a very
complete settlement of much of the richest agricultural land in the
country has been effected. The education of the youth of Siam in
the technology of the industries practised has not been neglected.
Pupils are sent to the best foreign agricultural, forestry and mining
schools, and, after going through the prescribed course, often with
distinction, return to Siam to apply their knowledge with more or
less success. Moreover, a college under the control of the Ministry
of Lands and Agriculture, which was founded in 1909, provides locally
courses of instruction in these subjectsand also in irrigation engineer-
ing, sericulture and surveying.
Commerce. — Rice-mills, saw-mills and a few distilleries of locally
consumed liquor, one or two brick and tile factories, and here and
there a shed in which coarse pottery is made, are all Siam has in
the way of factories. All manufactured articles of daily use are
imported, as is all ironware and machinery. The foreign commerce
of Siam is very ancient. Her commerce with India, China and
probably Japan dates from the beginning of the Christian era or
earlier, while that with Europe began in the i6th century. Trade
with her immediate neighbours is now insignificant, the total value
of annual imports and exports being about £400,000; but sea-
borne commerce is in a very flourishing condition. Bangkok, with
an annual trade valued at £13,000,000, easily overtops all the rest
of the country, the other ports together accounting for a total of
imports and exports not exceeding £3,000,000. On both the east
and west coasts of southern Siam trade is increasing rapidly, and is
almost entirely wjth the Straits Settlements. The trade of the
west coast is carried in British ships exclusively, that on the east
coast by British and Siamese.
Art. — The Siamese are an artistic nation. Their architecture,
drawing, goldsmith's work, carving, music and dancing are all highly
developed in strict accordance with the traditions of Indo-Chinese
art. Architecture, chiefly exercised in connexion with religious
buildings, is clearly a decadent form of that practised by the ancient
Khmers, whose architectural remains are among the finest in the
world. The system of music is elaborate but is not written, vocalists
and instrumentalists performing entirely by ear. The interval corre-
sponding to the octave being divided into seven equal parts, each
about 1 1 semitone, it follows that Siamese music sounds strange in
Western ears. Harmony is unknown, and orchestras, which include
fiddles, flutes, drums and harmonicons, perform in unison. The
goldsmith's work of Siam is justly celebrated. Repouss6 work in
silver, which is still practised, dates from the most ancient times.
Almost every province has its special patterns and processes, the
most elaborate being those of Nakhon Sri Tammarat (Ligore),
Chantabun and the Laos country. In the Ligore ware the hammered
ground-work is inlaid with a black composition of sulphides of baser
metals which throws up the pattern with distinctness.
Government. — The government of Siam is an absolute monarchy.
The heir to the throne is appointed by the king, and was formerly
chosen from among all the members of his family, collateral as
well as descendants. The choice was sometimes made early
in the reign when the heir held the title of " Chao Uparach "
or " Wang Na," miscalled " Second King " in English, and
sometimes was left until the death of the king was imminent.
The arrangement was fraught with danger to the public tran-
quillity, and one of the reforms of the last sovereign was the
abolition of the office of " Chao Uparach " and a decree that the
throne should in future descend from the king to one of his sons
born of a queen, which decree was immediately followed by the
appointment of a crown prince. There is a council consisting
of the ten ministers of state — for foreign affairs, war, interior,
finance, household, justice, metropolitan government, public
works, public instruction and for agriculture — together with the
general adviser. There is also a legislative council, of which
the above are ex officio members, consisting of forty-five persons
appointed by the king. The council meets once a week for the
transaction of the business of government. The king is an
autocrat in practice as well as in theory, he has an absolute
power of veto, and the initiative of measures rests largely
with him. Most departments have the benefit of European
advisers. The government offices are conducted much on
European lines. The Christian Sunday is observed as a holiday
and regular hours are prescribed for attendance. The numerous
palace and other functions make some demand upon ministers'
time, and, as the king transacts most of his affairs at night,
high officials usually keep late office hours. The Ministry of
Interior and certain technical departments are recruited from
the civil service schools, but many appointments in government
service go by patronage. For administrative purposes the
country is divided into seventeen montons (or divisions) each
in charge of a high commissioner, and an eighteenth, including
Bangkok and the surrounding suburban provinces, under the
direct control of the minister for metropolitan government (see
BANGKOK). The high commissioners are responsible to the
minister of interior, and the montons are furnished with a very
complete staff for the various branches of the administration.
The montons consist of groups of the old rural provinces (muang),
the hereditary chiefs of which, except in the Lao country in the
north ajid in the Malay States, kave been replaced by governors
trained in administrative work and subordinate to the high
commissioner. Each muang is subdivided into ampurs under
assistant commissioners, and these again are divided into village
circles under headmen (kamnans), which circles comprise villages
under the control of elders. The suburban provinces of the
metropolitan monton are also divided as above. The policing
of the seventeen montons is provided for by a gendarmerie of
over 7000 men and officers (many of the latter Danes), a
well-equipped and well-disciplined force. That of the sub-
urban provinces is effected by branches of the Bangkok civil
police.
Finance. — The revenue administration is controlled by the
ministers of the interior, of metropolitan government and of finance,
by means of well-organized departments and with expert European
assistance. The total revenue of the country for 1908-1909 amounted
to 58,000,000 ticals, or, at the prevailing rate of exchange, about
£4,300,000, made up as follows : —
Farms and monopolies (spirits, gambling, &c.) £783,000
Opium revenue .... 823,000
Lands, forests, mines, capitation. 1,330,000
Customs and octroi . . . ' 653,000
Posts, telegraphs and railways . 331,000
Judicial and other fees . . . 270,000
Sundries 110,000
Total £4,300,000
The unit of Siamese currency is the tical, a silver coin about equal
in weight and fineness to the Indian rupee. In 1902, owing to the
serious depreciation of the value of silver, the Siamese mint was closed
to free coinage, and an arrangement was made providing for the
gradual enhancement of the value of the tical until a suitable value
should be attained at which it might be fixed. This measure was
6
SIAM
successful, the value of the tical having thereby been increased from
i lid. in 1902 to is. 5{|d. in 1909, to the improvement of the
national credit and of the value of the revenues. A paper currency
was established in 1902, and proved a financial success. In 1905
Siam contracted her first public loan, £1,000,000 being raised in
London and Paris at 95 J and bearing 4! % interest. This sum was
employed chiefly in railway construction, and in 1907 a second loan
of £3,000,000 was issued in London, Paris and Berlin at 931 for the
same purpose and for extension of irrigation works. A further sum
of £4,000,000 was borrowed in 1909 from the government of the
Federated (British) Malay States at par and bearing interest at
4 %, also for railway construction.
Weights and Measures. — In accordance with the custom formerly
prevalent in all the kingdoms of Further India, the coinage of Siam
furnishes the standard of weight. The tical (baht) is the unit of
currency and also the unit of weight. Eighty ticals equal one
chang and fifty chang equal one haph, equivalent to the Chinese
picul, or I33jlb avoirdupois. For the weighing of gold, gems, opium,
&c., the/Mang, equal to i tical, and the salung, equal to J tical, are
used. The unit of linear measure is the wah, which is subdivided into
i wah or sauk, \ wah or kup, and into fa wah or mew. Twenty wah
equal one sen and 400 sen equal one yote. The length of the wah
has been fixed at two metres. The unit of land measure is the rai,
which is equal to 400 square wah, and is subdivided into four equal
ngan. Measures of capacity are the tang or bucket, and the sat or
basket. Twenty tanan, originally a half coco-nut shell, equal one
tang, and twenty-five of the same measure equal one sat. The tang
is used for measuring rice and the sat for paddi and other grain.
One sat of paddi weighs 42 J ft avoirdupois.
Army and Navy. — By a law passed in 1903, the ancient system
of recruiting the army and navy from the descendants of former
prisoners of war was abolished in favour of compulsory service by
all able-bodied men. The new arrangement, which is strictly terri-
torial, was enforced in eight montons by the year 1909, resulting in a
standing peace army of 20,000 of all ranks, in a marine service of
about 10,000, and in the beginnings of first and second reserves.
The navy, many of the officers of which are Danes and Norwegians,
comprises a steel twin-screw cruiser of 2500 tons which serves as
the royal yacht, four steel gunboats of between 500 and 700 tons all
armed with modern quick-firing guns, two torpedo-boat destroyers
and three torpedo boats, with other craft for river and coast work.
Justice.— Since the institution of the Ministry of Justice in 1892
very great improvements have been effected in this branch of the
administration. The old tribunals where customary law was
administered by ignorant satellites of the great, amid unspeakable
corruption, have all been replaced by organized courts with qualified
judges appointed from the Bangkok law school, and under the
direct control of the ministry in all except the most outlying parts.
The ministry is well organized, and with the assistance of European
and Japanese officers of experience has drafted a large number of
laws and regulations, most of which have been brought into force.
Extra-territorial jurisdiction was for long secured by treaty for the
subjects of all foreign powers, who could therefore only be sued in
the courts maintained in Siam by their own governments, while
European assessors were employed in cases where foreigners sued
Siamese. An indication, however, foreshadowing the disappearance
of extra-territorial rights, appeared in the treaty of 1907 between
France and Siam, the former power therein surrendering all such
rights where Asiatics are concerned so soon as the Siamese penal and
Erocedure codes should have become law, and this was followed
y a much greater innovation in 1909 when Great Britain closed her
courts in Siam and surrendered her subjects under certain temporary
conditions to the jurisdiction of the Siamese courts. When it is
understood that there _are over 30,000 Chinese, Annamese, Burmese
and other Asiatic foreign subjects living in Siam, the importance to
the country of this change will be to some extent realized.
Religion. — While the pure-blooded Malays of the Peninsula are
Mahommedans, the Siamese and Lao profess a form of Buddhism
which is tinged by Cingalese and Burmese influences, and, especially
in the more remote country districts, by the spirit-worship which is
characteristic of the imaginative and timid Ka and other hill peoples
of Indo-China. In the capital a curious admixture of early Brah-
minical influence is still noticeable, and no act of public importance
takes place without the assistance of the divinations of the Brahmin
priests. The Siamese, as southern Buddhists, pride themselves on
their orthodoxy; and since Burma, like Ceylon, has lost its inde-
pendence, the king is regarded in the light of the sole surviving
defender of the faith. There is a close connexion between the laity
and priesthood, as the Buddhist rule, which prescribes that every
man should enter the priesthood for at least a few months, is almost
universally observed, even young princes and noblemen who have
been educated in Europe donning the yellow robe on their return to
Siam. A certain amount of scepticism prevails among the educated
classes, and political motives may contribute to their apparent
orthodoxy, but there is no open dissent from Buddhism, and those
who discard its dogmas still, as a rule, venerate it as an ethical
system. The accounts given by some writers as to the profligacy
and immorality in the monasteries are grossly exaggerated. Many
of the temples in the cap-tal are under the direct supervision of the
king, and in these a stricter rule of life is observed. Some of the
priests are learned in the Buddhist scriptures, and most of the Pali
scholarship in Siam is to be found in monasteries, but there is no
learning of a secular nature. There is little public worship in the
Christian sense of the word. On the day set apart for worship (Wan
Phra, or " Day of the Lord ") the attendance at the temples is small
and consists mostly of women. Religious or semi-religious cere-
monies, however, play a great part in the life of the Siamese, and
few weeks pass without some great function or procession. Among
these the cremation ceremonies are especially conspicuous. The
more exalted the personage the longer, as a rule, is the body kept
before cremation. The cremations of great people, which often last
several days, are the occasion of public festivities and are celebrated
with processions, theatrical shows, illuminations and fireworks.
The missionaries in Siam are entirely French Roman Catholics and
American Protestants. They have done much to help on the general
work of civilization, and the progress of education has been largely
due to their efforts.
Education. — As in Burma, the Buddhist monasteries scattered
throughout the country carry on almost the whole of the elementary
education in the rural districts. A provincial training college was
established in 1903 for the purpose of instructing priests and laymen
in the work of teaching, and has turned out many qualified teachers
whose subsequent work has proved satisfactory. By these means,
and with regular government supervision and control, the monastic
schools are being brought into line with the government educational
organization. They now contain not far short of 100,000 pupils.
In the metropolitan monton there are primary, secondary and special
schools for boys and girls, affording instruction to some 10,000
pupils. There are also the medical school, the law school, the civil
service school, the military schools and the agricultural college,
which are entered by students who have passed through the secondary
grade for the purpose of receiving professional instruction. Many
of the special schools use the English language for conveying
instruction, and there are three special schools where the whole
curriculum is conducted in English by English masters. Two
scholarships of £300 a year each for four years are annually com-
peted for by the scholars of these schools, the winners of which
proceed to Europe to study a subject of their own selection which
shall fit them for the future service of their country. Most of the
special schools also give scholarships to enable the best of their
pupils to complete their studies abroad. The result of the wide-
spread monastic school system is that almost all men can read and
write a little, though the women are altogether illiterate.
History.
Concerning the origin of the name " Siam " many theories
have been advanced. The early European visitors to the
country noticed that it was not officially referred to by any such
name, and therefore apparently conceived that the term must
have been applied from outside. Hence the first written accounts
give Portuguese, Malay and other derivations, some of which
have continued to find credence among quite recent writers.
It is now known, however, that " Siam " or " Sayam " is one
of the most ancient names of the country, and that at least
a thousand years ago it was in common use, such titles as
Swankalok-Sukhotai, Shahr-i-nao, Dwarapuri, Ayuthia, the last
sometimes corrupted to " Judea," by which the kingdom has
been known at various periods of its history, being no more than
the names of the different capital cities whose rulers in turn
brought the land under their sway. The Siamese (Thai) call
their country Muang Thai, or " the country of the Thai race,"
but the ancient name Muang Sayam has lately been revived.
The gradual evolution of the Siamese (Thai) from the fusion of
Lao-Tai and Khmer races has been mentioned above. Their
language, the most distinctively Lao-Tai attribute which they
have, plainly shows their very close relationship with the latter
race and its present branches, the Shans (Tai L6ng) and the
Ahom of Assam, while their appearance, customs, written
character and religion bear strong evidence of their affinity with
the Khmers. The southward movement of the Lao-Tai family
from their original seats in south-west China is of very ancient
date, the Lao states of Luang Prabang and Wieng Chan on the
Mekong having been founded at least two thousand years ago.
The first incursions of Lao-Tai among the Khmers of northern
Siam were probably later, for the town of Lampun (Labong or
Haribunchai) , the first Lao capital in Siam, was founded about
A.D. 575. The fusion of races may be said to have begun then,
for it was during the succeeding centuries that the kings of
Swankalok-Sukhotai gradually assumed Lao characteristics,
and that the Siamese language, written character and other
racial peculiarities were in course of formation. But the finishing
SIAM
touches to the new race were supplied by the great expulsion of
Lao-Tai from south-west China by Kublai Khan in A.D. 125°)
which profoundly affected the whole of Further India. There-
after the north, the west and the south-west of Siam, comprising
the kingdom of Swankalok-Sukhotai, and the states of Suphan
and Nakhon Sri Tammarat (Ligore), with their sub-feudatories,
were reduced by the Siamese (Thai), who, during their southern
progress, moved their capital from Sukhotai to Nakhon Sawan,
thence to Kampeng Pet, and thence again to Suvarnabhumi
near the present Kanburi. A Sukhotai inscription of about
1284 states that the dominions of King Rama Kamheng ex-
tended across the country from the Mekong to Pechaburi, and
thence down the Gulf of Siam to Ligore; and the Malay annals
say that the Siamese had penetrated to the extremity of the
peninsula before the first Malay colony from Menangkabu
founded Singapore, i.e. about 1160. Meanwhile the ancient
state of Lavo (Lopburi), with its capital at Sano (Sornau or
Shahr-i-nao), at one time feudatory to Swankalok-Sukhotai,
remained the last stronghold of the Khmer, although even here
the race was much modified by Lao-Tai blood; but presently
Sano also was attacked, and its fall completed the ascendancy
of the Siamese (Thai) throughout the country. The city of
Ayuthia which rose in A.D. 1350 upon the ruins of Sano was the
capital of the first true Siamese king of all Siam. This king's
sway extended to Moulmein, Tavoy, Tenasserim and the whole
Malacca peninsula (where among the traders from the west
Siam was known as Sornau, i.e. Shahr-i-nau, long after Sano
had disappeared — Yule's Marco Polo, ii. 260), and was felt even
in Java. This is corroborated by Javan records, which describe
a " Cambodian " invasion about 1340; but Cambodia was
itself invaded about this time by the Siamese, who took Angkor
and held it for a time, carrying off 90,000 captives. The great
southward expansion here recorded is confirmed by the Chinese
annals of the period. The wars with Cambodia continued with
varying success for some 400 years, but Cambodia gradually
lost ground and was finally shorn of several provinces, her
sovereign falling entirely under Siamese influence. This, how-
ever, latterly became displeasing to the French, now in Cochin
China, and Siam was ultimately obliged to recognize the pro-
tectorate forced on Cambodia by that power. Vigorous attacks
were also made during this period on the Lao states to the north-
west and north-east, followed by vast deportation of the people,
and Siamese supremacy was pretty firmly established in Chieng-
mai and its dependencies by the end of the i8th century, and over
the great eastern capitals, Luang Prabang and Vien-chang,
about 1828. During the I5th and i6th centuries Siam was
frequently invaded by the Burmese and Peguans, who, attracted
probably by the great wealth of Ayuthia, besieged it more than
once without success, the defenders being aided by Portuguese
mercenaries, till about 1555, when the city was taken and Siam
reduced to dependence. From this condition, however, it was
raised a few years later by the great conqueror and national
hero Phra Naret, who after subduing Laos and Cambodia
invaded Pegu, which was utterly overthrown in the next century
by his successors. But after the civil wars of the i8th century
the Burmese, having previously taken Chieng-mai, which
appealed to Siam for help, entered Tenasserim and took Mergui
and Tavoy in 1764, and then advancing simultaneously from
the north and the west captured and destroyed Ayuthia after
a two years' siege (1767).
The intercourse between France and Siam began about 1680
under Phra Narain, who, by the advice of his minister, the
Cephalonian adventurer Constantine Phaulcon, sent an embassy
to Louis XIV. When the return mission arrived, the eagerness
of the ambassador for the king's conversion to Christianity,
added to the intrigues of Phaulcon with the Jesuits with the
supposed intention of establishing a French supremacy, led to
the death of Phaulcon, the persecution of the Christians, and
the cessation of all intercourse with France. An interesting
episode was the active intercourse, chiefly commercial, between
the Siamese and Japanese governments from 1592 to 1632.
Many Japanese settled in Siam, where they were much employed.
They were dreaded as soldiers, and as individuals commanded
a position resembling that of Europeans in most eastern countries.
The jealousy of their increasing influence at last led to a massacre,
and to the expulsion or absorption of the survivors. Japan
was soon after this, in 1636, closed to foreigners; but trade
was carried on at all events down to 1745 through Dutch and
Chinese and occasional English traders. In 1752 an embassy
came from Ceylon, desiring to renew the ancient friendship and
to discuss religious matters. After the fall of Ayuthia a great
general, Phaya Takh Sin, collected the remains of the army
and restored the fortunes of the kingdom, establishing his
capital at Bangkok; but, becoming insane, he was put to
death, and was succeeded by another successful general, Phaya
Chakkri, who founded the present dynasty. Under him Tenas-
serim was invaded and Tavoy held for the last time by the
Siamese in 1792, though in 1825, taking advantage of the Bur-
mese difficulty with England, they bombarded some of the towns
on that coast. The supremacy of China is indicated by occasional
missions sent, as on the founding of a new dynasty, to Peking,
to bring back a seal and a calendar. But the Siamese now
repudiate this supremacy, and have sent neither mission nor
tribute for sixty years, while no steps have been taken by the
Chinese to enforce its recognition. The sovereign, Phra Para-
mendr Maha Mongkut, was a very accomplished man, an en-
lightened reformer and devoted to science; his death, indeed,
was caused by fatigue and exposure while observing an eclipse.
Many of his predecessors, too, were men of different fibre from
the ordinary Oriental sovereign, while his son Chulalong Korn,
who succeeded him in 1868, showed himself an administrator of
the highest capacity. He died on the 23rd of October 1910.
Of European nations the Portuguese first established inter-
course with Siam. This was in 1511, after the conquest of
Malacca by D'Albuquerque, and the intimacy lasted over a
century, the tradition of their greatness having hardly yet died
out. They were supplanted gradually in the i7th century by
the Dutch, whose intercourse also lasted for a similar period; but
they have left no traces of their presence, as the Portuguese
always did in these countries to a greater extent than any other
people. English traders were in Siam very early in the i7th
century; there was a friendly interchange of letters between
James I. and the king of Siam, who had some Englishmen in his
service, and, when the ships visited " Sia " (which was " as
great a city as London ") or the queen of Patani, they were
hospitably received and accorded privileges — the important
items of export being, as now, tin, varnish, deer-skins and
" precious drugs." Later on, the East India Company's servants,
jealous at the employment of Englishmen not in their service,
attacked the Siamese, which led to a massacre of the English
at Mergui in 1687, and the factory at Ayuthia was abandoned
in 1688. A similar attack is said to have been made in 1719
by the governor of Madras. After this the trade was neglected.
Pulo Penang, an island belonging to the Siamese dependency
of Kedah, was granted on a permanent lease to the East India
Company in 1786, and treaties were entered into by the sultan
of Kedah with the company. In 1822 John Crawfurd was sent
to Bangkok to negotiate a treaty with the suzerain power, but
the mission was unsuccessful. In 1824, by treaty with the
Dutch, British interests became paramount in the Malay
Peninsula and in Siam, and, two years later, Captain Burney
signed the first treaty of friendship and commerce between
England and Siam. A similar treaty was effected with America
in 1833. Subsequently trade with British possessions revived,
and in time a more elaborate treaty with England became
desirable. Sir J. Brooke opened negotiations in 1850 which
came to nothing, but in 1855 Sir J. Bowring signed a new treaty
whereby Siam agreed to the appointment of a British consul in
Bangkok, and to the exercise by that official of full extra-
territorial powers. Englishmen were permitted to own land in
certain defined districts, customs and port dues and land revenues
were fixed, and many new trade facilities were granted. This
important arrangement was followed at intervals by similar
treaties with the other powers, the last two being those with
8
SIAM
Japan in 1898 and Russia in 1899. A further convention
afterwards provided for a second British consular district in
northern Siam, while England and France have both appointed
vice-consuls in different parts of the country. Thus foreigners
in Siam, except Chinese who have no consul, could only be tried
for criminal offences, or sued in civil cases, in their own consular
courts. A large portion of the work of the foreign consuls,
especially the British, was consequently judicial, and in 1901
the office of judge was created by the British government, a
special judge with an assistant judge being appointed to this
post. Meanwhile, trade steadily increased, especially with
Great Britain and the British colonies of Hong Kong and
Singapore.
The peaceful internal development of Siam seemed also likely
to be favoured by the events that were taking place outside her
frontiers. For centuries she had been distracted by wars with
Cambodians, Peguans and Burmans, but the incorporation of
Lower Cochin China, Annam and Tongking by the French, and
the annexation of Lower and Upper Burma successively by the
British, freed her from all further danger on the part of her old
rivals. Unfortunately, she was not destined to escape trouble.
The frontiers of Siam, both to the east and the west, had always
been vague and ill-defined, as was natural in wild and unexplored
regions inhabited by more or less barbarous tribes. The frontier
between Siam and the new British possessions in Burma was
settled amicably and without difficulty, but the boundary
question on the east was a much more intricate one and was
still outstanding. Disputes with frontier tribes led to complica-
tions with France, who asserted that the Siamese were occupying
territory that rightfully belonged to Annam, which was now
under French protection. France, while assuring the British
Government that she laid no claim to the province of Luang
Prabang, which was situated on both banks of the upper
Mekong, roughly between the i8th and zoth parallels, claimed
that farther south the Mekong formed the true boundary between
Siam and Annam, and demanded the evacuation of certain
Siamese posts east of the river. The Siamese refused to yield,
and early in 1893 encounters took place in the disputed area,
in which a French officer was captured and French soldiers were
killed. The French then despatched gunboats from Saigon to
enforce their demands at Bangkok, and these made their way
up to the capital in spite of an attempt on the part of the Siamese
naval forces to bar their way. In consequence of the resistance
with which they had met, the French now greatly increased
their demands, insisting on the Siamese giving up all territory
east of the Mekong, including about half of Luang Prabang,
on the payment of an indemnity and on the permanent with-
drawal of all troops and police to a distance of 25 kilometres
from the right bank of the Mekong. Ten days' blockade of the
port caused the Siamese government to accede to these demands,
and a treaty was made, the French sending troops to occupy
Chantabun until its provisions should have been carried out.
In 1895 lengthy negotiations took place between France and
England concerning their respective eastern and western frontiers
in Farther India. These negotiations bore important fruit
in the Anglo-French convention of 1896, the chief provision of
which was the neutralization by the contracting parties of the
central portion of Siam, consisting of the basin of the river
Menam, with its rich and fertile land, which contains most of the
population and the wealth of the country. Neither eastern nor
southern Siam was included in this agreement, but nothing was
said to impair or lessen in any way the full sovereign rights of
the king of Siam over those parts of the country. Siam thus has
its independence guaranteed by the two European powers who
alone- have interests in Indo-China, England on the west and
France on the east, and has therefore a considerable political
interest similar to that of Afghanistan, which forms a buffer state
between the Russian and British possessions on the north of
India. Encouraged by the assurance of the Anglo-French
convention, Siam now turned her whole attention to internal
reform, and to such good purpose that, in a few years, improved
government and expansion of trade aroused a general interest
in her welfare, and gave her a stability which had before been
lacking. With the growth of confidence negotiations with
France were reopened, and, after long discussion, the treaty of
1893 was set aside and Chantabun evacuated in return for the
cession of the provinces of Bassac, Melupre, and the remainder
of Luang Prabang, all on the right bank of the Mekong, and of
the maritime district of Krat. These results were embodied
in a new treaty signed and ratified in 1904.
Meanwhile, in 1899, negotiations with the British government
led to agreements denning the status of British subjects in Siam,
and fixing the frontier between southern Siam and the British
Malay States, while in 1900 the provisions of Sir J. Bowring's
treaty of 1855, fixing the rates of land revenue, were abrogated
in order to facilitate Siamese financial reform.
In 1907 a further convention was made with France, Siam
returning to the French protectorate of Cambodia the province
of Battambang conquered in 1811, and in compensation receiving
back from France the maritime province of Krat and the district
of Dansai, which had been ceded in 1904. This convention also
modified the extra-territorial rights enjoyed by France in Siam,
and disclosed an inclination to recognize the material improve-
ments of the preceding years. In 1907 also negotiations were
opened with Great Britain, the objects of which were to modify
the extra-territorial rights conceded to that power by the
treaty of 1855, and to remove various restrictions regarding
taxation and general administration, which, though diminished
from time to time by agreement, still continued to hamper the
government very much. These negotiations continued all
through 1908 and resulted in a treaty, signed and ratified in
1909, by which Siam ceded to Great Britain her suzerain rights
over the dependencies of Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu and
Perlis, Malay states situated in southern Siam just north of
British Malaya, containing in all about a million inhabitants
and for the most part flourishing and wealthy, and obtained the
practical abolition of British jurisdiction in Siam proper as well
as relief from any obligations which, though probably very
necessary when they were incurred, had long since become mere
useless and vexatious obstacles to progress towards efficient
government. This treaty, a costly one to Siam, is important
as opening up a prospect of ultimate abandonment of extra-
territorial rights by all the powers. Administrative reform
and an advanced railway policy have made of Siam a market
for the trade of Europe, which has become an object of keen
competition. In 1908 the British empire retained the lead, but
other nations, notably Germany, Denmark, Italy and Belgium,
had recently acquired large interests in the commerce of the
country. Japan also, after an interruption of more than two
hundred years, had resumed active commercial relations with
Siam.
AUTHORITIES.— H. Alabaster, Wheel of the Law (London, 1871);
Dr Anderson, English Intercourse with Siam in the l?th Century
(London, 1890) ; W. J. Archer, Journey in the Mekong Valley (1892) ;
C. Bock, Temples and Elephants; Sir John Bowring, The Kingdom
and People of Siam (London, 1857) ; J. G. D. Campbell, Siam in
the Twentieth Century (London, 1902) ; A. C. Carter, The Kingdom
of Siam (New York, 1904) ; A. R. Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans
(London, 1885); J. Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy to Siam
(London, 1829); Lord Curzon, Nineteenth Century (July, 1893);
H.R.H. Prince Damrong, " The Foundation of Ayuthia," Siam
Society Journal (1905) ; Diplomatic and Consular Reports for
Bangkok and Chien Mai (1888-1907); Directory for Bangkok and
Siam (Bangkok Times Office Annual); Francis Garnier, Voyage
d' exploration en Indo-Chine (Paris, 1873); Geographical Journal,
papers by J. S. Black, Lord Curzon, Lord Lamington, Professor
H. Louis, T. M'Carthy, W. H. Smythe; Colonel G. E. Gerini," The
Tonsure Ceremony," " The Art of War in Indo-China "; " Siam's
Intercourse with China," Asiatic Quarterly Review (1906) ; " Historical
Retrospect of Junkceylon Island," Siam Society's Journal (1905);
W. A. Graham, " Brief History of the R.C. Mission in Siam," Asiatic
Quarterly Review (1901); Mrs Grindrod, Siam: a Geographical
Summary; H. Hallet, A Thousand Miles on an Elephant (London,
1890) ; Captain Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies (1688-
I723); Prince Henri d'Orleans, Around Tonquin and Siam (London,
1894); Professor A. H. Keane, Eastern Geography: Asia; Dr Keith,
Journal Royal Asiatic Society (1892); C. S. Leckie, Journal Society
of Arts (1894), vol. xlii.; M. de la Loubere, Description du royaume
de Siam (Amsterdam, 1714); Captain Low, Journal Asiatic Society,
SIAM
vol. vii.; J. M'Carthy, Surveying and Exploring in Siam (London,
1900); Henri Mouhot, Travels in Indo-China (London, 1844);
F. A. Neale, Narrative of a Residence in Siam (London, 1852); Sir
H. Norman, The Far East (London, 1904); Bishop Pallegoix,
Description du royaume Thai ou Siam (Paris, 1854); H. W. Smythe,
Five Years in Siam (London, 1898); J. Thomson, Antiquities of
Cambodia, Malacca, Indo-China and China (London, 1875); P. A.
Thompson, Lotus Land (London, 1906); Turpin, Histoire de Siam
(Paris, 1719); F. Vincent, Land of the White Elephant; E. Young,
The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe (London, 1898).
Language and Literature.
Siamese belongs to the well-defined Tai group of the Siamese-
Chinese family of languages. Its connexion with Chinese is
clear though evidently distant, but its relationship with the other
languages of the Tai group is very close. It is spoken throughout
central Siam, in all parts of southern Siam except Patani Monton,
in northern Siam along the river-banks as far up as Utaradit
and Raheng, and in eastern Siam as far as the confines of the
Korat Monton. In Patani the common language is still Malay,
while in the upper parts of northern, and the outlying parts of
eastern, Siam the prevailing language is'Lao, though the many
hill tribes which occupy the ranges of these parts have distinct
languages of their own.
Originally Siamese was purely monosyllabic, that is, each true
word consisted of a single vowel sound preceded by, or followed by,
a consonant. Of such monosyllables there are less than two thousand,
and therefore many syllables have to do duty for the expression of
more than one idea, confusion being avoided by the tone in which
they are spoken, whence the term tonal," which is applied to all
the languages of this family. The language now consists of about
15,000 words, of which compounds of two monosyllabic words and
appropriations from foreign sources form a very large part. Bali,
the ancient language of the kingdom of Magadha, in which the
sacred writings of Buddhism were made, was largely instrumental
in forming all the languages of Further India, including Siamese —
a fact which accounts for the numerous connecting links between
the M&n, Burmese and Siamese languages of the present time,
though these are of quite separate origin. When intercourse with
the West began, and more especially when Western methods of
government and education were first adopted in Siam, the tendency
to utilize European words was very marked, but recently there
has been an effort to avoid this by the coining of Siamese or Bali
compound words.
The current Siamese characters are derived from the more monu-
mental Cambodian alphabet, which again owes its origin to the
alphabet of the inscriptions, an offshoot of the character found on
the stone monuments of southern India in the 6th and 8th centuries.
The sacred books of Siam are still written in the Cambodian
character.
The Siamese alphabet consists of 44 consonants, in each of which
the vowel sound " aw " is inherent, and of 32 vowels all marked
not by individual letters, but by signs written above, below, before
or after the consonant in connexion with which they are to be pro-
nounced. It may seem at first that so many as 44 consonants can
scarcely be necessary, but the explanation is that several of them
express each a slightly different intonation of what is practically
the same consonant, the sound of " kh," for instance, being repre-
sented by six different letters and the sound of " t " by eight. More-
over, other letters are present only for use in certain words imported
from Bali or Sanskrit. The vowel signs have no sound by them-
selves, but act upon the vowel sound " aw " inherent in the con-
sonants, converting it into " a," " i," " o," " ee," " ow," &c. Each
of the signs has a name, and some of them produce modulations so
closely resembling those made by another that at the present day
they are scarcely to be distinguished apart. A hard-and-fast rule
the
at
anything else is simply suppressed or is pronounced as though it
were a letter naturally producing one or other of those sounds.
Thus many of the words procured from foreign sources, not ex-
cluding Bali and Sanskrit, are more or less mutilated in pronuncia-
tion, though the entirely suppressed or altered letter is still retained
in writing.
Siamese is written from left to right. In manuscript there is
usually no space between words, but punctuation is expressed by
intervals isolating phrases and sentences.
The greatest difficulty with the Siamese language lies in the tonal
system. Of the simple tones there are five — the even, the circumflex,
the descending, the grave and the high — any one of which when
applied to a word may give it a quite distinct meaning. Four of
the simple tones are marked in the written character by signs
placed over the consonant affected, and the absence of a mark
implies that the one remaining tone is to be used. A complication
is caused by the fact that the consonants are grouped into three
classes, to each of which a special tone applies, and consequently
the application of a tonal sign to a letter has a different effect, accord-
ing to the class to which such letter belongs. Though many syllables
have to do duty for the expression of more than one idea, the
majority have only one or at most two meanings, but there are some
which are used with quite a number of different inflections, each
of which gives the word a new meaning. Thus, for example, the
syllable khao may mean " they," " badly," " rice," " white,"
" old," or " news," simply according to the tone in which the word
is spoken. Words are unchangeabje and incapable of inflection.
There is no article, and no distinction of gender, number or case.
These, when it is necessary to denote them, are expressed by ex-
planatory words after the respective nouns; only the dative and
ablative are denoted by subsidiary words, which precede the nouns,
the nominative being marked by its position before, the objective
by its position after, the verb, and the genitive (and also the ad-
jective) by its place after the noun it qualifies. Occasionally, how-
ever, auxiliary nouns serve that purpose. Words like " mother,"
" son," " water " are often employed in forming compounds to
express ideas for which the Siamese have no single words, e.g. luk
can, " the son of hire," a labourer; me mu, " the mother of the hand,"
the thumb. The use of class words with numerals obtains in Siamese
as it does in Chinese, Burmese, Anamese, Malay and many other
Eastern languages. As in these, so in Siamese the personal pronouns
are mostly represented by nouns expressive of the various shades
of superior or lower rank according to Eastern etiquette. The verb
is, like the noun, perfectly colourless — person, number, tense and
mood being indicated by auxiliary words only when they cannot be
inferred from the context. Such auxiliary words are y&, " to be,"
" to dwell " (present) ; dai, " to have," leas, " end " (past) ; ca,
" also " (future) ; the first and third follow, the second and fourth
precede, the verb. Hai, " to give " (prefixed), often indicates the
subjunctive. As there are compound nouns, so there are compound
verbs; thus, e.g. pai, " to go," is joined to a transitive verb to
convert it into an intransitive or neuter; and thuk, " to touch,"
and long, " to be compelled," serve to form a sort of passive voice.
The number of adverbs, single and compound, is very large. The
prepositions mostly consist of nouns.
The construction of the sentence in Siamese is straightforward
and simple. The subject of the sentence precedes the verb and the
object follows it. The possessive pronoun follows the object. The
adverb usually follows the verb. In compound sentences the verbs
are placed together as in English, not separated by the object as in
German. When an action is expressed in the past the word which
forms with the verb the past tense is divided from the verb itself by
the object. Examples are : —
Rao (We) dekchai (boy) sam (three) kon (persons) cha (will) pai (go)
chap (catch) pla (fish) samrap (for) hai (give) paw (father) kin (eat).
Me (Mother) tan (you) yu (live) ti (place) nai (where), or "Where is
your mother?"
Me (Mother) pai (go) talat (bazaar) leao (finish), or " (My) mother
has gone to the bazaar."
The difficulties of the Siamese language are increased by the fact
that in addition to the ordinary language of the people there is a
completely different set of words ordained for the use of royalty.
This " Palace language " appears to have come into existence from
a desire to avoid the employment in the presence of royalty of
downright expressions of vulgarity or of words which might be
capable of conveying an unpleasant or indelicate idea other than
the meaning intended. In the effort to escape from the vulgar,
words of Sanskrit origin have been freely adopted and many Cam-
bodian words are also used. The language is so complete that the
dog, pig, crow and other common or unclean animals are all ex-
pressed by special words, while the actions of royalty, such as
eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, bathing, dying, are spoken of
in words quite distinct from those used to describe similar actions
of ordinary people.
The prose literature of Siam consists largely of mythological
and historical fables, almost all of which are of Indian origin,
though many of them have come to Siam through Cambodia.
Their number is larger than is usually supposed, many of them
being known to few beyond the writers who laboriously copy
them and the professional " raconteurs " who draw upon them
to replenish their stock-in-trade. The best known have all been
made into stage-plays, and it is in this form that they usually
come before the notice of the general public. Amongst them
are Ramakien, taken from the great Hindu epic Ramayana;
Wetyasunyin, the tale of a king who became an ascetic after
contemplation of a withered tree; Worawongs, the story of a
prince who loved a princess and was kiUed by the thrust of a
magic spear which guarded her; Chalawan, the tale of a princess
beloved by a crocodile; Unarud, the life story of Anuruddha,
a demigod, the grandson of Krishna; Phumhon, the tale of a
princess beloved by an elephant; Prang tong, a story of a
princess who before birth was promised to a " yak " or giant in
10
SIBAWAIHI— SIBERIA
return for a certain fruit which her mother desired to eat.
Mahasot is an account of the wars of King Mahasot. Nok Khum
is one of the theories of the genesis of mankind, the Nok Khum
being the sacred goose or " Hansa " from whose eggs the first
human beings were supposed to have been hatched. A consider-
able proportion of the romances are founded upon episodes
in the final life, or in one of the innumerable former existences,
of the Buddha. The Patlama Sompothiyan is the standard
Siamese life of the Buddha. Many of the stories have their
scene laid in Himaphan, the Siamese fairyland, probably origin-
ally the Himalaya.
A great many works on astrology and the casting of horoscopes,
on the ways to secure victory in war, success in love, in business
or in gambling, are known, as also works on other branches
of magic, to which subject the Siamese have always been partial.
On the practice of medicine, which is in close alliance with magic,
there are several well-known works.
The Niti literature forms a class apart. The word Niti is
from the Bali, and means " old saying," " tradition," " good
counsel." The best known of such works are Rules for the
Conduct of Kings, translated from the Bali, and The Maxims
of Phra Ruang, the national hero-king, on whose wonderful
sayings and doings the imagination of Siamese youth is fed.
In works on history the literature of Siam is unfortunately rather
poor. There can be little doubt that, as in the case of a!l the other
kingdoms of Further India, complete and detailed chronicles were
compiled from reign to reign by order of her kings, but of the more
ancient of these, the wars and disturbances which continued with
such frequency down to quite recent times have left no trace. The
Annals of the North, the Annals ofKrung Kao (Ayuthia) and the Book
of the Lives of the Four Kings (of the present dynasty) together
form the only more or less connected history of the country from
remote times down to the beginning of the present reign, and these,
at least so far as the earlier parts are concerned, contain much that
is inaccurate and a good deal which is altogether untrue. Foreign
histories include a work on Pegu, a few tales of Cambodian kings and
recently published class-books on European history compiled by
the educational department.
The number of works on law is considerable. The Laksana Phra
Thamasat, the Phra Tamra, Phra Tamnon, Phra Racha Kamnot
and Intkapat are ancient works setting forth the laws of the country
in their oldest form, adapted from the Dharmacastra and the Classifi-
cation of the Law of Manu. These, and also many of the edicts
passed by kings of the Ayuthia period which have been preserved,
are now of value more as curiosities of literature and history than
anything else, since, for all practical purposes, they have long been
superseded by laws more in accordance with modern ideas. The
laws of the sovereigns who have reigned at Bangkok form the most
notable part of this branch of Siamese literature. They include a
great number of revenue regulations, laws on civil matters such as
mortgage, bankruptcy, rights of way, companies, &c., and laws
governing- the procedure of courts, all of which adhere to Western
principles in the main. The latest addition is the P^nal Code, a
large and comprehensive work based upon the Indian, Japanese
and French codes and issued in 1908.
Poetry is a very ancient art in Siam and has always been held in
high honour, some of the best-known poets being, indeed, members
of the royal family. There are several quite distinct forms of metre,
of which those most commonly used are the Klong, the Kap and the
Klon. The Klong is rhythmic, the play being on the inflection of the
voice in speaking the words, which inflection is arranged according
to fixed schemes; the rhyme, if it can so be called, being sought
not in the similarity of syllables but of intonation. The Kap is
rhythmical and also has rhyming syllables. The lines contain an
equal number of syllables, and are arranged in stanzas of four lines
each. The last syllable of the first line rhymes with the third
syllable of the second line, the last of the second with the last of
the third and also with the first of the fourth line, and the last syllable
of the fourth line rhymes with the last of the second line of the next
succeeding stanza. The number of poems in one or other of these
two metres is very great, and includes verses on almost every theme.
In the Nirat poetry, a favourite form of verse, both are often used, a
stanza in Klong serving as a sort of argument at the head of a set of
verses in Kap. This Nirat poetry takes the form of narrative
addressed by a traveller to his lady-love, of a journey in which every
object and circumstance serves but to remind the wanderer of some
virtue or beauty of his correspondent. In most of such works the
journey is of course imaginary, but in some cases it is a true record
of travelling or campaigning, and has been found to contain in-
formation of value concerning the condition at certain times of out-
lying parts of the kingdom. Of the little love songs in Klon metre,
called Klon pet ton, there are many hundreds. These follow a
prescribed form, and consist of eight lines divided into two stanzas
of four lines each, every line containing eight syllables. The last
syllable of the first line rhymes with the third syllable of the second,
and the final of the second line with the final of the third. The
songs treat of all the aspects of love. A fourth poetical metre is
Chan, which, however, is not so much used as the others.
The introduction of printing in the Siamese character has re-
volutionized the literature of the country. Reading has become a
general accomplishment, a demand for reading matter has arisen,
and bookshops stocked with books have appeared to satisfy it. The
historical works above referred to have been issued in many editions,
and selections from the ancient fables and romances are continually-
being edited and reissued in narrative form or as plays. The
educational department has done good work in compiling volumes
of prose and verse which have found much favour with the public.
All the laws, edicts and regulations at present in force are to be had
in print at popular prices. Printing, in fact, has supplied a great
incentive to the development of literature, the output has increased
enormously, and will doubtless, continue to do so for a long time to
come. (W. A. G.)
SlBAWAIHI [Abu Bishr, or Abu-1 Hasan' Amr ibn'Uthman ibn
Qanbar, known as SIBAWAIHI or SIBUYA] (c. 753-793), Arabian
grammarian, was by origin a Persian and a freedman. Of his
early years nothing is known. At the age of thirty-two he went
to Basra, where he was a pupil of the celebrated grammarian
Khalll. Later he went to Bagdad, but soon left, owing to a
dispute with the Kufan grammarian Kisa'i, and returned to
Persia, where he died at the age of about forty. His great
grammar of Arabic, known simply as The Book, is not only the
earliest systematic presentation of Arabic grammar, but is
recognized among Arabs as the most perfect. It is not always
clear, but is very full and valuable for its many illustrations
from the Koran and the poets.
The Book was published by H. Derenbourg (2 vols., Paris, 1881-
1889), and a German translation, with extracts from the commentary
of Sira.fi (d. 978) and others, was published by G. Jahn (Berlin, 189";-
1900). (G. W. T.)
SIBBALD, SIR ROBERT (1641-1722), Scottish physician and
antiquary, was born in Edinburgh on the isth of April 1641.
Educated at Edinburgh, Leiden and Paris, he took his doctor's
degree at Angers in 1662, and soon afterwards settled as a
physician in Edinburgh. In 1667 with Sir Andrew Balfour
he started the botanical garden in Edinburgh, and he took a
leading part in establishing the Royal College of Physicians of
Edinburgh, of which he was elected president in 1684. In
1685 he was appointed the first professor of medicine in the
university. He was also appointed geographer-royal in 1682,
and his numerous and miscellaneous writings deal effectively
with historical and antiquarian as well as botanical and medical
subjects. He died in August 1722.
Amongst Sibbald's historical and antiquarian works may be
mentioned A History Ancient and Modern of the Sheriffdoms of Fife
and Kinross (Edinburgh, 1710, and Cupar, 1803), An Account of the
Scottish Atlas (folio, Edinburgh, 1683), Scotia tllustrata (Edinburgh,
1684) and Description of the Isles of Orkney and Shetland (folio,
Edinburgh, 1711 and 1845). The Remains of Sir Robert Sibbald,
containing his autobiography, memoirs of the Royal College of
Physicians, portion of his literary correspondence and account of
his manuscripts, was published at Edinburgh in 1833.
SIBERIA. This name (Russ. Sibir) in the i6th century
indicated the chief settlement of the Tatar khanKuchum — Isker
on the Irtysh. Subsequently the name was extended
to include the whole of the Russian dominions in Asia.
Geographically, Siberia is now limited by the Ural
Mountains on the VV., by the Arctic and North Pacific Oceans
on the N. and E. respectively, and on the S. by a line running
from the sources of the river Ural to the Tarbagatai range (thus
separating the steppes of the Irtysh basin from those of the Aral
and Balkash basins), thence along the Chinese frontier as far as
the S.E. corner of Transbaikalia, and then along the rivers
Argun, Amur and Usuri to the frontier of Korea. This wide
area is naturally subdivided into West Siberia (basins of the Ob
and the Irtysh) and East Siberia (the remainder of the region).
The inhabited districts are well laid down on the best maps;
but the immense areas between and beyond them are mapped only
along a few routes hundreds of miles apart. The inter- nnrraphy
mediate spaces are filled in according to information
derived from various hunters. With regard to a great many rivers
we know only the position of their mouths and their approximate
lengths estimated by natives in terms of a day's march. Even the
Name and
extent.
SIBERIA
1 1
hydrographical network is very imperfectly known, especially in the
uninhabited hilly tracts.1
Like other plateaus, the great plateau of the centre of Asia,
stretching from the Himalayas to Bering Strait,2 has on its surface
a number of gentle eminences (angehaufte Gebirge of K. Ritter),
which, although reaching great absolute altitudes, are relatively
low.3 These heights for the most part follow a north-easterly direc-
tion in Siberia. On the margins of the plateau there are several
gaps or indentations, which can best be likened to gigantic trenches,
like railway cuttings, as with an insensible gradient they climb to a
higher level. These trenches have for successive geological periods
been the drainage valleys of immense lakes (probably also of glaciers)
which formerly extended over the plateau or fiords of the seas which
surrounded it. And it is along these trenches that the principal
commercial routes have been made for reaching the higher levels of
the plateau itself. In the plateau there are in reality two terraces —
a higher and a lower, both very well defined in Transbaikalia and in
Mongolia. The Yablonoi range and its south-western continuation
the Kentei are border-ridges of the upper terrace. Both rise very
gently above it, but have steep slopes towards the lower terrace,
which is occupied by the Nerchinsk steppes in Transbaikalia and by
the great desert of Gobi in Mongolia (2000 to 2500 ft. above the sea).
They rise 5000 to 7000 ft. above the sea; the peak of Sokhondo in
Transbaikalia (m° E.) reaches nearly 8050 ft. Several low chains
of mountains have their base on the lower terrace and run from
south-west to north-east; they are known as the Nerchinsk Moun-
tains in Transbaikalia, and their continuations reach the northern
parts of the Gobi.4
The great plateau is fringed on the north-west by a series of lofty
border-ranges, which have their southern base on the plateau and
their northern at a much lower level. They may be traced from
the Tian-shan to the Arctic Circle, and have an east-north-easterly
direction in lower latitudes and a north-easterly direction farther
north. The Alai range of the Pamir, continued by the Kokshaltau
range and the Khan-tengri group of the Tian-shan, and the Sailughem
range of the Altai, which is continued in the unnamed border-range
of West Sayan (between the Bei-kem and the Us), belong to this
category. There are, however, among these border-ranges several
breaches of continuity — broad depressions or trenches leading from
Lake Balkash and Lake Zaisan to the upper parts of the plateau.
On the other hand, there are on the western outskirts of the plateau
a few mountain chains which take a direction at right angles to the
above (that is, from north-west to south-east), and parallel to the
great line of upheavals in south-west Asia. The Tarbagatai Moun-
tains, on the borders of Siberia, as well as several chains in Turkestan,
are instances. The border-ridges of the Alai Mountains, the Khan-
tengri group, the Sailughem range and the West Sayan contain the
highest peaks of their respective regions. Beyond 102° E. the
configuration is complicated by the great lateral indentation of
Lake Baikal. But around and north-east of this lake the same well-
marked ranges fringe the plateau and turn their steep north-western
slope towards the valleys of the Irkut, the Barguzin, the Muya and
the Chara, while their southern base lies on the plateaus of the
Selenga (nearly 4000 ft. high) and the Vitim. The peaks of the
Sailughem range reach 9000 to 11,000 ft. above the sea, those of
West Sayan about 10,000. In East Sayan is Munku-Sardyk, a peak
11,450 ft. high, together with many others from 8000 to 9000 ft.
Farther east, on the southern shore of Lake Baikal, Khamar-daban
rises to 6900 ft., and the bald dome-shaped summits of the Barguzin
and southern Muya Mountains attain elevations of 6000 to 7000 ft.
above sea-level. The orography of the Aldan region is little known ;
but travellers who journey from the Aldan (tributary of the Lena)
to the Amur or to the Sea of Okhotsk have to cross the same plateau
and its border-range. The former becomes narrower and barely
attains an average altitude of 3200 ft.
A typical feature of the north-eastern border of the high plateau
is a succession of broad longitudinal 5 valleys along its outer base,
'The wide area between the middle Lena and the Amur, as well
as the hilly tracts west of Lake Baikal, and the Yeniseisk mining
region are in this condition.
2 The great plateau of North America, also turning its narrower
point towards Bering Strait, naturally suggests the idea that there
was a period in the history of our planet when the continents turned
their narrow extremities towards the northern pole, as now they turn
them towards the southern.
'See " General Sketch of the Orography of Siberia," with map
and " Sketch of the Orography of Minusinsk, &c.," by Prince P. A.
Kropotkin, in Mem. Russ. Geogr. Soc., General Geography (vol. v.,
I875)-
'The lower terrace is obviously continued in the Tarim basin
of East Turkestan ; but in the present state of our knowledge we
cannot determine whether the further continuations of the border-
ridge of the higher terrace (Yablonoi, Kentei) must be looked for
in the Great Altai or in some other range situated farther south.
There may be also a breach of continuity in some depression towards
Barkul.
'The word "longitudinal" is here used in an orographical ,
not a geological sense. These valleys are not synclinal foldings of
rocks; they seem to be erosion-valleys.
shut in on the outer side by rugged> mountains having a very steep
slope towards them. Formerly filled with alpine lakes, these valleys
are now sheeted with flat alluvial soil and occupied by human
settlements, and are drained by rivers which flow along them before
they make their way to the north through narrow gorges pierced
in the mountain-walls. This conformation is seen in the valley of
the Us in West Sayan, in that of the upper Oka and Irkut in East
Sayan, in the valley of the Barguzin, the upper Tsipa, the Muya
and the Chara, at the foot of the Vitim plateau, as also, probably,
in the Aldan.6 The chains of mountains which border these valleys
on the north-west contain the wildest parts of Siberia. They are
named the Usinsk Mountains in West Sayan and the Tunka Alps
in East Sayan; the latter, pierced by the Angara at Irkutsk, are in
all probability continued north-east in the Baikal Mountains, which
stretch from Irkutsk to Olkhon Island and the Svyatoi Nos peninsula
of Lake Baikal, thus dividing the lake into two parts.7
An alpine region, too to 150 m. in breadth, fringes the plateau on
the N. W., outside of the ranges just mentioned. This constitutes
what is called in East Siberia the taiga: it consists of
separate chains of mountains whose peaks rise 4800 to
6500 ft. above the sea, beyond the upper limits of forest
vegetation; while the narrow valleys afford difficult means of
communication, their floors being thickly strewn with boulders, or
else swampy. The whole is clothed with impenetrable forest.
The orography of this alpine region is very imperfectly known ;
but the chains have a predominant direction from south-west to
north-east. They are described under different names in Siberia —
the Altai Mountains in West Siberia, the Kuznetskiy Ala-tau and
the Us and Oya Mountains in West Sayan, the Nizhne-Udinsk taiga
or gold-mine district, several chains pierced by the Oka river, the
Kitoi Alps in East Sayan, the mountains of the upper Lena and
Kirenga, the Olekminsk gold-mine district, and the unnamed
mountains which project* north-east between the Lena and the
Aldan.
Outside of these alpine regions comes a broad belt of elevated
plains, ranging between 1200 and 1700 ft. above the sea. These
plains, which are entered by the great Siberian highway Elevated
about Tomsk and extend south-west to the Altai Moun- oMna
tains, are for the most part fertile, though sometimes dry,
and are rapidly being covered with the villages of the Russian
immigrants. About Kansk in East Siberia they penetrate in the
form of a broad gulf south-eastwards as far as Irkutsk. Those on
the upper Lena, having a somewhat greater altitude and being
situated in higher latitudes, are almost wholly unfitted for agriculture.
The north-western border of these elevated plains cannot be deter-
mined with exactitude. In the region between Viluisk (on the Vilui)
and Yenise_isk a broad belt of alpine tracts, reaching their greatest
elevation in the northern Yeniseisk taiga (between the Upper
Tunguzka and the Podkamennaya Tunguzka) and continued to the
south-west in lower upheavals, separates the elevated plains from
the lowlands which extend towards the Arctic Ocean. In West
Siberia these high plains seem to form a narrower belt towards
Barnaul and Semipalatinsk, and are bordered by the Aral-Caspian
depression.
Farther to the north-west, beyond these high plains, comes a
broad belt of lowlands. This vast tract, which is only a few dozen
feet above the sea, and most probably was covered by the p{orti,era
sea during the Post-Pliocene period, stretches from the lowlaads
Aral-Caspian depression to the lowlands of the Tobol,
Irtysh and Ob, and thence towards the lower parts of the Yenisei
and the Lena. Only a few detached mountain ranges, like the
Byrranga on the Taymyr peninsula, the Syverma Mountains, the
Verkhoyansk and the Kharaulakh (E. of the Lena) ranges, diversify
these monotonous lowlands, which are covered with a thick sheet of
black earth in the south and assume the character of barren tundras
in the north.
The south-eastern slope of the great plateau of Asia cannot
properly be reckoned to Siberia, although parts of the province of
Amur and the Maritime Province are situated on it; south-
they have quite a different character, climate and vege-
tation, and ought properly to be reckoned to the Man-
churian region. To the east of the Yablonoi border-range
lies the lower terrace of the high plateau, reaching 2000
to 2500 ft. in Transbaikalia and extending farther south-west
through the Gobi to East Turkestan. The south-eastern edge of this
lower terrace is fringed by a massive border-range — the Khingan —
which runs in a north-easterly direction from the Great Wall of
China to the sources of the Nonni-ula.
A narrow alpine region (40 to 50 m.), consisting of a series of short
secondary chains parallel to the border-range, fringes this latter on
its eastern face. Two such folds maybe distinguished, correspond-
ing on a smaller scale to 'the belt of alpine tracts which fringe the
plateau on the north-west. The resemblance is further sustained by
a broad belt of elevated plains, ranging from 1200 to 1700 ft., which
"The upper Bukhtarma valley in the Sailughem range of the
Altai system appears to belong to the same type.
'The deep fissure occupied by Lake Baikal, would thus appear
to consist of two longitudinal valleys connected together by the
passage between Olkhon and Svyatoi Nos.
eastern
slope of
plateau.
12
SIBERIA
accompany the eastern edge of the plateau. The eastern Gobi, the
occasionally fertile and occasionally sandy plains between the Nonni
and the Sungari, and the rich plains of the Bureya and Silinji in the
Amur province belong to this belt, 400 m. in breadth, the surface of
which is diversified by the low hills of Ilkhuri-alin, Khulun and
Turana. These high plains are bordered on the south-east by a
picturesque chain — the Bureya Mountains, which are to be identified
with the Little Khingan. It extends, with unaltered character,
from Mukden and Kirin to Ulban Bay in the Sea of Okhotsk (close
by the Shantar Islands), its peaks clothed from top to bottom
with luxuriant forest vegetation, ascending 4500 to 6000 ft. A
lowland belt about 200 m. broad runs in the same direction along
the outer margin of the above chain. The lower Amur occupies
the northern part of this broad valley. These lowlands, dotted over
with numberless marshes and lakes, seem to have emerged from the
sea at a quite recent geological period; the rivers that meander
across them are still excavating their valleys.
Volcanic formations, so far as is known, occur chiefly along the
north-western border-range of the great plateau. Ejections of
y . basaltic lava have been observed on the southern slope
***' of this range, extending over wide areas on the plateau
itself, over a stretch of more than 600 m. — namely, in East Sayan
about Lake Kosso-gol and in the valley of the Tunka (river Irkut),
in the vicinity of Selenginsk, and widely distributed on the Vitim
plateau (rivers Vitim and Tsipa). Deposits of trap stretch for more
than 1 200 m. along the Tunguzka; they appear also in the Noril
Mountains on the Yenisei, whence they extend towards the Arctic
Ocean. Basaltic lavas are reported to have been found in the Aldan
region. On the Pacific slope extinct volcanoes (mentioned in
Chinese annals) have been reported in the Ilkhuri-alin mountains
in northern Manchuria.
The mineral wealth of Siberia is considerable. Gold-dust is found
in almost all the alpine regions fringing the great plateau. The
... . principal gold-mining regions in these tracts are the
' Altai, the upper (or Nizhne-Udinsk) and the lower (or
Yeniseisk) taigas, and the Olekma region. Gold is found on the
high plateau in the basin of the upper Vitim, on the lower plateau
in the Nerchinsk district, and on the upper tributaries of the Amur
(especially the Oldoi) and the Zeya, in the north-east continuation
of the Nerchinsk Mountains. It has been discovered also in the
Bureya range, and in its north-east continuation in the Amgun
region. Auriferous sands, but not very rich, have been discovered
in the feeders of Lake Hanka and the Suifong river, as also on the
smaller islands of the Gulf of Peter the Great. Mining is the next
most important industry after agriculture. In East Siberia gold is
obtained almost exclusively from gravel-washings, quartz mining
being confined to three localities, one near Vladivostok and two in
Transbaikalia. In West Siberia, however, quartz-mining is steadily
increasing in importance: whereas in 1900 the output of gold from
this source was less than 10,000 oz., in 1904 it amounted to close
upon 50,000 oz. On the other hand gravel-washing gives a declining
yield in West Siberia, for while in 1900 the output from this source
was approximately 172,000 oz., in 1904 it was only 81,000 oz.
The districts of Maninsk and Achinsk are the most successful
quartz-mining localities. Altogether West Siberia yields annually
130,000 oz. of gold. The gold-bearing gravels of East Siberia,
especially those of the Lena and the Amur, are relatively more
prolific than those of West Siberia. The total yield annually amounts
to some 700,000 oz., the largest quantity coming from the Olekminsk
district in the province of Yakutsk, and this district is followed by
the Amur region, the Maritime province, and Nerchinsk and Trans-
baikalia. Silver and lead ores exist in the Altai and the Nerchinsk
Mountains, as well as copper, cinnabar and tin. Iron-ores are known
at several places on the outskirts of the alpine tracts (as about
Irkutsk), as well as in the Selenginsk region and in the Altai. The
more important iron-works of the Urals are situated on the Siberian
slope of the range. Coal occurs in many Jurassic fresh-water
basins, namely, on the outskirts of the Altai, in south Yeniseisk,
about Irkutsk, in the Nerchinsk district, at many places in the
Maritime province, and on the island of Sakhalin. Beds of excellent
graphite have been found in the Kitoi Alps (Mount Alibert) and in
the Turukhansk district in Yenisei. Rock-salt occurs at several
places on the Lena and in Transbaikalia, and salt-springs are
numerous — those of Ust-kutsk on the Lena and of Usolie near
Irkutsk being the most noteworthy. A large number of lakes,
especially in Transbaikalia and in Tomsk, yield salt. Lastly, from
the Altai region, as well as from the Nerchinsk Mountains, precious
stones, such as jasper, malachite, beryl, dark quartz, and the like,
are exported. The Ekaterinburg stone-polishing works in the Urals
and those of Kolyvan in the Altai are well known.
The orography sketched above explains the great development
of the river-systems of Siberia and the uniformity of their course.
Rivera ^e three principal rivers — the Ob, the Yenisei, and the
_Lena — take their rise on the high plateau or in the alpine
regions fringing it, and, after descending from the plateau and
piercing the alpine regions, flow for many hundreds of miles across
the high plains and lowlands before they reach the Arctic Ocean.
The three rivers of north-eastern Siberia — the Yana, Indigirka and
Kolyma — have the same general character, their courses being,
however, much shorter, as in these latitudes the plateau approaches
nearer to the Arctic Ocean. The Amur, the upper tributaries of
which rise on the eastern border-range of the high plateau, is similar.
The Shilka and the Argun, which form it, flow first towards the
north-east along the windings of the lower terrace of the great
plateau; from this the Amur descends, cutting through the Great
Khingan and flowing down the terraces of the eastern versant
towards the Pacific. A noteworthy feature of the principal Siberian
rivers is that each is formed by the confluence of a pair of rivers.
Examples are the Ob and the Irtysh, the Yenisei and the Angara
(itself a double river formed by the Angara and the Lower Tunguzka),
the Lena and the Vitim, the Argun and the Shilka, while the Amur
in its turn receives a tributary as large as itself — the Sungari. Owing
to this twinning and the general direction of their courses, the rivers
of Siberia offer immense advantages for inland navigation, not only
from north to south but also from west to east. It is this
circumstance that facilitated the rapid invasion of Siberia Waier
by the Russian Cossacks and hunters; they followed the co""aual-
courses of the twin rivers in their advance towards the catioa'
east, and discovered short portages which permitted them to transfer
their boats from the system of the Ob to that of the Yenisei, and
from the latter to that of the Lena, a tributary of which — the Aldan —
brought them close to the Sea of Okhotsk. At the present day
steamers ply from Tyumen, at the foot of the Urals, to Semipalatinsk
on the border of the Kirghiz steppe and to Tomsk in the very heart
of West Siberia. Uninterrupted water communication could readily
be established from Tyumen to Yakutsk, Aldansk, and the gold-
mines of the Vitim. Owing to the fact that the great plateau
separates the Lena from the Amur, no easy water communication
can be established between the latter and the other Siberian rivers.
The tributaries of the Amur (the Shilka with its affluent the Ingoda)
become navigable only on the lower terrace of the plateau. But
the trench of the Uda, to the east of Lake Baikal, offers easy access
for the Great Siberian railway up to and across the high plateau.
Unfortunately all the rivers are frozen for many months every year.
Even in lower latitudes (52° to 55° N.) they are ice-bound from the
beginning of November to the beginning of May;1 while in 65° N.
they are open only for 90 to 120 days, and only for 100 days (the
Yenisei) or even 70 days (the Lena) in 70° N. During the winter the
smaller tributaries freeze to the bottom, and about 1st January
Lake Baikal becomes covered with a solid crust of ice capable of
bearing files of loaded sledges.
Numberless lakes occur in both East and West Siberia. There are
wide areas on the plains of West Siberia and on the high plateau of
East Siberia, which, virtually, are still passing through
the Lacustrine period; but the total area now under
water bears but a trifling proportion to the vast surface which the
Jakes covered even at a very recent period, when Neolithic man
inhabited Siberia. All the valleys and depressions bear traces of
immense post-Pliocene lakes. Even within historical times and
during the igth century the desiccation of the lakes has gone on at
a very rapid rate.2 The principal lake is Lake Baikal, more than
400 m. long, and 20 to 50 broad. Another great lake, Lake Kosso-
gol, on the Mongolian frontier, is 120 m. long and 50 broad. Vast
numbers of small lakes stud the Vitim and upper Selenga plateaus ;
the lower valley of the latter river contains the Goose Lake(Gusinoye).
In the basin of the Amur are Lake Hanka (1700 sq. m.), connected
with the Usuri; Lakes Kada and Kidzi, by which the lower Amur
once flowed to the Pacific ; and very many smaller ones on the left
side of the lower Amur. Numerous lakes and extensive marshes
diversify the low plains of West Siberia ; the Baraba steppe is dotted
with lakes and ponds — Lake Chany (1400 sq. m.) and the innumer-
able smaller lakes which surround it being but relatively insignificant
remains of the former lacustrine basins; while at the confluence of
the Irtysh and the Ob impassable marshes stretch over many
thousands of square miles. Several alpine lakes, of which the
picturesque Teletskoye may be specially mentioned, occupy the
deeper parts of the valleys of the Altai.
The coast-line of Siberia is very extensive both on the Arctic
Ocean and on the Pacific. The former ocean is ice-bound for at
least ten months out of twelve; and, though Nordensk-
jold and Captain Wiggins demonstrated (1874-1900) the
possibility of navigation along its shores, it is exceedingly f ". .
doubtful whether it can ever become a commercial route
of any importance. The coast-line has few indentations, the chief
being the double gulf of the Ob and the Taz, separated from the
Sea of Kara by an elongated peninsula (Samoyede), and from the
bay of the Yenisei by another. The immense peninsula of Taymyr —
a barren tundra intersected by the wild Byrranga Hills-projects
in Cape Chelyuskin as far north as 77° 46' N. The bay of the Yana,
east of the delta of the Lena, is a wide indentation sheltered on the
north by the islands of New Siberia. The bays of the Kolyma, the
Chaun and Kolyuchin are of little importance. The New Siberia
islands are occasionally visited by hunters, as is also the small
group of the Bear Islands opposite the mouth of the Kolyma.
Wrangel or Kellett Island is still quite unknown. Bering Strait, at
1 The Lena at Verkholensk is navigable for 170 days, at Yakutsk
for 153 days: the Yenisei at Krasnoyarsk for 196 days.
2 See Yadrintsev, in Izvestia of the Russian Geogr. Soc. (1886,
No. i, with maps).
SIBERIA
the north-east extremity of Siberia, and Bering Sea between the
land of the Chukchis and Alaska, with the Gulf of Anadyr, are often
visited by seal-hunters, and the Commander Islands off Kamchatka
are valuable stations for this pursuit. The Sea of Okhotsk, separated
from the Pacific by the Kurile Archipelago and from the Sea of
Japan by the islands of Sakhalin and Yezo, is notorious as one of
the worst seas of the world, owing to its dense fogs and its masses of
floating ice. The Shantar Islands in the bay of the Uda possess
geological interest. The double bay of Gizhiga and Penzhina, as
well as that of Taui, would be useful as harbours were they not
frozen seven or eight months in the year and persistently shrouded
in dense fogs in summer. The northern part of the Sea of Japan,
which washes the Usuri region, has, besides the smaller bays of
Olga and Vladimir, the beautiful Gulf of Peter the Great, on
which stands Vladivostok, the Russian naval station on the
Pacific. Okhotsk and Ayan on the Sea of Okhotsk, Petropav-
lovsk on the east shore of Kamchatka, Nikolayevsk, and Vladivo-
stok on the Sea of Japan, and Dui on Sakhalin are the only ports of
Siberia.
Climate. — The climate is extremely severe, even in the southern
parts. This arises chiefly from the orographical structure; the
vast plateau of Central Asia prevents the moderating influence of the
sea from being felt. The extensive lowlands which stretch over
more than one half of the area, as well as the elevated plains, lie
open to the Arctic Ocean. Although attaining altitudes of 6000 to
10,000 ft., the mountain peaks of East Siberia do not reach the
snow-line, which is found only on the Munku-Sardyk in East Sayan,
above 10,000 ft. Patches of perpetual snow occur in East Siberia
only on the mountains of the far north. On the Altai Mountains
the snow-line runs at about 7000 ft. The air, after being chilled
on the plateaus during the winter, drifts, owing to its greater density,
down upon the lowlands; hence in the region of the lower Lena
there obtains an exceedingly low temperature throughout the winter,
and Verkhoyansk, in 67°N., is the pole of cold of the eastern hemi-
sphere. The average temperature of winter (December to February)
at Yakutsk is -40-2° F., at Verkhoyansk -53-1°. At the polar
meteorological station of Sagastyr, in the delta of the Lena (73°
23' N.), the following average temperatures have been observed:
January -34-3° F. (February -43-6 ), July 40-8°, year 2-1°. The
lowest average temperature of a day is —61-6° F. Nevertheless
owing to the dryness of the climate, the unclouded sun fully warms
the earth during the long summer days in those high latitudes, and
gives a short period of warm and even hot weather in the immediate
neighbourhood of the pole of cold. Frosts of -13° to -18° F. are
not uncommon at Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Nerchinsk; even in the
warmer southern regions of West Siberia and of the Amur the average
winter temperature is 2-4° F. and -10-2° respectively; while at
Yakutsk and Verkhoyansk the thermometer occasionally falls as
low as -75° and -85° F. The minimum temperatures recorded
at these two stations are -84° F. and -90° respectively; the
minimum at Krasnoyarsk is -67° F., at Irkutsk -51", at Omsk
-56°, and at Tobolsk -58" F. The soil freezes many feet deep over
immense areas even in southern Siberia. More dreaded than the
frosts are the terrible burans or snowstorms, which occur in early
spring and destroy thousands of horses and cattle that have been
grazing on the steppes throughout the winter. Although very
heavy falls of snow take place in the alpine tracts— ^especially about
Lake Baikal-^-on the other side, in the steppe regions of the Altai
and Transbaikalia and in the neighbourhood of Krasnoyarsk, the
amount of snow is so small that travellers use wheeled vehicles,
and cattle are able to find food in the steppe. Spring sets in with
remarkable rapidity and charm at the end of April; but in the
second half of May come the " icy saints' days," so blighting that
it is impossible to cultivate the apple or pear. After this short
period of frost and snow summer comes in its full beauty; the
days are very hot, and, although they are always followed by cold
nights, vegetation advances at an astonishing rate. Corn sown
about Yakutsk in the end of May is ripe in the end of August.
Still, at many places night frosts set in as early as the second half
of July. They become quite common in August and September.
Nevertheless September is much warmer than May, and October
than April, even in the most continental parts of Siberia. The
isotherms are exceedingly interesting. That of 32" F. crosses the
middle parts of West Siberia and the southern parts of East Siberia.
The summer isotherm of 68° F., which in Europe passes through
Cracow and Kaluga, traverses Omsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk,
whence it turns north to Yakutsk, and then south again to Vladivo-
stok. Even the mouths of the Ob, Yenisei, Lena and Kolyma in
70° N. have in July an average temperature of 40° to 50°. Quite
contrary is the course of the January isotherms. That of 14 F.,
which passes in Europe through Uleaborg in Finland only touches
the southern part of West Siberia in the Altai Mountains. That of
-4" F., which crosses Novaya Zemlya in Europe, passes through
Tobolsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, and touches 45° N. at
Urga in Mongolia, turning north in the Amur region and reaching
the Pacific at Nikolayevsk. The isotherm of -22° F., which touches
the north point of Novaya Zemlya, passes in Siberia through Turuk-
hansk (at the confluence of the Lena and the Lower Tunguzka) and
descends as low as 55" N. in Transbaikalia, whence it turns north
to the Arctic Ocean.
Most rain falls in summer, especially in July and August. During
the summer an average of 8 in. falls on a zone that stretches from
Moscow and St Petersburg through Perm to Tobolsk and, after a
dry belt as far as Tomsk, continues in a narrower strip as far as the
S. end of Lake Baikal, then it broadens out so as to include the
whole of the Amur basin, the total summer precipitation there being
about 12 in. North of this zone the rainfall decreases towards the
Arctic.
Flora. — The flora of Siberia presents very great local varieties, not
only on account of the diversity of physical characteristics, but also
in consequence of the intrusion of new species from the neighbouring
regions, as widely different as the arctic littoral, the arid steppes of
Central Asia, and the wet monsoon regions of the Pacific littoral.
Siberia is situated for the most part in what Grisebach describes as
the " forest region of the Eastern continent."1 The northern limit
of this region, must, however, be drawn nearer to the Arctic Ocean.
A strip 60 to 200 m. wide is totally devoid of tree vegetation. The
last trees which struggle for existence on the verge of the tundras are
crippled dwarfs and almost without branches, and trees a hundred
years old are only a few feet high and a few inches through and
thickly encrusted with lichens.2 The following species, none of
which are found in European Russia, are characteristic of the tundras
— arbutus (Arctostaphilus alpina), heaths or andomedas (Cassiope
tetragona and C. hypnoides), Phyllodoce taxifolia, Loiseleuria pro-
cumbens, a species of Latifolium, a Polar azalea (Osmothamnus
fragrans) and a Polar willow (Salix arctica). In Yakutsk the tundra
vegetation consists principally of mosses of the genera Polytrichum,
Bryum and Hypnum. Some two hundred species of flowering plants
struggle for a precarious existence in the tundra region, the frozen
ground and the want of humus militating against them more than
the want of warmth.3 From this northern limit to the Aral-Caspian
and Mongolian steppes stretches all over Siberia the forest region;
the forests are, however, very unequally distributed, covering from
50 to 99 % of the area in different districts. In the hill tracts and
the marshy depression of the Ob they are unbroken, except by the
bald summits of the loftier mountains (goltsy) ; they have the aspect
of agreeable bosquets in the Baraba steppe, and they are thinly
scattered through south-eastern Transbaikalia, where the dryness of
the Gobi steppe makes its influence appreciably felt. Immense
marshy plains covered with the dwarf birch take their place in the
north as the tundras are approached. Over this immense area the
trees are for the most part the same as we are familiar with in
Europe. The larch becomes predominant chiefly in two new species
(Larix sibirica and L. dahurica). The fir appears in the Siberian
varieties Picea obovata and P. ayanensis. The silver fir (Abies
sibirica, Pinus pectinata) and the stone-pine (P. Cembra) are quite
common; they reach the higher summits, where the last-named is
represented by a recumbent species (Cembra pumila). The birch in
the loftier alpine tracts and plateaus becomes a shrub (Betula nana,
B. fruticosa), and in Transbaikalia assumes a new and very elegant
aspect with a dark bark (B. daurica). In the deeper valleys and on
the lowlands of West Siberia the larches, pines and silver firs, inter-
mingled with birches and aspens, attain a great size, and the streams
are fringed with thickets of poplar and willow. The alpine rose
(Rhododendron dauricum) clusters in masses on the higher mountains ;
juniper, spiraea, sorbus, the pseudo-acacia (Caragana sibirica and
C. arborescens, C. jubata in some of the higher tracts), various
Rosaceae — Potentilla fruticosa and Cotoneaster wniflora — the wild
cherry (Prunus Padus), and many other shrubs occupy the spaces
between the trees. Berry-yielding plants are found everywhere,
even on the goltsy, at the upper limit of tree vegetation ; on the lower
grounds they are an article of diet. The red whortleberry or cow-
berry (Vaccinium Vitis idaea), the bog whortleberry (V. uliginosum,
the bilberry (V. myrtillus) and the arctic bramble (Rubus arcticus)
extend very far northward ; raspberries and red and black currants
form a luxuriant undergrowth in the forests, together with Ribes
dikusha in East Siberia. The oak, elm, hazel, ash, apple, lime and
maple disappear to the east of the Urals, but reappear in new varieties
on the eastern slope of the border-ridge of the great plateau.4 There
we encounter the oak (Q. mongolica), maple (Acerginala, Max.), ash
(Fraxinus manchurica), elm (Ulmus montana), hazel (Corylus hetero-
phylla) and several other European acquaintances. Farther east,
in the Amur region, a great number of new species of European
1 According to A. Engler's Versuch einer Entwickelungsgeschichte
der Pflanzenwelt (Leipzig, 1879—1882), we should have in Siberia (a)
the arctic region; (b) the sub-arctic or coniferous region — north
Siberian province ; (c) the Central-Asian domain — Altai and Daurian
mountainous regions; and (d) the east Chinese, intruding into the
basin of the Amur.
2 See Middendorff's observations on vegetable and animal life
in the tundras, attractively told in vol. iv. of his Sibirische Reise.
3 Kjellmann, Vega Expeditionens Vetenskapliga lakttagelser (Stock-
holm, 1872-1887) reckons their number at 182; 124 species were
found by Middendorff on the Taymyr peninsula, 219 along the
borders of the forest region of Olenek, and 344 species within the
forest region of the same; 470 species were collected by Maack in
the Vilui region.
4 Nowhere, perhaps, is the change better seen than on crossing
the Great Khingan.
SIBERIA
trees, and even new genera, such as the cork-tree (Phellodendron
amurense, walnut (Jugtans manchurica), acacia (Maackia amurensis),
the graceful climber Maximowiczia amurensis, the Japanese Trocho-
stigma and many others — all unknown to Siberia proper — are met
with.
On the high plateau the larch predominates over all other species
of conifers or deciduous trees; the wide, open valleys are thickly
planted with Betula nana and B. fruticosa in the north and with
thick grasses (poor in species) in the southern and drier parts. The
Siberian larch predominates also in the alpine tracts fringing the
plateau on the north, intermingled with the fir, stone-pine, aspen
and birch. In the drier parts the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris) makes
its appearance. In the alpine tracts of the north the narrowness of
the valleys and the steep stony slopes strewn with debris, on which
only lichens and mosses are able to grow, make every plot of green
grass (even if it be only of Carex) valuable. For days consecutively
the horse of the explorer can get no other food than the dwarf birch.
But even in these districts the botanist and the geographer can
easily distinguish between the chern or thick forest of the Altai and
the taiga of East Siberia. The lower plateau exhibits, of course,
new characteristics. Its open spaces are lovely prairies, on which
the Daurian flora flourishes in full beauty. In spring the traveller
crosses a sea of grass above which the flowers of the paeony, aconite,
Orobtis, Carallia, Saussurea and the like wave 4 or 5 ft. high. As the
Gobi desert is approached the forests disappear, the ground becomes
covered chiefly with dry Gramineae, ana Salsolaceae make their
appearance. The high plains of the west slope of the plateau are
also rich prairies diversified with woods. Nearly all the species of
plants which grow on these prairies are common to Europe (paeonies,
HemerocaUis, asters, pinks, gentians, violets, Cypripedium, Aquilegia,
Delphinium, aconites, irises and so on) ; but here the plants attain
a much greater size; a man standing erect is often hidden by the
grasses. The flora of Minusinsk — the Italy of Siberia — is well known ;
the prairies on the Ishim and of the Baraba steppe are adorned with
the same rich vegetation, so graphically described by Middendorff
and O. Finsch. Farther north we come to the urmans of West
Siberia, dense thickets of trees often rising from a treacherous carpet
of thickly interlaced grasses, which conceals deep marshes, where
even the bear has learnt to tread circumspectly.
Fauna. — The fauna of Siberia is closely akin to that of central
Europe; and the Ural Mountains, although the habitat of a few
species which warrant the naturalist in regarding the southern Urals
as a separate region, are not so important a boundary zoologically
as they are botanically. As in European Russia, so in Siberia, three
principal zones — the arctic, the boreal and the middle — may be
distinguished, and these may be subdivided into several sub-regions.
The Amur region shares the characteristics of the north Chinese
fauna. On the whole, we may say that the arctic and boreal faunas
of Europe extend over Siberia, with a few additional species in the
Ural and Baraba region— a number of new species also appearing in
East Siberia, some spreading along the high plateau and others
along the lower plateau from the steppes of the Gobi. The arctic
fauna is very poor. According to Nordenskjold * it numbers only
twenty-nine species of mammals, of which seven are marine and
seventeen or eighteen may be safely considered as living beyond the
forest limit. Of these, again, four are characteristic of the land of
the Chukchis. The reindeer, arctic fox (Cants lagopus), hare, wolf,
lemming (Myodes obensis), collar lemming (Cuniculus torquatus) and
two species of voles (Anricolae) are the most common on land. The
avifauna is very rich in migratory water and marsh fowl (Grattatores
and Nalalores), which come to breed in the coast region; but only
five land birds — the ptarmigan (Lagopus alpinus), snow-bunting,
Iceland falcon, snow-owl and Vaven — are permanent inhabitants of
the region. The boreal fauna is, of course, much more abundant;
but here also the great bulk of the species, both mammals and birds,
are common to Europe and Asia. The bear, badger, wolverine, pole-
cat, ermine, common weasel, otter, wolf, fox, lynx, mole, hedgehog,
common shrew, water-shrew and lesser shrew (Sorex vulgaris, S.
fodiens and S. pygmaeus), two bats (the long-eared and the boreal),
three species of Vespertilio (V. daubentoni, V. natlereri and V. mysta-
cinus), the flying and the common squirrel (Tamias striatus), the
brown, common, field and harvest mouse (Mus decumanus, M.
musculus, M. sylvaticus, M. agrarius and M. minutus), four voles
(Arvicola amphibius, A. rufocanus, A. rutilus and A. schistocolor) ,
the beaver, variable hare, wild boar, roebuck, stag, reindeer, elk and
Phoca annelata of Lake Baikal — all these are common alike to
Europe and to Siberia ; while the bear, musk-deer (Moschus moschi-
ferus), ermine, sable, pouched marmot or souslik (Spermophilus
eversmani), Arvicola obscurus and Lagomys hyperboraeus, distributed
over Siberia, may be considered as belonging to the arctic fauna.
In addition to the above we find in East Siberia Mustela alpina,
Canis alpinus, the sable antelope (Aegocerus sibiricus), several species
of mouse (Mus gregatus, M. oeconomus and M. saxatilus), two voles
(Arvicola russatus and A. macrotus), Syphneus aspalax and the alpine
Lagomys from the Central Asian plateaus; while the tiger makes
incursions not only into the Amur region but occasionally as far as
Lake Baikal. On the lower terrace of the great plateau we find an
In Vega Exped. Vetensk. lakttagelser., vol. ii.
admixture of Mongolian species, such as Canis corsac, Felis manul,
Spermophilus dauricus, the jerboa (Dipus jaculus), two hamsters
(Cricetus songarus and C. furunculus), three new voles (Aruicolae),
the Tolai hare, Ogotona hare (Lagomys ogotona), Aegocerus argali,
Antilope gutturosa and Equus hemionus (jighitai). Of birds no less
than 285 species have been observed in Siberia, but of these forty-five
only are absent from Europe. In south-east Siberia there are forty-
three new species belonging to the north Manchurian or Amur fauna ;
and in south-east Transbaikalia, on the borders of the Gobi steppe,
only 103 species were found by G. F. R. Radde, among which the
most numerous are migratory birds and the birds of prey which
pursue them. The rivers and lakes of Siberia abound in fish; but
little is known of their relations with the species of neighbouring
regions.2
The insect fauna is very similar to that of Russia; but a few
genera, as the Tentyria, do not penetrate into the steppe region of
West Siberia, while the tropical Colasposoma, Popilia and Languria
are found only in south-eastern Transbaikalia, or are confined to
the southern Amur. On the other hand, several American genera
(Cephalaon, Opnryastes) extend into the north-eastern parts of
Siberia.8 As in all uncultivated countries, the forests and prairies
of Siberia become almost uninhabitable in summer because of the
mosquitoes. East Siberia suffers less from this plague than the
marshy Baraba steppe ; but on the Amur and the Sungari large gnats
are an intolerable plague. The dredgings of the " Vega " expedition
in the Arctic Ocean disclosed an unexpected wealth of marine fauna,
and those of L. Schrenck in the north of the Japanese Sea led to the
discovery of no fewer than 256 species (Gasteropods, Brachiopods
and Conchifers). Even in Lake Baikal Dybowski and Gpdlewski
discovered no fewer than ninety-three species of Gammarides and
twenty-five of Gasteropods.4 The Sea of Okhotsk is very interesting,
owing to its local species and the general composition of its fauna
(70 species of Molluscs and 21 of Gasteropods). The land Molluscs,
notwithstanding the unfavourable conditions of climate, number
about seventy species — Siberia in this respect being not far behind
north Europe. The increase of many animals in size (becoming
twice as large as in Europe) ; the appearance of white varieties
among both mammals and birds, and their great prevalence among
domesticated animals (Yakut horses) ; the migrations of birds and
mammals over immense regions, from the Central Asian steppes to
the arctic coast, not only in the usual rotation of the seasons but also
as a result of occasional climacteric conditions are not yet fully
understood (e.g. the migration of thousands and thousands of roe-
buck from Manchuria across the Amur to the left bank of the river,
or the migration of reindeer related by Baron F. von Wrangel) ;
the various coloration of many animals according to the composition
of the forests they inhabit (the sable and the squirrel are well-known
instances) ; the intermingling northern and southern faunas in the
Amur region and the remarkable consequences of that intermixture
in the struggle for existence; — all these render the study of the
Siberian fauna most interesting. Finally, the laws of distribution
of animals over Siberia cannot be made out until the changes under-
gone by its surface during the Glacial and Lacustrine periods are
well established and the Post-Tertiary fauna is better known. The
remarkable finds of Quaternary mammals about Omsk and their
importance for the history of the Equidae are merely a slight indi-
cation of what may be expected in this field.
Population. — In 1906 the estimated population was 6,740,600.
In 1897 the distribution was as follows. Geographically, though
not administratively, the steppe provinces of Akmolinsk and
Semipalatinsk belong to Siberia. They are described under
STEPPES.
Governments and Provinces.
Area in
sq. m.
Population
in
1897.
Density
per
sq. m. .
Tobolsk
Tomsk.
Irkutsk f Yeniseisk .
(general- -i Irkutsk
government) t Yakutsk
(Transbaikalia
Amur .
Maritime
Sakhalin .
535,739
327,173
981,607
280,429
1,530,253
229,520
172,826
712,585
14,700
1,444,470
1,947,021
572,847
515,132
271,830
676,407
119,909
209,516
27,250
2-7
5'i
0-6
1-8
0-2
3-o
0-6
0-7
1-9
4,784,832
5,784.382
Av. 1-2
2 Czekanowski (Izvestia Sib. Geog. Soc., 1877) has described fifty
species from the basin of the Amur ; he considers that these constitute
only two-thirds of the species inhabiting that basin.
s See L. Schrenck, Reisen und Forschungen im Amurlande (1858-
1891).
4 See Mem. de I'academie des sciences de St-Petersbourg, vol. xxii.
(1876).
SIBERIA
Of the total in 1897, 81-4% were Russians, 8-3% Turko-Tatars,
5 % Mongols and 0-6 % " indigenous " races, i.e. Chukchis, Koryaks,
Ghilyaks, Kamchadales and others. Only 8% of the
Kussiaas. totaj are c[asse(j as urban. The great bulk of the popula-
tion are Russians, whose number increased with great rapidity
during the igth century; although not exceeding 150,00x3 in 1709
and 500,000 a century later, they numbered nearly 6,500,000 in
1904. Between 1870 and 1890 over half a million free immigrants
entered Siberia from Russia, and of these 80 % settled in the govern-
ment of Tobolsk; and between 1890 and 1905 it is estimated that
something like a million and a half free immigrants entered the
country. These people came for the most part from the northern
parts of the black earth zone of middle Russia, and to a smaller
extent from the Lithuanian governments and the Ural governments
of Perm and Vyatka. The Russians, issuing from the middle Urals,
have travelled as a broad stream through south Siberia, sending
branches to the Altai, to the Hi river in Turkestan and to Minusinsk,
as well as down the chief rivers which flow to the Arctic Ocean, the
banks of which are studded with villages 15 to 20 m. apart. As
Lake Baikal is approached the stream of Russian immigration
becomes narrower, being confined mostly to the valley of the Angara,
with a string of villages up the Irkut; but it widens out again in
Transbaikalia, and sends branches up the Selenga and its tributaries.
It follows the course of the Amur, again in a succession of villages
some 20 m. apart, and can be traced up the Usuri to Lake Khangka
and Vladivostok, with a string of villages on the plains between
the Zeya and the Silinji. Small Russian settlements are planted on
a few bays of the North Pacific and the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as
on Sakhalin.
Colonization. — Siberia has been colonized in two different ways.
On the one hand, the government sent parties (l) of Cossacks to
settle on the frontiers, (2) of peasants who were bound to settle at
appointed places and maintain communication along the routes,
(3) of stryeltsy (i.e. Moscow imperial guards) to garrison forts, (4) of
yamshiks — a special organization of Old Russia entrusted with the
maintenance of horses for postal communication, and finally (5) of
convicts. A good deal of the Amur region was peopled in this way.
Serfs in the imperial mines were liberated and organized in Cossack
regiments (the Transbaikal Cossacks) ; some of these were settled
on the Amur, forming the Amur and Usuri Cossacks. Other parts
of the river were colonized by peasants who emigrated with govern-
ment aid, and were bound to settle in villages, along the Amur, at
spots designated by officials. As a rule, this kind of colonization has
not produced the results that were expected. On the other hand,
free colonization has been more successful and has been undertaken
on a much larger scale. Soon after the first appearance (1580) of
the Cossacks of Yermak in Siberia thousands of hunters, attracted
by the furs, immigrated from north Russia, explored the country,
traced the first footpaths and erected the first houses in the wilder-
ness. Later on serfdom, religious persecutions and conscription were
the chief causes which led the peasants to make their escape to
Siberia and build their villages in the most inaccessible forests, on
the prairies and even on Chinese territory. But the severe measures
adopted by the government against such " runaways " were power-
less to prevent their immigration into Siberia. While governmental
colonization studded Siberia with forts, free colonization filled up
the intermediate spaces. Since the emancipation of the serfs in
1 86 1, it has been steadily increasing, the Russian peasants of a
village often emigrating en bloc.1
Siberia was for many years a penal colony. Exile to Siberia began
in the first years of its discovery, and as early as 1658 we read of the
Exiles Nonconformist priest Awakum 2 following in chains the ex-
ploring party of Pashkov on the Amur. Raskolniks or Non-
conformists in the second half of the 1 7th century, rebel stryeltsy under
Peter the Great, courtiers of rank during the reigns of the empresses,
Polish confederates under Catherine II., the " Decembrists " under
Nicholas I., nearly 50,000 Poles after the insurrection of 1863, and
later on whole generations of socialists were sent to Siberia; while
the number of common-law convicts and exiles transported thither
increased steadily from the end of the 1 8th century. No exact
statistics of Siberian exile were kept before 1823. But it is known
that in the first years of the igth century nearly 2000 persons were
transported every year to Siberia. This figure reached an average
of 18,250 in 1873-1877, and from about 1880 until the discontinuance
of the system in 1900 an average of 20,000 persons were annually
exiled to Siberia. After liberation the hard-labour convicts are
settled in villages; but nearly all are in a wretched condition, and
more than one-third have disappeared without being accounted
for. Nearly 20,000 men (40,000 according to other estimates) are
Jiving in Siberia the life of brodyagi (runaways or outlaws), trying to
make their way through the forests to their native provinces in
Russia.
Asiatic Races. — The Ural- Altaians consist principally of Turko-
Tatars, Mongols, Tunguses, Finnish tribes and Samoyedes. The
Samoyedes, who are confined to the province of Tobolsk, Tomsk
1 See Yadrintsev, Siberia as a Colony (in Russian, 2nd ed., St
Petersburg, 1892).
2 The autobiography of the protopope Avvakum is one of the
most popular books with Russian Nonconformists.
and Yeniseisk, do not exceed 12,000 in all. The Finns consist
principally of Mordvinians (18,500), Ostiaks (20,000) and Voguls
(5000). Survivals of Turkish blood, once much more numerous,
are scattered all over south Siberia as far as Lake Baikal. Their
territories are being rapidly occupied by Russians, and their settle-
ments are cut in two by the Russian stream— the Baraba Tatars
and the Yakuts being to the north of it, and the others having been
driven back to the hilly tracts of the Altai and Sayan Mountains.
In all they number nearly a quarter of a million. The Turkish stock
of the Yakuts in the basin of the Lena numbers 227,400. Most of
these Turkish tribes live by pastoral pursuits and some by agriculture,
and are a most laborious and honest population.
The Mongols (less than 300,000) extend into West Siberia from
the high plateau — nearly 20,000 Kalmucks living in the eastern
Altai. In East Siberia the Buriats occupy the Selenga and the Uda,
parts of Nerchinsk, and the steppes between Irkutsk and the upper
Lena, as also the Baikal Mountains and the island of Orknon;
they support themselves chiefly by live-stock breeding, but some,
especially in Irkutsk, are agriculturists. On the left of the Amur
there are some 60,000 Chinese and Manchurians about the mouth
of the Zeya, and 26,000 Koreans on the Pacific coast. The Tunguses
(nearly 70,000) occupy as their hunting-grounds an immense region
on the high plateau and its slopes to the Amur, but their limits are
yearly becoming more and more circumscribed both by Russian
gold-diggers and by Yakut settlers. In the Maritime Province,
before the Boxer uprising of 1900, 26% of the population in the
N. Usuri district and 36 % in the S. Usuri district were Koreans and
Chinese, and in the Amur province there were nearly 15,000 Manchus
and Koreans. Jews number 32,650 and some 5000 gipsies wander
about Siberia.
At first the indigenous populations were pitilessly deprived of
their hunting and grazing grounds and compelled to resort to
agriculture — a modification exceedingly hard for them, not only on
account of their poverty but also because they were compelled to
settle in the less favourable regions. European civilization made
them familiar with all its worst sides and with none of its best.
Taxed with a tribute in furs from the earliest years of the Russian
conquest, they often revolted in the 1 7th century, but were cruelly
reduced to obedience. In 1824 the settled indigenes had to pay the
very heavy rate of n roubles (about £ij per head, and the arrears,
which soon became equal to the sums levied, were rigorously exacted.
On the other hand the severe measures taken by the government
prevented the growth of anything like legalized slavery on Siberian
soil ; but the people, ruined as they were both by the intrusion of
agricultural colonists and by the exactions of government officials,
fell into what was practically a kind of slavery to the merchants.
Even the best-intentioned government measures, such as the
importation of corn, the prohibition of the sale of spirits, and
so on, became new sources of oppression. The action of mission-
aries, who cared only about nominal Christianizing, had no better
effect.
Social Features. — In West Siberia there exist compact masses of
Russians who have lost little of their primitive ethnographical
features: but the case is otherwise on the outskirts. M. A. Castren
characterized Obdorsk (mouth of the Ob) as a true Samoyedic town,
although peopled with " Russians." The Cossacks of West Siberia
have the features and customs and many of the manners of life of
the Kalmucks and Kirghiz. Yakutsk is thoroughly Yakutic;
marriages of Russians with Yakut wives are common, and in the
middle of the igth century the Yakut language was predominant
among the Russian merchants and officials. At Irkutsk and in
the valley of the Irkut the admixture of Tungus and Burial blood
is obvious, and still more in the Nerchinsk district and among the
Transbaikal Cossacks settled on the Argun. They speak the Burial
language as often as Russian, and in a Buriat dress can hardly be
distinguished from ihe Buriats. In different parts of Siberia, on
Ihe borders of ihe hilly tracts, intermarriage of Russians with
Tatars was quite common. Of course it is now rapidly growing
less, and the settlers who entered Siberia in the igth century married
Russian wives and remained thoroughly Russian. There are
accordingly parts of Siberia, especially among the Raskolniks or
Nonconformists, where the north Russian, the Great Russian and
the Ukrainian (or soulhern) lypes have maintained themselves in
their full purity, and only some differences in domestic architecture,
in the disposition of Iheir villages and in ihe language and character
of the population remind the Iraveller lhat he is in Siberia. The
special features of the language and partly also of the nalional
character are due to the earliest settlers, who came mostly from
northern Russia.
The natural rate of increase of population is very slow as a rule,
and does not exceed 7 or 8 per 1000 annually. The great mortality,
especially among the children, is one of the causes of this, the birth-
rate being also lower lhan in Russia. The climate of Siberia, how-
ever, cannot be called unhealthy, except in certain localities where
goitre is common, as it is on the Lena, in several valleys of Nerchinsk
and in the Altai Mountains. The rapid growth of the actual popula-
lion is chiefly due lo immigration.
Towns. — Only 8-1 % of the population live in towns (6-4% only
in the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk). There are seventeen
towns with a population of 10,000 or more, namely, Tomsk (63,533
i6
SIBERIA
in 1900) and Irkutsk (49,106) — the capitals of West and East Siberia
respectively; Blagpvyeshchensk (37,368), Vladivostok (38,000).
Tyumen (29,651) in West Siberia, head of Siberian navigation;
Barnaul (29,850), capital of the Altai region; Krasnoyarsk (33,337)
and Tobolsk (21,401), both mere administrative centres; Biysk
(17,206), centre of the Altai trade; Khabarovsk (15,082), adminis-
trative centre of the Amur region; Chita (11,480), the capital of
Transbaikalia; Nikolsk (22,000); Irbit (20,064); Kolyvan (11,703).
the centre of the trade of southern Tomsk; Yeniseisk (11,539),
the centre of the gold-mining region of the same name; Kurgan
(10,579), a growing town in Tobolsk; and Minusinsk (10,255), i° the
southern part of the Yeniseisk province, trading with north-west
Mongolia.
Education. — Education stands at a very low level. The chief
town of every province is provided witW a classical gymnasium for
boys and a gymnasium or progymnasium for girls; but the education
there received is not of a high grade, and the desire of the local
population for " real schools ' is not satisfied. Primary education
is in a very unsatisfactory state, and primary schools very scarce.
The petitions for a university at Irkutsk, the money required for
which has been freely offered to the government, have been refused,
and the imperative demands of the local tradesmen for technical
instruction have likewise met with little response. The Tomsk
University remains incomplete, and has only 560 students. There
are nevertheless eighteen scientific societies in Siberia, which issue
publications of great value. Twelve natural history and ethnological
museums have been established by the exiles — the Minusinsk
museum being the best. There are also twenty public libraries.
Agriculture. — Agriculture is the chief occupation both of the
settled Russians and of the native population. South Siberia has a
very fertile soil and yields heavy crops, but immense tracts of the
country are utterly unfit for tillage. Altogether it is estimated that
not more than 500,000 sq. m. are suitable for cultivation. The
aggregate is thus distributed — 192,000 sq. m. in West Siberia, 20,000
in Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk, 100,000 in East Siberia, 85,000 in
Transbaikalia, 40,000 in Amur, and 63,000 in Usuri. In the low-
lands of West Siberia cultivation is carried on up to 61 ° N.1 On the
high plains fringing the alpine tracts on the north-west it can be
carried on only in the south, farther north only in the valleys,
reaching 62° N. in that of the Lena, and in the alpine tracts in only
a few valleys, as that of the Irkut. On the high plateau all attempts
to grow cereals have failed, the wide trenches alone (Uda, Selenga,
Jida) offering encouragement to the agriculturist. On the lower
plateau, in Transbaikalia, grain is successfully raised in the Ner-
chinsk region, with serious risks, however, from early frosts in the
valleys. South-east Transbaikalia suffers from want of water, and
the Buriats have to irrigate their fields. Although agriculture is
carried on on the upper Amur, where land has been cleared from
virgin forests, it really prospers only below Kumara and on the
fertile plains of the Zeya and Silinji. In the depression between the
Bureya range and the coast ranges it suffers greatly from the heavy
July and August rains, and from inundations, while on the lower
Amur the agriculturists barely maintain themselves by growing
cereals in clearances on the slopes of the hills, so that the settlements
on the lower Amur and Usuri continually require help from govern-
ment to save them from famine. The chief grain-producing regions
of Siberia are — the Tobol and Ishim region, -the Baraba, the region
about Tomsk and the outskirts of the Altai. The Minusinsk district,
one of the richest in Siberia (45,000 inhabitants, of whom 24,000 are
nomadic), has more than 45,000 acres under crops. Mining, the
second industry in point of importance, is dealt with above.
Land Tenure. — Out of the total area of over 3,000,000,000 acres of
land in Siberia, close upon 96 % belong to the state, while the cabinet
of the reigning emperor owns 114,700,000 acres (112,300,000 in the
Altai and 2,400,000 in Nerchinsk) or nearly 4%. Private property
is insignificant in extent — purchase of land being permitted only
in the Amur region. (In West Siberia it was only temporarily per-
mitted in 1860-1868.) Siberia thus offers an example of the nationali-
zation of land unparalleled throughout the world. Any purchase of
land within a zone 67 m. wide on each side of the trans-Siberian
railway was absolutely prohibited in 1895, and the extent of crown
lands sold to a single person or group of persons never exceeds 1080
acres unless an especially usefuj industrial enterprise is projected,
and in that case the maximum is fixed at 2700 acres. The land is
held by the Russian village communities in virtue of the right of
occupation. Industrial surveys, having for their object the granting
of land to the peasants to the extent of 40 acres per each male head,
with 8 additional acres of wood and 8 acres as a reserve,- were started
many years ago, and after being stopped in 1887 were commenced
again in 1898. At the present time the land allotments per male
head vary greatly, even in the relatively populous region of southern
Siberia. In the case of the peasants the allotments vary on an average
from 32 to 102 acres (in some cases from 21-6 to 240 acres); the
Transbaikal Cossacks have about in acres per male head, and the
indigenous population 108 to 154 acres.
1 The northern limits of agriculture are 60° N. on the Urals,
62° at Yakutsk, 61° at Aldansk, 54° 30' at Udskoi, and 53°
to 54^° in the interior of Kamchatka (Middendorff, Sibirische Reise,
vol. iv.).
The'total cultivated area and the average area under crops every
year have been estimated by A. Kaufmann as follows2: —
Under Crops (Acres).
Province or
Government.
Area
cultivated,
Acres.
Total.
Average
per House-
hold.
Average
per 100
Inhabit-
ants.
Tobolsk
5,670,000
3,270,000
13-2
243
Tomsk .
8,647,000
5,259,000
15-7
310
Yeniseisk
1,830,000
977,000
13-0
267
Irkutsk
1,800,000
910,000
13-2
265
Transbaikalia .
1,415,000
872,000
9-4
'59
Yakutsk
81,000
43,000
0-8
16
Amur (Russians)
143,000
143,000
19-4
275
South Usuri
(peasants only)
151,000
151,000
24-0
375
19,737,000
11,625,000
Live
stock.
Bee-
keeping,
These figures are somewhat under-estimated, but the official figures
are still lower, especially for Tomsk. Tillage is conducted on very
primitive methods. After four to twelve years' cultivation the land
is allowed to lie fallow for ten years or more. In the Baraba district
it is the practice to sow four different grain crops in five to seven
years and then to let the land rest ten to twenty-five years. The
yield from the principal crops fluctuates greatly; indeed in a very
good year it is almost three times that in a very bad one. The
southern parts of Tobolsk, nearly all the government of Tomsk
(exclusive of the Narym region), southern Yeniseisk and southern
Irkutsk, have in an average year a surplus of grain varying from
35 to 40% of the total crop, but in bad years the crop falls short
of the actual needs of the population. There is considerable move-
ment of grain in Siberia 'tself, the populations of vast portions of
the territory, especially of the mining regions, having to rely upon
imported corn. The forest area under supervision is about 30,000,000
acres (in Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yeniseisk and Irkutsk), out of a total
area of forest land of 63,000,000 acres.
As an independent pursuit, live-stock breeding is carried on by
the Russians in eastern Transbaikalia, by the Yakuts in the province
of Yakutsk, and by the Buriats in Irkutsk and Trans-
baikalia, but elsewhere it is secondary to agriculture.
Both cattle-breeding and sheep-grazing are more profit-
able than dairying; but the Kirghiz herds are not well tended, being
left to graze on the steppes all the year, where they perish from wild
animals and the cold. The live stock includes some 180,000 camels.
Bee-keeping is widelycarried on, especially in Tomsk and
the Altai. Honey is exported to Russia. The seeds of
the stone-pine are collected for oil in West Siberia.
Hunting. — Hunting is a profitable occupation, the male population
of whole villages in the hilly and woody tracts setting out in October
for a month's hunting. The sable, however, which formerly con-
stituted the wealth of Siberia, is now exceedingly scarce. Squirrels,
bears, foxes, arctic foxes, antelopes and especially deer in spring are
the principal objects of the chase. The forests on the Amur yielded
a rich return of furs during the first years of the Russian occupation,
and the Amur sable, although much inferior to the Yakutsk and
Transbaikalian, was largely exported.-
Fishing. — Fishing is a valuable source of income on the lower
courses of the great rivers, especially the Ob. The fisheries on Lake
Baikal supply cheap food (the omul) to the poorer classes of Irkutsk
and Transbaikalia. The native populations of the Amur — Golds
and Gilyaks — support themselves chiefly by fishing, when the salmon
enters the Amur and its tributaries in dense masses. Fish (e.g. the
heta, salmon and sturgeon) are a staple article of diet in the north.
Manufactures. — Though Siberia has within itself all the raw
produce necessary for prosperous industries, it continues to import
from Russia all the manufactured articles it uses. Owing to the
distances over which they are carried and the bad organization of
trade, all manufactured articles are exceedingly dear, especially in
the east. The manufactories of Siberia employ less than 25,000
workmen, and of these some 46% are employed in West Siberia.
Nearly one-third of the total value of the output represents wine-
spirit, 23% tanneries, 18% tallow-melting and a considerable sum
cigarette-making.
It is estimated that about one-half of the Russian agricultural
population supplement their income by engaging in non-agricultural
pursuits, but not more than 18 to 22% carry on domestic trades,
the others finding occupation in the carrying trade — which is still
important, even since the construction of the railway — in hunting
(chiefly squirrel-hunting) and in work in the mines. Domestic and
petty trades are therefore developed only round Tyumen, Tomsk and
Irkutsk. The principal of these trades are the weaving of carpets
— about Tyumen; the making of wire sieves; the painting of
ikons or sacred images; the making of wooden vessels and of the
necessaries for the carrying trade about Tomsk (sledges, wheels, &c). ;
2 Russian Encyclopaedic Dictionary, vol. lix. (1900).
SIBERIA
the preparation of felt boots and sheepskins; and the manufacture
of dairy utensils and machinery. Weaving is engaged in for domestic
purposes. But all these trades are sporadic, and are confined to
limited areas, and often only to a few separate villages.
Commerce. — There are no figures from which even an approximate
idea can be gained as to the value of the internal trade of Siberia,
but it is certainly considerable. The great fair at Irbit retains its
importance, and there are, besides, over 500 fairs in Tobolsk and
over loo in other parts of the region. The aggregate returns of all
these are estimated at £2,643,000 annually. The trade with the
natives continues to be mainly the sale of spirits.
In the external trade the exports to Russia consist chiefly of grain,
cattle, sheep, butter and other animal products, furs, game, feathers
and down. The production of butter for export began only in
1894, but grew with great rapidity. In 1902 some 1800 dairies were
at work, the greater number in West Siberia, and 40,000 tons of butter
were exported. The total trade between Russia and China amounts
to about £5,500,000 annually, of which 87 % stands for imports
into Russia and 13% for exports to China. Tea makes up nearly
one-half of the imports, the other commodities being silks, cottons,
hides and wool; while cottons and other manufactured wares
constitute considerably over 50% of the exports. Part of this
commerce (textiles, sugar, tobacco, steel goods) is conveyed by sea
to the Pacific ports. The principal centre for the remainder (textiles
and petroleum), conveyed by land, is Kiakhta on the Mongolian
frontier. Prior to the building of the trans-Siberian railway a fairly
active trade was carried on between China and the Amur region;
but since the opening of that railway (in 1902-1905) the Amur
region has seriously and rapidly declined in all that concerns trade,
industry, general prosperity and civilization. There is further an
import trade amounting to between two and three-quarters and three
millions sterling annually with Manchuria, to over one million sterling
with the United States, and to a quarter to half a million sterling
with Japan. As nearly as can be estimated, the total imports into.
Siberia amount approximately to £5,000,000, the amount having
practically doubled between 1890 and 1962; the total exports
average about £9,000,000. In the Far East the chief trade centres
are Vladivostok and Nikolayevsk on the Amur, with Khabarovsk
and Blagovyeshchensk, both on the same river. For some years a
small trade was carried on by the British Captain Wiggins with the
mouth of the river Yenisei through the Kara Sea, and after his death
in 1905 the Russians themselves endeavoured to carry farther the
pioneer work which he had begun.
Communications. — Navigation on the Siberian rivers has developed
both as regards the number of steamers plying and the number of
branch rivers traversed. In 1900, one hundred and thirty private
and several crown steamers plied on the Ob-Irtysh river system as
far as Semipalatinsk on the Irtysh, Biysk on the Ob, and Achinsk
on the Chulym. The Ob- Yenisei canal is ready for use, but its actual
usefulness is impaired by the scarcity of water in the smaller streams
forming part of the system. On the Yenisei steamers ply from
Minusinsk to Yeniseisk, and to Ghilghila at its mouth; on its
tributary, the Angara, of which some rapids have been cleared,
though the Padun rapids have still to be rounded by land; and on
the Selenga. On the Lena and the Vitim there are steamers, and a
small railway connects the Bodoibo river port with the Olekma
gold-washings. In the Amur system, the Zeya, the Bureya and the
Argun are navigated.
The main line of communication is the great Moscow road. It
starts from Perm on the Kama, and, crossing the Urals, reaches
Ekaterinburg — the centre of mining industry — and Tyumen on the
Tura, whence steamers ply via Tobolsk to Tomsk. From Tyumen
the road proceeds to Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk,
sending off from Kolyvan a branch south to Barnaul in the Altai
and to Turkestan. From Irkutsk it proceeds to Transbaikalia,
Lake Baikal being crossed either by steamer or (when frozen) on
sledges, in either case from Listvinichnoe to Misovaya. A route
was laid out about 1868 round the south shore of Lake Baikal in
order to maintain communication with Transbaikalia during the
spring and autumn, and in 1905 the great Siberian railway was com-
pleted round the same extremity of the lake. From Lake Baikal
the road proceeds to Verkhne-udinsk, Chita and Stryetensk on the
Shilka, whence steamers ply to the mouth of the Amur and up the
Usuri and Sungacha to Lake Khangka. When the rivers are
frozen communication is maintained by sledges on the Amur; but
in spring and autumn the only continuous route down the Shilka
and the Amur, to its mouth, is on horseback along a mountain
path (very difficult across the Bureya range). On the lower Amur
and on the Usuri the journey is also difficult even on horseback.
When the water in the upper Amur is low, vessels are sometimes
unable to reach the Shilka. Another route of importance before the
conquest of the Amur is that which connects Yakutsk with Okhotsk
or Ayan. Regular postal communication is maintained by the
Russians between Kiakhta and Kalgan (close by Peking) across the
desert of Gobi.
The first railway to reach Siberia was built in 1878, when a line
was constructed between Perm, at which point travellers for Siberia
Pall a a used to strike off from the Kama eastwards, and Ekaterin-
' burg, on the eastern slope of the Urals. In 1884 this line
was continued as far as Tyumen, the head of navigation on the
Siberian rivers. It was supposed at that time that this line would
form part of the projected trans-Siberian railway ; but it was finally
decided, in 1885, to give a more southerly direction to the railway
and to continue the Moscow-Samara line to Ufa, Zlatoust in the
Urals, and Chelyabinsk on the west Siberian prairies, at the head
of one of the tributaries of the Ob. Thence the line was continued
across the prairies to Kurgan and Omsk, and from there it followed
the great Siberian highway to Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, and on
round Lake Baikal to Chita and Stryetensk on the Shilka. From
that place it was intended to push it down the Amur to Khabarovsk,
and finally to proceed up the Usuri to Vladivostok. The building
of the railway was begun at several points at once in 1892; it had,
indeed, been started a year before that in the Usuri section. For
reasons indicated elsewhere (see RUSSIA: Railways) it was found
inadvisable to continue the railroad along the Shilka and the Amur
to Khabarovsk, and arrangements were made in 1 896 with the Chinese
government for the construction of a trans-Manchurian railway.
This line connects Kaidalovo, 20 m. below Chita, with Vladivostok,
and sends off a branch from Kharbin, on the Sungari, to Dalny and
Port Arthur. Those parts of it which run through Russian territory
(in Transbaikalia 230 m.; in the neighbourhood of Vladivostok
67 m.) were opened in 1902, and also the trans-Manchurian line
(1000 m.), although not quite completed. A line was constructed
from Vladivostok to the Amur before it became known that the
idea of following the latter part of the route originally laid down
would have to be abandoned. This line, which has been in working
order since 1898, is 479 m. long, and proceeds first to Grafskaya,
across the fertile and populous south Usuri region, then down the
Usuri to Khabarovsk at the confluence of that river with the Amur.
Returning westwards, Chelyabinsk has been connected with
Ekaterinburg (153 m.); and a branch line has been built from the
main Siberian line to Tomsk (54 m.). Altogether the entire railway
system, including the cost of the Usuri line, the unfinished Amur
line, the circum- Baikal line and the eastern Chinese railway, is put
down at a total of £87,555,760, and the total distance, all branches
included, is 5413 m., of which 1070 m. are in Chinese territory.
History. — The shores of all the lakes which filled the depressions
during the Lacustrine period abound in remains dating from the
Neolithic Stone period; and numberless kurgans (tumuli), furnaces
and so on bear witness to a much denser population than the present.
During the great migrations in Asia from east to west many popula-
tions were probably driven to the northern borders of the great
plateau and thence compelled to descend into Siberia; succeeding
waves of immigration forced them still farther towards the barren
grounds of the north, where they melted away. According to
Radlov, the earliest inhabitants of Siberia were the Yeniseians,
who spoke a language different from the Ural-Altaic; some few
traces of them (Yeniseians, Sayan-Ostiaks, and Kottes) exist among
the Sayan Mountains. The Yeniseians were followed by the Ugro-
Samoyedes, who also came originally from the high plateau and
were compelled, probably during the great migration of the Huns
in the 3rd century B.C., to cross the Altai and Sayan ranges and to
enter Siberia. To them must be assigned the very numerous remains
dating from the Bronze period which are scattered all over southern
Siberia. Iron was unknown to them; but they excelled in bronze,
silver and gold work. Their bronze ornaments and implements,
often polished, evince considerable artistic taste; and their irrigated
fields covered wide areas in the fertile tracts. On the whole, their
civilization stood much higher than that of their more recent suc-
cessors. Eight centuries later the Turkish stocks of " Tukiu " (the
Chinese spelling for "Turks"), Khagases and Uigurs — also com-
pelled to migrate north-westwards from their former seats — subdued
the Ugro-Samoyedes. These new invaders likewise left numerous
traces of their sojourn, and two different periods may be easily
distinguished in their remains. They were acquainted with iron,
and learned from their subjects the art of bronze-casting, which
they used for decorative purposes only, and to which they gave a
still higher artistic stamp. Their pottery is much more perfect and
more artistic than that of the Bronze period, and their ornaments
are accounted among the finest of the collections at the St Petersburg
museum of the Hermitage. This Turkish empire of the Khagases
must have lasted until the 1 3th century, when the Mongols, under
Jenghiz Khan, subdued them and destroyed their civilization. A
decided decline is shown by the graves which have been discovered,
until the country reached the low level atwhich it was found by the
Russians on their arrival towards the close of the l6th century. In
the beginning of the i6th century Tatar fugitives from Turkestan
subdued the loosely associated tribes inhabiting the lowlands to the
east of the Urals. Agriculturists, tanners, merchants and mollahs
(priests) were called from Turkestan, and small principalities sprang
up on the Irtysh and the Ob. These were united by Khan Ediger,
and conflicts with the Russians who were then colonizing the Urals
brought him into collision with Moscow; his envoys came to Moscow
in !555 and consented to a yearly tribute of a thousand sables. As
early as the nth century the Novgorodians had occasionally pene-
trated into Siberia; but the fall of the republic and the loss of its
north-eastern dependencies checked the advance of the Russians
across the Urals. On the defeat of the adventurer Stenka Razin
(1667-1671) many who were unwilling to submit to the iron rule of
Moscow made their way to the settlements of Stroganov in Perm,
i8
SIBI— SIBSAGAR
and tradition has it that, in order to get rid of his guests, Stroganov
suggested to their chief, Yermak, that he should cross the Urals
into Siberia, promising to help him with supplies of food and arms.
Yermak entered Siberia in 1580 with a band of 1636 men, following
the Tagil and Tura rivers. Next year they were on the Tobol, and
500 men successfully laid siege to Isker, the residence of Khan
Kuchum, in the neighbourhood of what is now Tobolsk. Kuchum
fled to the steppes, abandoning his domains to Yermak, who, accord-
ing to tradition, purchased by the present of Siberia to Ivan IV.
his own restoration to favour. Yermak was drowned in the Irtysh
in 1584 and the Cossacks abandoned Siberia. But new bands of
hunters and adventurers poured every year into the country, and
were supported by Moscow. To avoid conflicts with the denser
populations of the south, they preferred to advance eastwards along
higher latitudes; meanwhile Moscow erected forts and settled
labourers around them to supply the garrisons with food. Within
eighty years the Russians had reached the Amur and the Pacific.
This rapid conquest is accounted for by the circumstance that neither
Tatars nor Turks were able to offer any serious resistance. In 1607—
1610 the Tunguses fought strenuously for their independence, but
were subdued about 1623. In 1628 the Russians reached the Lena,
founded the fort of Yakutsk in 1637, and two years later reached
the Sea of Okhotsk at the mouth of the Ulya river. The Burials
offered some opposition, but between 1631 and 1641 the Cossacks
erected several palisaded forts in their territory, and in 1648 the
fort on the upper Uda beyond Lake Baikal. In 1643 Poyarkov's
boats descended the Amur, returning to Yakutsk by the Sea of
Okhotsk and the Aldan, and in 1649-1650 Khabarov occupied the
banks of the Amur. The resistance of the Chinese, however, obliged
the Cossacks to quit their forts, and by the treaty of Nerchinsk
(1689) Russia abandoned her advance into the basin of the river.
In 1852 a Russian military expedition under Muraviev explored the
Amur, and by 1857 a chain of Russian Cossacks and peasants were
settled along the whole course of the river. The accomplished fact
was recognized by China in 1857 and 1860 by a treaty. In the same
year in which Khabarov explored the Amur (1648) the Cossack
Dejnev, starting from the Kolyma, sailed round the north-eastern
extremity of Asia through the strait which was rediscovered and
described eighty years later by Bering (1728). Cook in 1778, and
after him La Perouse, settled definitively the broad features of the
northern Pacific coast. Although the Arctic Ocean had been reached
as early as the first half of the 1 7th century, the exploration of its
coasts by a series of expeditions under Ovtsyn, Minin, Pronchishev,
Lasinius and Laptev— whose labours constitute a brilliant page in
the annals of geographical discovery — was begun only in the 1 8th
century (1735-1739)-
The scientific exploration of Siberia, begun in the period ^1733 to
1742 by Messerschmidt, Gmelin, and De Lisle de la Crpyere, was
followed up by Miiller, Fischer and Georgi. Pallas, with several
Russian students, laid the first foundation of a thorough exploration
of the topography, fauna, flora and inhabitants of the country.
The journeys of Hansteen and Erman (1828-1830) were a most
important step in the exploration of the territory. Humboldt,
Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose also paid in the course of these years
short visits to Siberia, and gave a new impulse to the accumulation
of scientific knowledge; while Ritter elaborated in his Asien (1832-
1859) the foundations of a sound knowledge of the structure of
Siberia. Middendorff's journey (1844-1845) to north-eastern Siberia
— contemporaneous with Castren's journeys for the special study
of the Ural-Altaian languages— directed attention to the far north
and awakened interest in the Amur, the basin of which soon became
the scene of the expeditions of Akhte and Schwarz (1852), and later
on (1854-1857) of the Siberian expedition to which we owe so marked
an advance in our knowledge of East Siberia. The Siberian branch
of the Russian Geographical Society was founded at the same time
at Irkutsk, and afterwards became a permanent centre for the ex-
ploration of Siberia; while the opening of the Amur and Sakhalin
attracted Maack, Schmidt, Glenn, Radde and Schrenck, whose
works on the flora, fauna and inhabitants of Siberia have become
widely known.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — A. T. von Middendorff, Sibirische Reise (St
Petersburg, 1848-1875); L. Schrenck, Reisen und Forschungen im
Amurgebiet (St Petersburg, 1858-1891); Trudy of the Siberian
expedition — mathematical part (also geographical) by Schwarz, and
physical part by Schmidt, Glehn and Brylkin (1874, seq.); G.
Kennan, Tent Life in Siberia (1870); Paplov, Siberian Rivers
(1878); A. E. Nordenskjoid, Voyage of the Vega (1881) and Vega
Exped. Vetensk. lakttagelser (5 vols., Stockholm, 1872-1887);
P. P. Semenov, Geogr. and Stat. Dictionary of the Russian Empire
(in Russian, 5 vols., St Petersburg, 1863-1884) — a most valuable
source of information, with full bibliographical details under each
article; Picturesque Russia (in Russian), ed. by P. Semenov, vol. xi.
(West Siberia) and xii. (East Siberia) ; Schegflov, Chronology of Sib.
Hist, from 1032 to 1882; Yadrintsev, Siberia (St Petersburg, 2nd
ed., 1892, in Russian); Vagin, " Historical Documents on Siberia,"
in the collection Sibir, vol. i. ; Yadrintsev, Siberia as a Colony
(new ed., 1892); F. M. Dostoievsky's novel, Buried Alive (1881);
Baron A. von Rosen, Memoiren eines russischen Dekabristen (Leipzig,
1870). Consult further Materials for the Study of the Economic
Conditions of West Siberia (22 vols., St Petersburg, 1889-1898),
condensed in Peasant Land-Tenure and -Husbandry in Tobolsk and
Tomsk (St Petersburg, 1894), both in Russian. Similar Materials
for the Altai region, published at St Petersburg by the Cabinet of the
emperor, and for Irkutsk and Yeniseisk (12 fasc., Irkutsk, 1889—
1893); Materials for Transbaikalia (16 vols., St Petersburg, 1898),
summed up in Transbaikalia, by N. Razumov (St Petersburg, 1899).
Other works deserving special mention are: Ermolov, Siberia as a
Colony (3rd ed., 1894) ; Jarilow, Ein Beitrag zur Landwirtschaft in
Sibirien (Leipzig, 1896). Among books of more recent publication
must be mentioned G. Krahmer, Russland in Asien (3 vols., Lejpzig,
1898-1900) and Sibirien und die grosse sibirische Eisenbahn (2nd ed.,
1900); Wirt Gerrare, Greater Russia (London 1903); J. F. Fraser,
The Real Siberia (London, 1902) ; P. Kropotkin, Orographie de la
Siberie (Brussels, 1904); P. Leroy-Beaulieu, La Renovation de I' Asie
centrale (Paris, 1900); J. Stadling, Through Siberia (London, 1901);
S. Turner, Siberia (London, 1906) ; G. F. Wright, Asiatic Russia
(2 vols., London, 1903) ; L. Deutsch, Sixteen Years in Siberia
(Eng. trans., London, 1905) ; V. Dolgorukov, Guide through Siberia
(3rd ed., Tomsk, 1898, in Russian, with summaries in French) ;
A. N. de Koulomzine, Le Trans-siberien (Paris, 1904) ; Bishop of
Norwich, My Life in Mongolia and Siberia (London, 1903); S.
Patkanov, Essai d'une statistique el d'une geographic des peuples
paleoasiatigues de la Siberie (St Petersburg, 1903) ; M. P. de Semenov,
La Russie extra-europeenne et polaire (Paris, 1900) ; I. W. Bookwalter,
Siberia and Central Asia (Springfield, Ohio, 1899); Siberia and the
Great Siberian Railway, by Ministry of Finance (Eng. trans., ed. by
J. M. Crawford, St Petersburg, 1893, vol. v. for flora). Climatological
Atlas of the Russian Empire, by the Physical Observatory (St
Petersburg, 1900), gives data and observations covering the period
1849-1899. A full bibliography will be found in the Russian Ency-
clopaedic Dictionary, as also in Mezhov, Siberian Bibliography (3 vols.,
St Petersburg, 1891-1892), and in A. Pypin's History of Russian
Ethnography, vol. iv. (P. A. K.; J. T. BE.)
SIBI, a town and district of Baluchistan. The town is now
an important junction on the Sind-Peshin railway, where
the Harnai line and the Quetta loop line meet, near the entrance
of the Bolan pass, 88 m. S.E. of Quetta. Pop. (1901) 4551.
The district, which was constituted in 1903, has an area of
4iS2sq.m.; pop. (1901) 74,555. The greater part became British
territory by the treaty of Gandamak in 1879; the rest is ad-
ministered under a perpetual lease from the khan of Kalat.
Political control is also exercised over the Marri-Bugti country,
with an additional area of 7129 sq. m.: pop. (1901) 38,919.
Besides the town of Sibi, the district contains the sanatorium
of Ziarat, the summer residence of the government.
See Sibi District Gazetteer (Bombay, 1907).
SIBONGA, a town of the province of Cebu, island of Cebu,
Philippine Islands, on the E. coast, 30 m. S.W. of Cebu, the
capital. Pop. (1903) 25,848. Sibonga is an agricultural town
with a port for coasting vessels, and is served by a railway.
The principal products are Indian corn and tobacco. The climate
is hot, but healthy. The language is Cebu-Visayan.
SIBPUR, a town of British India, in the Hugli district of
Bengal, on the right bank of the river Hugli, opposite Calcutta.
It is a suburb of Howrah. It contains jute-mills, a flour-mill,
rope- works, brick-works and other industrial establishments;
the royal botanical garden; and the engineering college with
electrical and mining departments and a boarding-house.
The college, of gothic architecture, was originally built for a
missionary institution, as the Bishop's College, in 1824. It has
recently been decided to remove it to Ranchi, in Chota Nagpur.
SIBSAGAR, a town and district of British India, in eastern
Bengal and Assam. The town is situated on the Dikhu river,
about 9 m. from the left bank of the Brahmaputra, being pictur-
esquely built round a magnificent tank, covering an area of
114 acres. Pop. (1901) 5712. In 1907 the transfer of the
district headquarters to Jorhak (pop. 2899), on the Disai river,
was sanctioned.
The DISTRICT OF SIBSAGAR has an area of 4996 sq. m. It
consists of a level plain, much overgrown with grass and jungle,
and intersected by numerous tributaries of the Brahmaputra.
It is divided by the little river Disai into two tracts, which differ
in soil and general appearance. The surface of the eastern
portion is very flat, the general level being broken only by the
long lines of embankments raised by the Ahom kings to serve
both as roadways and as a protection against floods. The soil
consists of a heavy loam of a whitish colour, which is well adapted
for rice cultivation. West of the Disai, though the surface
soil is of the same character, the general aspect is diversified
SIBTHORP— SIBYLS
by the protrusion of the subsoil, which consists of a stiff clay
abounding in iron nodules, and is furrowed by frequent ravines
and water-courses, which divide the cultivable fields into
innumerable small sunken patches or kolas. The chief river is
the Brahmaputra, which is navigable throughout the year by
steamers. The tributaries of the Brahmaputra comprise the
Dhaneswari, the Dihing, the Disang and the Dikhu, all flowing
in a northerly direction from the Naga Hills. Included within
the district is the island of Maguli, formed by the silt brought
down by the Subansiri river from the Himalayas and deposited
in the wide channel of the Brahmaputra. Coal, iron, petroleum
and salt are found. The climate, like that of the rest of the
Assam valley, is comparatively mild and temperate, and the
annual rainfall averages about 94 in.
In 1901 the population was 597,969, showing an increase of
24 % in the decade. Sibsagar is the chief centre of tea cultivation
in the Brahmaputra valley, which was introduced by the Assam
Company in 1852. It contains a large number of well-managed
tea-gardens, which bring both men and money into the province.
There are also several timber mills. The Assam-Bengal railway
serves the southern part of the district, and a light railway
connects this line with Kalikamukh on the Brahmaputra, itself
an important highway of communication.
On the decline of the Ahom dynasty Sibsagar, with the rest
of the Assam valley, fell into the hands of the Burmese. As
a result of the first Burmese war (1824-1826) the valley was
annexed to British India, and the country now forming Sibsagar
district, together with the southern portion of Lakhimpur,
was placed under the rule of Raja Purandhar Singh, on his
agreeing to pay a tribute of £5000. Owing to the raja's misrule,
Sibsagar was reduced to a state of great poverty, and, as he was
unable to pay the tribute, the territories were resumed by the
government of India, and in 1838 were placed under the direct
management of a British officer.
See Sibsagar District Gazetteer (Allahabad, 1906).
SIBTHORP, JOHN (1758-1796), English botanist, was born
at Oxford on the 28th of October 1758, and was the youngest
son of Dr Humphrey Sibthorp (1713-1797), who from 1747
to 1784 was Sherardian professor of botany at Oxford. He
graduated at Oxford in 1777, and then studied medicine at
Edinburgh and Montpellier. In 1784 he succeeded his father in
the Sherardian chair. Leaving his professional duties to a
deputy he left England for Gb'ttingen and Vienna, in preparation
for a botanical tour in Greece (1786). Returning to England
at the end of the following year he took part in the foundation
of the Linnaean Society in 1788, and set to work on a flora of
Oxfordshire, which was published in 1794 as Flora Oxoniensis.
He made a second journey to Greece, but developed consumption
on the way home and died at Bath on the 8th of February 1796.
By his will he bequeathed his books on natural history and
agriculture to Oxford university, where also he founded the
Sibthorpian professorship of rural economy, attaching it to
the chair of botany. He directed that the endowment should
first be applied to the publication of his Flora Graeca and Florae
Graecae Prodromus, for which, however, he had done little
beyond collecting some three thousand species and providing
the plates. The task of preparing the works was undertaken
by Sir J. E. Smith, who issued the two volumes of'the Prodromus
in 1806 and 1813, and six volumes of the Flora Graeca between
1806 and 1828. The seventh appeared in 1830, after Smith's
death, and the remaining three were produced by John Lindley
between 1833 and 1840.
Another member of the family, RALPH WALDO SIBTHORP
(1792-1879), a grandson of Dr Humphrey Sibthorp, was a
well-known English divine. He was educated at Oxford and
took Anglican orders in 1815. He became known as a prominent
" evangelical " in London, but in 1841 was received into the
Roman Church. Two years later he returned to the Anglican
Church, though he was not readmitted to the ministry till 1857.
Finally he re-entered the Roman communion in 1865, but on
his death in 1879 he was, by his own request, buried according
to the service of the English Church. His elder brother, COLONEL
CHARLES DE LAET WALDO SIBTHORP (1783-1855), represented
Lincoln in parliament from 1826 until his death, except for a
short period in 1833-1834, and was notorious for the vigour with
which he expressed his opinions and for his opposition to the
Catholic Emancipation Bill and the Reform Bill. The eldest
son of Colonel Sibthorp, GERVAISE TOTTENHAM WALDO SIB-
THORP (1815-1861), was also M.P. for Lincoln.
SIBYLLINE ORACLES, a collection of Apocalyptic writings,
composed in imitation of the heathen Sibylline books (see
SIBYLS) by the Jews and, later, by the Christians in their efforts
to win the heathen world to their faith. The fact that they
copied the form in which the heathen revelations were conveyed
(Greek hexameter verses) and the Homeric language is evidence
of a degree of external Hellenization, which is an important fact
in the history of post-exilic Judaism. Such was the activity
of these Jewish and Christian missionaries that their imitations
have swamped the originals. Even Virgil in his fourth Eclogue
seems to have used Jewish rather than purely heathen oracles.
The extant fragments and conglomerations of the Sibylline
oracles, heathen, Jewish and Christian, were collected, examined,
translated and explained by C. Alexandre in a monumental
edition full of exemplary learning and acumen. On the basis
of his results, as they have been scrutinized by scholars like
Schiirer and Geffcken, it is possible to disentangle some of the
different strata with a certain degree of confidence.
1. Book III. contains Jewish oracles relative to the Golden
Age established by Roman supremacy in the East about the
middle of the 2nd century B.C. (especially 175-181: cf. i Mace,
viii. 1-16). The evacuation of Egypt by Antiochus Epiphanes
at the bidding of the Roman ambassadors suits the warning
addressed to " Greece " (732-740) against overweening ambition
and any attempt upon the Holy City, which is somewhat
strangely enforced by the famous Greek oracle, " Let Camarina
be, 'tis best unstirred." Older ihan these are the Babylonian
oracle (97-154) and the Persian (381-387). A later Jewish
oracle (46-62) refers to the wars of the second Triumvirate of
Rome, and the whole compilation seems to come from a Christian
redactor.
2. Book IV. is a definite attack upon the heathen Sibyl —
the Jews and Christians did not attempt to pass off their
" forgeries " as genuine — as the mouthpiece of Apollo by a Jew
who speaks for the Great God and yet uses a Greek review (49-
114) of ancient history from the Assyrian empire. There are
references to the legendary escape of Nero to Parthia (119-124)
and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (130-136).
3. Book V. contains a more developed form of the myth of
Nero redivivus in which a panegyric on him (137-141) has bee»
brought up to date by some Jew or Christian, and eulogies of
Hadrian and his successors (48-51) side by side with the legend
of the miserable death of Titus in quittance of his destruction
of Jerusalem (411-413) which probably represents the hope of
the zealots who survived it.
4. The remaining books appear to be Christian (some heretical)
and to belong to the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
EDITIONS. — C. Alexandre (Paris, 1841, 2 vols. ; 1869, i vol.);
Rzach (Prague, 1891; text and appendix of sources); Geffcken
(Leipzig, 1902; text with full apparatus of variants, sources and
parallel passages) ; see also his Komposilion und Entstehungszeit des
Oracula Sibyllina (Leipzig, 1902). An annotated Eng. trans, was
undertaken in 1910 by H. C. O. Lanchester. For references to
modern literature see Schiirer, Geschichle des jiidischen Volkes, iii.
(4th ed.), 555-592- (J. H. A. H.)
SIBYLS l (Sibyllae), the name given by the Greeks and Romans
to certain women who prophesied under the inspiration of a
deity. The inspiration manifested itself outwardly in distorted
features, foaming mouth and frantic gestures. Homer does not
refer to a Sibyl, nor does Herodotus. The first Greek writer,
so far as we know, who does so is Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.). As
to the number and native countries of the Sibyls much diversity
of opinion prevailed. Plato only speaks of one, but in course
of time the number increased to ten according to Lactantius
1 The word is usually derived from Zto-0oXXa, the Doric form of
0eoO 0ov\t (=will of God).
20
SICANI— SICILY
(quoting from Varro): the Babylonian or Persian, the Libyan,
the Cimmerian, the Delphian, the Erythraean, the Samian, the
Cumaean, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian and the Tiburtine.
The Sibyl of whom we hear most is the Erythraean, generally
identified with the Cumaean, whom Aeneas consulted before his
descent to the lower world (Aeneid, vi. 10); it was she who sold
to Tarquin the Proud the Sibylline books. She first offered him
nine; when he refused tLem, she burned three and offered him
the remaining six at the same price; when he again refused
them, she burned three more and offered him the remaining
three still at the same price. Tarquin then bought them (Dion.
Halic. iv. 62). He entrusted them to the care of two patricians;
after 367 B.C. ten custodians were appointed, five patricians
and five plebeians; subsequently (probably in the time of Sulla)
their number was increased to fifteen. These officials, at the
command of the senate, consulted the Sibylline books in order
to discover, not exact predictions of definite future events, but
the religious observances necessary to avert extraordinary
calamities (pestilence, earthquake) and to expiate prodigies in
cases where the national deities were unable, or unwilling, to
help. Only the interpretation of the oracle which was con-
sidered suitable to the emergency was made known to the public,
not the oracle itself. An important effect of these books was
the grecizing of Roman religion by the introduction of foreign
deities and rites (worshipped and practised in the Troad) and
the amalgamation of national Italian deities with the correspond-
ing Greek ones (fully discussed in J. Marquardt, Staatsver-
wallung, iii., 1885, pp. 42, 350, 382). They were written in hexa-
meter verse and in Greek; hence the college of curators was
always assisted by two Greek interpreters. The bocks were
kept in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol and shared the
destruction of the temple by fire in 83. After the restoration
of the temple the senate sent ambassadors in 76 to Erythrae to
collect the oracles afresh and. they brought back about 1000
verses; others were collected in Ilium, Samos, Sicily, Italy and
Africa. In the year 12 B.C. Augustus sought out and burned
a great many spurious oracles and subjected the Sibylline books
to a critical revision; they were then placed by him in the
temple of Apollo Patroiis on the Palatine, where we hear of them
still existing in A.D. 363. They seem to have been burned by
Stilicho shortly after 400. According to the researches of R. H.
Klausen (Aeneas und die Penaten, 1839), the oldest collection of
Sibylline oracles appears to have been made about the time of
Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida in the Troad; it was
attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the
temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae,
where it became famous. It was this very collection, it would
appear, which found its way to Cumae and from Cumae to
Rome.
Some genuine Sibylline verses are preserved in the Book of Marvels
(ttcpi OavnaaUav) of Phlegon of Tralles (and century A.D.). See
H. Diels, Sibyllinische Blatter (1890). On the subject generally
see J. Marquardt as above; A. Bouch<5-Leclerq, La Divination
dans I'antiquite (1879-1882); E. Maass, De Sibyllarum indicibus
(1879); C. Schultess, Die sibyllinischen Bucher in Rom (1895;
with references to authorities in notes).
SICANI, in ancient geography, generally regarded (together
with the Elymi) as the oldest inhabitants of Sicily. Sicania
(the country of the Sicani) and the Siculi (q.v.) or Siceli are
mentioned in Homer (Odyssey, xx. 383, xxiv. 307), the latter
apparently being known to the Greeks as slave-dealers. There
existed considerable difference of opinion among the ancients as
to the origin of the Sicani. From the similarity of name, it
would be natural to identify them with the Siculi, but ancient
authorities expressly state that they were two distinct peoples
(see SICILY: History, ad init.). At first the Sicani occupied
nearly the whole of the island, but were gradually driven by the
Siceli into the interior and the N. and N.W. They lived chiefly
in small towns and supported themselves by agriculture. These
towns were not subject to a single king, but each had its own
ruler and constitution. The most important of the towns to
which a Sicanian origin can be with certainty assigned and
whose site can be determined, are: Hyccara (Muro di Carini),
taken and plundered by the Athenians during the Sicilian
expedition (41 5 B.C.); Omphake, between Agrigentum (Girgenti)
and Gela ( Terranova) ; and Camicus (site unknown) , the residence
of the mythical Sicanian king Cocalus, constructed for him by
Daedalus (q.v.), to whom he had given shelter when pursued by
Minos, king of Crete.
SICARD, ROCH-AMBROISE CUCURRON (1742-1822), French
abbe and instructor of deaf-mutes, was born at Le Fousseret,
Haute-Garonne, on the 2oth of September 1742. Educated
as a priest, he was made principal of a school of deaf-mutes at
Bordeaux in 1786, and in 1789, on the death of the Abbe de
1'Epee (see EPEE), succeeded him at Paris. His chief work was
his Cours d 'instruction d'un sourd-muet de naissance (1800).
See DEAF AND DUMB. The Abbe Sicard managed to escape any
serious harm in the political troubles of 1792, and became a
member of the Institute in 1795, but the value of his educational
work was hardly recognized till shortly before his death at Paris
on the loth of May 1822.
SICILY (Ital. Sicilia), an island of the Mediterranean Sea
belonging to the kingdom of Italy, and separated from the
nearest point of the mainland of Italy only by the Straits of
Messina, which at their narrowest part are about 2 m. in width.
It is nearly bisected by the meridian of 14° E., and by far the
greater part lies to the south of 38° N. Its southernmost point,
however, in 36° 38' N. is 40' to the north of Point Tarifa, the
southernmost point of Spain and of the continent of Europe.
In shape it is roughly triangular,1 whence the ancient poetical
name of Trinacria, referring to its three promontories of Pelorum
(now Faro) in the north-east, Pachynum (now Passero) in the
south-east, and Lilybaeum (now Boeo) in the west. Its area,
exclusive of the adjacent small islands belonging to the comparti-
mento, is, according to the calculations of the Military Geographi-
cal Institute of Italy, 9860 sq. m.; while the area of the whole
compartimento is 9936 sq. m.
The island occupies that part of the Mediterranean in which
the shallowing of the waters divides that sea into two basins,
and in which there are numerous indications of frequent changes
in a recent geological period. The channel between Cape Bon
in Tunis and the south-west of Sicily (a distance of 80 m.) is,
on the whole, shallower than the Straits of Messina, being for
the most part under 100 fathoms in depth, and exceeding 200
fathoms only for a very short interval, while the Straits of
Messina, have almost everywhere a depth exceeding 1 50 fathoms.
The geological structure in the neighbourhood of this strait
shows that the island must originally have been formed by a
rupture between it and the mainland, but that this rupture must
have taken place at a period long antecedent to the advent of
man, so that the name Rhegium cannot be based even on the
tradition of any such catastrophe. The mountain range that
runs out towards the north-east of Sicily is composed of crystal-
line rocks precisely similar to those forming the parallel range
of Aspromonte in Calabria, but both of these are girt about by
sedimentary strata belonging in part to an early Tertiary epoch.
That a subsequent knd connexion took place, however, by the
elevation of the sea-bed there is abundant evidence to show;
and the occurrence of the remains of African Quaternary
mammals, such as Elephas meridionalis, E. antiquus, Hippo-
potamus pentlandi, as well as of those of still living African forms,
such as Elephas africanus and Hyaena crocuta, makes it probable
that there was a direct post-Tertiary connexion also with the
African continent.
The north coast is generally steep and cliff-bound, and
abundantly provided with good harbours, of which that of
Palermo is the finest. In the west and south, and in the south
part of the east side, the hills are much lower and recede farther
from the sea. The coast is for the most part flat, more regular
in outline and less favourable to shipping, while in the east,
1 The name Tpivanpla was no doubt suggested by the Qpivaxlii
of Homer (which need not, however, be Sicily), and the geography
was then fitted to the apparent meaning given to the name Dy the
change. But of these three so-called promontories the last is not a
true promontory, and it is more accurate to treat Sicily as having a
fourth side on the west.
SICILY
where the sea-bottom sinks rapidly down towards the eastern
basin of the Mediterranean, steep rocky coasts prevail except
opposite the plain of Catania. In the northern half of this coast
the lava streams of Mount Etna stand out for a distance of about
20 m. in a line of bold cliffs and promontories. At various points
on the east, north and west coasts there are evidences of a rise
of the land having taken place within historical times, at Trapani
on the west coast even within the igth century. As in the rest
of the Mediterranean, tides are scarcely observable; but at
several points on the west and south coasts a curious oscillation
in the level of the waters, known to the natives as the marrobbio
(or marobia), is sometimes noticed, and is said to be always
preceded by certain atmospheric signs. This consists in a sudden
rise of the sea-level, occasionally to the height of 3 ft., sometimes
occurring only once, sometimes repeated at intervals of a minute
for two hours, or even, at Mazzara, where it is most frequently
observed, for twenty-four hours together.
The surface of Sicily lies for the most part more than 500 ft.
above the level of the sea. Caltanissetta, which occupies the
middle point in elevation as well as in respect of geographical
situation, stands 1900 ft. above sea-level. Considerable mount-
ains occur only in the north, where the lower slopes of all the
heights form one continuous series of olive-yards and orangeries.
Of the rest of the island the greater part forms a plateau varying
in elevation and mostly covered with wheat-fields. The only
plain of any great extent is that of Catania, watered by the
Simeto, in the east; to the north of this plain the active volcano
of Etna rises with an exceedingly gentle slope to the height of
10,868 ft. from a base 400 sq. m. in extent. This is the highest
elevation of the island. The steep and narrow crystalline ridge
which trends north-eastwards, and is known to geographers by
the name of the Peloritan Mountains, does not reach 40x30 ft.
The Nebrodian Mountains, a limestone range connected with
the Peloritan range and having an east and west trend, rise to a
somewhat greater height, and farther west, about the middle
of the north coast, the Madonie (the only one of the groups
mentioned which has a native name) culminate at the height
of nearly 6500 ft. From the western end of the Nebrodian
Mountains a lower range (in some places under 1500 'it, in height)
winds on the whole south-eastwards in the direction of Cape
Passaro. With the exception of the Simeto, the principal
perennial streams — the Salso, the Platani and the Belice — enter
the sea on the south coast.
Geology.1 — In general, the older beds occur along the northern
coast, and progressively newer and newer beds are found towards
the south. Folding, however, has brought some of the older beds
to the surface in the hills which lie to the north and north-east of
Sciacca. The Monti Peloritani at the north-eastern extremity of the
island consists of gneiss and crystalline schists; but with this ex-
ception the whole of Sicily is formed of Mesozoic and later deposits,
the Tertiary beds covering by far the greater part. Triassic rocks
form a discontinuous band along the northern coast, and are especially
well developed in the neighbourhood of Palermo. They rise again
to the surface in the southern part of the island, in the hills which
lie to the north of Sciacca and Bivona. In both areas they are
accompanied by Jurassic, and occasionally by Cretaceous, beds;
but of the latter there are only a few small patches. In the south-
eastern part of the island there are also a few very small outcrops
of Mesozoic beds. The Eocene and Oligocene form a broad belt
along the northern coast, very much more continuous than the
Mesozoic band, and from this belt a branch extends southwards to
Sciacca. Another patch of considerable size lies to the east of
Piazza-Armerina. Miocene and Pliocene deposits cover nearly the
whole of the country south of a line drawn from Etna to Marsala ;
and there is also a considerable Miocene area in the north about
Mistretta. Volcanic lavas and ashes of a recent geological period
form not only the whole of Etna but also a large part of the Monti
Iblei in the south. Small patches occur also at Pachino and in the
hills north of Sciacca.
Climate. — The climate of Sicily resembles that of the other lands
in the extreme south of Europe. As regards temperature, it has the
warm and equable character which belongs to most of the Mediter-
ranean region. At Palermo (where continuous observations have
been made since 1791) the range of temperature between the mean of
1 A general account of the geology of the island will be found in
L. Baldacci, Descrizione geologica dell' isola di Sicilia (Rome, 1886),
with map. For fuller and later information reference should be
made to the publications of the Reale Comitato Geologico d'ltalia.
21
the coldest and that of the hottest month is little greater than at
Greenwich. The mean temperature of January (51?° F.) is nearly
as high as that of October in the south of England, that of July
(77° F-) about 13° warmer than the corresponding month at Green-
wich. In only seven of the thirty years, 1871-1900, was the ther-
mometer observed to sink below the freezing-point; frost thus
occurs in the island even on the low grounds, though never for more
than a few hours. On the coast snow is seldom seen, but it does fall
occasionally. On the Madonie it lies till June, on Etna till July.
The annual rainfall except on the higher mountains does not reach
30 in., and, as in other parts of the extreme south of Europe, it
occurs chiefly in the winter months, while the three months
(June, July and August) are almost quite dry. During these months
the whole rainfall does not exceed 2 in., except on the slopes of the
mountains in the north-east. Hfence most of the streams dry up in
summer. The chief scourge is the sirocco, which is experienced in its
most characteristic form on the north coast, as an oppressive, parch-
ing, hot, dry wind, blowing strongly and steadily from the south, the
atmosphere remaining through the whole period of its duration
leaden-coloured and hazy in consequence of the presence of immense
quantities of reddish dust. It occurs most frequently in April, and
then in May and September, but no month is entirely free from it.
Three days are the longest period for which it lasts. The same name
is sometimes applied to a moist and not very hot, but yet oppressive,
south-east wind which blows from time to time on the east coast.
Malaria occurs in some parts of the island.
Flora. — The flora of Sicily is remarkable for its wealth of species;
but, comparing Sicily with other islands that have been long separ-
ated from the mainland, the number of endemic species is not great.
The orders most abundantly represented are the Compositae, Cruci-
ferae, Labiatae, Caryophyllaceae and Scrophulariaceae. The Rosaceae
are also abundantly represented, and among them are numerous
species of the rose. The general aspect of the vegetation of Sicily,
however, has been greatly affected, as in other parts of the Mediter-
ranean, by the introduction of plants within historical times. Being
more densely populated than any other large Mediterranean island,
and having its population dependent chiefly on the products of the
soil, it is necessarily more extensively cultivated than any other of
the larger islands referred to, and many of the objects of cultivation
are not originally natives of the island. Not to mention the olive,
which must have been introduced at a remote period, all the members
of the orange tribe, the agave and the prickly pear, as well as other
plants highly characteristic of Sicilian scenery, have been introduced
since the beginning of the Christian era. With respect to vegetation
and cultivation three zones may be distinguished. The first reaches
to about 1600 ft. above sea-level, the upper limit of the members
of the orange tribe; the second ascends to about 3300 ft., the limit
of the growth of wheat, the vine and the hardier evergreens; and
the third, that of forests, reaches from about 3300 ft. upwards.
But it is not merely height that determines the general character
of the vegetation. _The cultivated trees of Sicily mostly demand such
an amount of moisture as can be obtained only on the mountain
slopes, and it is worthy of notice that the structure of the mountains
is peculiarly favourable to the supply of this want. The limestones
of which they are mostly composed act like a sponge, absorbing
the rain-water through their innumerable pores and fissures, and thus
storing it up in the interior, afterwards to allow it to well forth in
springs at various elevations lower down. In this way the irrigation
which is absolutely indispensable for the members of the orange tribe
during the dry season is greatly facilitated, and even those trees
for which irrigation is not so indispensable receive a more ample
supply of moisture during_ the rainy season. Hence it is that,
while the plain of Catania is almost treeless and tree-cultivation is
comparatively limited in the west and south, where the extent of land
under 1600 ft. is considerable, the whole of the north and north-east
coast from the Bay of Castellammare round to Catania is an endless
succession of orchards, in which oranges, citrons and lemons alternate
with olives, almonds, pomegranates, figs, carob trees, pistachios,
mulberries and vines. The limit in height of the olive is about
2700 ft., and that of the vine about 3500 ft. The lemon is really grown
upon a bitter orange tree, grafted to bear the lemon. A consider-
able silk production depends on the cultivation of the mulberry in
the neighbourhood of Messina and Catania. Among other trees and
shrubs may be mentioned the sumach, the date-palm, the plantain,
various bamboos, cycads and the dwarf-palm, the last of which
grows in some parts of Sicily more profusely than anywhere else,
and in the desolate region in the south-west yields almost the only
vegetable product of importance. The Arundo Donax, the tallest of
European grasses, is largely grown for vine-stakes.
Population. — The area and population of the several provinces
are shown in the table on the next page. Thus between 1881 and
1901 the population increased at the rate of 20-5%. The
average density is extremely high for a country which lives
almost exclusively by agriculture, and is much higher than the
average for Italy in general, 293 per sq. m. In 1905 the popula-
tion was 3,368,124, the rate of increase being only 4-4% per
annum; the low rate is due to emigration.
22
SICILY
Province.
Area in
sq. m.
Population
1881.
Population
1901.
No. of
Communes.
Density
per sq. m.
1901.
Caltanissetta .
Catania .
Girgenti .
Messina .
Palermo .
Syracuse .
Trapani .
1263
1917
1172
1246
1948
1442
948
266,379
563-457
312,487
460,924
699,151
341,526
283,977
329,449
703,598
380,666
550,895
796,151
433,796
373,569*
28
63
41
97
76
32
20
262
371
317
440
4°3
296
373
9936
'2,927,901
3,568,124
357
Av. 352
* In 1861, 2,392,414; in 1871, 2,584,099.
The chief towns in each of these provinces, with their communal
populations in 1901, are as follow: Callanissetta (43,023), Castro-
giovanni (26,081), Piazza Armerina (24,119), Terranova (22,019),
San Cataldo (18,090); Catania (146,504), Caltagirone (44,527),
Acireale (35,203), Giarre (26,194), Paterno (22,857), Leonforte
(21,236), Bronte (20,166), Vizzini (18,013), Agira (17,634), Nicosia
(15,811), Grammichele (15,017); Girgenti (24,872), Canicatti
(24,687), Sciacca (24,64^5), Licata (22,993), Favara (20,403) ; Messina
(147,106), Racalmuto (16,028), Palma (14,384), Barceltona (24,133),
Milazzo (16,214), Mistretta (14,041); Palermo (305,716), Partinico
(23,668), Monreale (23,556), Termini Imerese (20,633), Bagheria
(18,329), Corleone (16,350), Cefalu (14,518); Syracuse (31,807)
Modica (49,951), Ragusa (32,453), Vittoria (32,219), Comiso (25,837)
Noto (22,284), Lentini (17,100), Avola (16,301), Scicli (16,220)
Palazzolo Acreide (15,106); Trapani (61,448), Marsala (57,824)
Alcamo (51,798), Monte S. Giuliano (29,824), Castelvetrano (24,510)
Castellammare del Golfo (20,665), Mazzara del Vallo (20,044) , Salemi
(17,159).
The archiepiscopal sees (the suffragan sees, if any, being placed
after each in brackets) are Catania (Acireale), Messina (Lipari,
Nicosia, Patti), Monreale (Caltanissetta, Girgenti), Palermo (Cefalu,
Mazara, Trapani), Syracuse (Caltagirone, Noto, Piazza Armerina).
Agriculture. — Sicily, formerly called the granary of Italy, ex-
ported grain until the end of the 1 8th century. Now, although the
island still produces every year some 15 million bushels, the supply
barely suffices for the consumption of a population of which bread
is almost the exclusive diet. The falling-off in the exportation of
cereals is not a consequence of any decadence in Sicilian agriculture,
but rather of the increase of population, which nearly doubled
within the igth century. Two types of agriculture prevail in
Sicily — the extensive and the intensive. The former covers mainly
the interior of the island and half the southern coast, while the
latter is generally adopted on the eastern and northern coasts.
Large holdings of at least 500 hectares *(a hectare equals about
2j acres) are indispensable to the profitable pursuit of extensive
agriculture. These holdings are usually called feudi or latifondi.
Their proprietors alternate the cultivation of wheat with that of
barley and beans. During the years in which the soil is allowed to
lie fallow, the grass and weeds which spring up serve as pasture for
cattle, but the poverty of the pasture is such that at least two
hectares are required for the maintenance of every animal. This
poverty is due to the lack of rain, which, though attaining an annual
average of 29 in. at Palermo, reaches only 21 in. at Syracuse on the
east coast, and about igi in. at Caltanissetta, on the central high
plateau. The system of extensive cultivation proper to the latifondi
gives an annual average gross return of about 200 lire per hectare
(£3, 4s- 5.d. per acre).
Intensive agriculture in Sicily is limited to fruit trees and fruit-
bearing plants, and is not combined with the culture of cereals and
vegetables, as in central and parts of northern Italy. Originally
the Sicilian system was perhaps due to climatic difficulties, but
now it is recognized in most cases to be more rational than com-
bined culture. Large extents of land along the coasts are therefore
exclusively cultivated as vineyards, or as olive, orange, and lemon
groves. Vineyards give an annual gross return of between £11
and £13 per acre, and orange and lemon groves between £32 and
£48 per acre. The by-products of the citrus-essences, citrate of
lime, &c. are also of some importance. Much damage is done by
the olive fly. Vegetables are grown chiefly in the neighbourhood
of large cities. Almonds are freely cultivated, and they seem to be
the only trees susceptible also of cultivation upon the latifondi
together with grain. A large export trade in almonds is carried on
with north and central Europe. Hazel nuts are grown in woods
at a level of more than 1200 ft. above the sea. These also are largely
exported to central Europe for use in the manufacture of chocolate.
The locust bean (used for forage), figs, and peaches are widely grown,
while in certain special zones the pistachio and the manna-ash yield
rich returns. On the more barren soil the sumach shrub, the leaves
of which are used for tanning, and the prickly pear grow freely. The
latter fruit constitutes, with bread, the staple food of the poorest
part of the rural population for several months in the year. The
cultivation of cotton, which spread during the American War of
Secession, is now rare, since it has not been able to withstand the
competition of more favoured countries. All these branches of
intensive cultivation yield a higher gross return than
that of the extensive system. Along the coast landed
property is as a rule broken up into small holdings,
usually cultivated by their owners. There is possibility
of great development of market-gardening.
Climatic conditions prevent cattle-raising in Sicily
from being as prosperous an undertaking as in central
Italy. The total number of bullocks in the island is
calculated to be less than 200,000; and although the
ratio of consumption of meat is low in proportion to
the population, some of the cattle for slaughter have
to be imported. Sheep and goats, which subsist more
easily on scanty pasturage, are relatively more
numerous, the total number being calculated at
700,000. Yet the wool harvest is scarce, and the pro-
duction of butter a negligible quantity, though there
is abundance of the principal product of Sicilian pasture lands,
cheese of various kinds, for which there is a lively local demand.
The Sicilian race of horses would be good but that it is not prolific,
and has degenerated in consequence of insufficient nourishment and
overwork. A better breed of horses is being obtained by more care-
ful selection, and by crossing with Arab and English stallions imported
by the government. Donkeys and mules of various breeds are good,
and would be better were they not so often weakened by heavy work
before attaining full maturity.
Forests. — The absence of forests, which cover hardly 3% of the
total area of the island, constitutes a serious obstacle to the pros-
perity of Sicilian pastoral and agrarian undertakings. The few
remaining forests are almost all grouped around Etna and upon the
high zone of the Madonian Mountains, a range which rises 40 m.
west of Palermo, running parallel to the northern coast almost as
far as Messina, and of which many peaks reach nearly 6000 ft. above
the sea. Here they are chiefly composed of oaks and chestnuts.
In that part of the island which is cultivated intensively some
100 million gallons of wine are annually produced. Had not the
phylloxera devastated the vineyards during the last decade of the
igth century, the production would be considerably higher; 7,700,000
gallons of olive oil and 2500 million oranges and lemons are also
produced, besides the other minor products above referred to. The
zone of the latifondi, or extensive culture, yields, besides wheat,
nearly 8,000,000 bushels of barley and beans every year.
Mining. — The most important Sicilian mineral is undoubtedly
sulphur, which is mined principally in the provinces of Caltanissetta
and Girgenti, and in minor quantities in those of Palermo and
Catania. Up to 1896 the sulphur industry was in a state of crisis
due to the competition of pyrites, to the subdivision of the mines,
to antiquated methods, and to a series of other causes which oc-
casioned violent oscillations in and a continual reduction of •prices.
The formation of the Anglo-Italian sulphur syndicate arrested the
downward tendency of prices and increased the output of sulphur,
so that the amount exported in 1899 was 424,018 tons, worth
£1,738,475, whereas some years previously the value of sulphur
exported had hardly been £800,000. Nineteen-twentieths of the
sulphur consumed in the world was formerly drawn from Sicilian
mines, while some 50,000 persons were employed in the extrac-
tion, manufacture, transport and trade in the mineral. But the
development of the United States sulphur industry at the beginning
of the 2Oth century created considerable difficulties, including the
practical loss of the United States market. In 1906, when the con-
cession to the Anglo-Sicilian Sulphur Company was about to expire,
the government decreed that it should be formed into an obligatory
syndicate for a term of twelve years for the control of all sulphur
produced in Sicily, and exempted from taxation and_ legal dues,
foreign companies established in Italy to exploit industries in which
sulphur is a principal element. The Bank, of Sicily was further
obliged to make advances to the sulphur industry up to four-fifths
of the value of the sulphur deposited in the warehouses. The ex-
ports of sulphur in December 1906 were 17,534 tons, as compared
with 40,713 tons in 1905; in the year 1904 the total production was
3,291,710 tons (value about £1,522,229) and the total exports
508,980 tons, as compared with 470,341 tons in 1905.
Another Sicilian mineral industry is that of common salt and rock-
salt. The former is distilled from sea-water near Trapani, and the
latter obtained in smaller quantities from mines. The two branches
of the industry yielded in 1899 about 180,000 tons per annum, worth
£80,000, while in 1906 about 200,000 tons were made at Trapani
alone. About half this quantity is exported, principally to Norway.
Besides salt, the asphalt mining industry may be mentioned. Its
centre is the province of Syracuse. The value of the annual output
is about £40,000, and the exports in 1906 amounted to nearly 103,000
tons. Pumice stone is also exported from Lipari (11,010 tons in
1904).
Other Industries. — Deep-sea fisheries give employment to some
twenty thousand Sicilians, who exercise their calling not only off the
coasts of their island, but a)ong the north African shore, from
Morocco to Tripoli. In 1894 (the last year for which accurate
statistics have been issued) 350 fishing smacks were.in active service,
giving a catch of 2480 tons of fish. Approximately, the value of the
annual catch may be reckoned at from £600,000 to £800,000. During
1904 the coral fisheries employed 98 vessels with 1138 men: the
SICILY
profits were about £75,264, the expenses being £64,664. The sponge
divers brought up sponges valued at £24,630. The estimated hauls
of tunny fish were 5534 tons, valued at £110,324.
The majority of the scanty Sicilian industries are directly con-
nected with various branches of agriculture. Such, for instance,
is the preparation of the elements of citric acid, which is manu-
factured at an establishment at Messina. Older and more flourishing
is the Marsala industry. Marsala wine is a product of the western
vineyards situated slightly above sea-level. In 1899, wine was
exported to the value of more than £120,000, while in 1906, 24,080
pipes of the value of £361 ,200 were shipped. The quantity consumed
in Italy is far greater than that exported abroad.
Another flourishing Sicilian industry carried on by_ a large number
of small houses is that of preserving vegetables in tins. Artichokes
and tomato sauce are the principal of these products, of which
several dozen million tins are annually exported from Sicily to the
Italian mainland, to Germany and to South America. Manu-
factories of furniture, carriages, gloves, matches and leather exist
in large number in the island. They are, as a rule, small in extent,
and are managed by the owners with the help of five, ten or at most
twenty workmen. There are several glass works at Palermo, a
cotton dyeing works at Messina, and a large metal foundry at
Palermo. Large shipbuilding yards and a yard for the construction
of trams and railway carriages have been constructed in the latter
city. There are dry docks both at Palermo and Messina.
Communications. — Before 1860 there was no railway in Sicily.
The total length of Sicilian railways is now 890 m., all single lines.
Their construction was rendered very costly by the mountainous
character of the island. They formed a separate system (the Rete
Sicula) until in 1906, like the rest of the railways of Italy, they passed
into the hands of the state, with the exception of the line round
Mount Etna and the line from Palermo to Corleone. Messina is
connected with the railway system of the mainland by ferry-boats
from Villa S. Giovanni and Reggio, on which the through carriages
are conveyed across the straits. From Messina lines run along the
northern coast to Palermo, and along the east coast via Catania to
Syracuse: the latter line is prolonged along the south of the island
(sometimes approaching, sometimes leaving the coast) via Canicatti
as far as Aragona Caldare, Girgenti and Porto Empedocle. From
Catania another line runs westward through the centre of the island
via S. Caterina Xirbi (with a branch to Canicatti) to Roccapalumba
(with a branch to Aragona Caldare) and thence northwards to
Termini, on the line between Messina and Palermo. This is the
direct route from Catania to Palermo. From Catania begins the
line round Etna following its south, west and northern slopes, and
ending at Giarre Riposto on the east coast railway. From Valsavoia
(14 m. S. of Catania on the line to Syracuse) a branch line runs to
Caltagirone. From Palermo a line runs southwards to Corleone and
S. Carlo (whence there are diligences to Sciacca on the south coast)
and another to Castelvetrano, Marsala and Trapani, going first
almost as far as the south coast and then running first west and then
north along the west coast. The only part of the coast of the island
which has no railways is that portion of the south coast between
Porto Empedocle and Castelvetrano (Sciacca lies about midway
between these two points), where a road already exists, and a railway
is projected, and the precipitous north coast between Palermo and
Trapani. A steam tramway runs from Messina to the Faro at the
north-east extremity of the island, and thence along the north coast
to Barcelona, and another along the east coast from Messina to
Giampilieri : while the island is fairly well provided with high roads,
but is very backward in rural communications, there being only
244 yds. of road per sq. m., as compared with 1480 yds. in north
Italy. The communications by sea, however, are at least as important
as those by land, even for passengers. A steamer leaves Naples
every night for Palermo, and vice versa, the journey (208 m.)
being done in II hours, while the journey by rail (438 m.), including
the crossing of the Straits of Messina takes 19 J hours; and the
weekly steamer from Naples to Messina (216 m.) takes 12 hours,
while the journey by rail and ferry boat (292 m.) takes 14 hours.
Palermo, Messina and Catania are the most important harbours,
the former being one of the two headquarters (the other, and the
main one, is Genoa) of the Navigazione Generate Italiana, and a port
of call for the steamers from Italy to New York. Emigrants to the
number of 37,638 left Palermo direct for New York in 1906, and
no less than 46,770 in 1905, while others embarked at Messina and
Naples.
The movement of trade in these three ports may be shown by the
following table: —
Palermo.
Messina.1
Catania.
1900
1904
1906
Tonnage of shipping
,, goods landed
shipping
,, goods landed
,, shipping
1,658,848
398,718
2,298,054
445.036
2, 403 ,85 12
1,683,244
213,624
2,265,381
315,414
2,574,872
1,245,954
235,575
i,5Q3,678
309,514
1,542,520
1 The high proportion of shipping entering Messina is due to its
position in the Straits. * Steamships only.
Of the other harbours, Porto Empedocle and Licata share with
Catania most of the sulphur export trade, and the other ports of
note are Marsala, Trapani, Syracuse (which shares with the road-
stead of Mazzarelli the asphalt export trade). The total importation
of coal in 1906 amounted to 519,478 tons, practically all British.
In 1904, 75,779 Sicilians were registered as seamen, and no
steamships with a gross tonnage of 145,702 were registered in Sicily.
Economic, Intellectual, and Moral Conditions. — As a general rule,
trade and the increase of production have not kept pace with the
development of the ways of communication. The poverty of the
Sicilian population is accentuated by the unequal distribution
of wealth among the different classes of society. A small but
comparatively wealthy class — composed principally of the owners
of latifondi — resides habitually in the large cities of the island,
or even at Naples, Rome or Paris. Yet even if all the wealthy
landowners resided on their estates, their number would not be
sufficient to enable them to play in local public life a part corre-
sponding to that of the English gentry. On the other hand, the class
which would elsewhere be called the middle class is in Sicily ex-
tremely poor. The origin of most of the abuses which vitiate Sicilian
political life, and of the frequent scandals in the representative local
administrations, is to be found in the straitened condition of the
Sicilian middle classes.
Emigration only attained serious proportions within the last
decade of the igth century. In 1897 the permanent emigration
from the island was 15,994, in J898, 21,320, and in 1899, 24,604.
Since then it has much increased: in 1905 the emigrants numbered
106,000, and in 1906, 127,000 (3-5% of the population). Of these
about three-fourths would be adults; but the population has in-
creased so fast as more than to cover the deficiency — with the dis-
advantage, however, that in three years 220,000 workers were replaced
by 320,000 infants.
The moral and intellectual defects of Sicilian society are in
part results of -the economic difficulties, and in part the effect
of bad customs introduced or maintained during the long period
of Sicilian isolation from the rest of Europe. When, in 1860,
Sicily was incorporated in the Italian kingdom, hardly a tenth of
the population could read and write. Upon the completion of unity,
elementary schools were founded everywhere; but, though education
was free, the indigence of the peasants in some regions prevented
them from taking full advantage of the opportunities offered.
Thus, even now, 60% of the Sicilian conscripts come up for military
service unable either to read or to write. Secondary and superior
education is more diffused. The pupils of the secondary schools in
Sicily number 3-94 per 1000, the maximum being 6-60 in Liguria
and the minimum 1-65 in Basilicata.
Brigandage of the classical type has almost disappeared from
Italy. The true brigands haunt only the most remote and most
inaccessible mountains. Public security is better in the east than
in the west portion of the island. Criminal statistics, though slowly
diminishing, are still high — murders, which are the most frequent
crimes, having been 27 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1897-1898 and
25-23 per 100,000 in 1903, as against 2-57 in Lombardy, 2-00 in the
district of Venetia, 4^50 in Tuscany and 5-24 in Piedmont. Violent
assaults with infliction of serious wounds are also frequent. This
readiness to commit bloodshed is largely attributable to the senti-
ment of the Mafia (q.v.). (G. G. C.; G. Mo.; T. As.)
HISTORY
The geographical position of Sicily led almost as a matter of
necessity to its historical position, as the meeting-place of the
nations, the battle-field of contending races and creeds. For
this reason, too, Sicily was never in historic times (nor, it seems,
in prehistoric times either) the land of a single nation: her
history exists mainly in its relation to the history of other lands.
Lying nearer to the mainland of Europe and nearer to Africa
than any other of the great Mediterranean islands, Sicily is,
next to Spain, the connecting-link between those two quarters
of the world. It stands also as a breakwater between the eastern
and western divisions of the Mediterranean Sea. In prehistoric
times those two divisions were two vast lakes, and Sicily is a
surviving fragment of the land which once united the two
continents. That Sicily and Africa were once joined we know
only from modern scientific research; that Sicily and Italy were
once joined is handed down in legend. Sicily then, compara-
tively near to Africa, but much nearer to Europe, has been a
European land, but one specially open to invasion and settlement
from Africa. It has been a part of western Europe, but a part
which has had specially close relations with eastern Europe.
It has stood at various times in close connexion with Greece,
Africa and Spain; but its closest connexion has been with
Italy. Still the history of Sicily should never be looked on as
simply part of the history of Italy. Lying thus between Europe
SICILY
and Africa, Sicily has been the battle-field of Europe and Africa.
That is to say, it has been at two separate periods the battle-field
of Aryan and Semitic man. In the later stage of the strife it
has been the battle-field of Christendom and Islam. This history
Sicily shares with Spain to the west of it and with Cyprus to the
east. And with Spain the island has had several direct points
of connexion. There was in all likelihood a near kindred between
the earliest inhabitants of the two lands. In later times Sicily
was ruled by Spanish kings, both alone and in union with other
kingdoms. The connexion with Africa has consisted simply
in the settlement of conquerors from Africa at two periods,
first Phoenician, then Saracen. On the other hand, Sicily has
been more than once made the road to African conquest and
settlement, both by Sicilian princes and by the Roman masters
of Sicily. The connexion with Greece, the most memorable of
all, has consisted in the settlement of many colonies from old
Greece, which gave the island the most brilliant part of its
history, and which made the greater part practically Greek.
This Greek element was strengthened at a later time by the long
connexion of Sicily with the Eastern, the Greek-speaking, division
of the Roman empire. And the influence of Greece on Sicily
has been repaid in more than one shape by Sicilian rulers who
have at various times held influence and dominion in Greece
and elsewhere beyond the Adriatic. The connexion between
Sicily and Italy begins with the primitive kindred between some
of the oldest elements in each. Then came the contemporary
Greek colonization in both lands. Then came the tendency
in the dominant powers in southern Italy to make their way
into Sicily also. Thus the Roman occupation of Sicily ended
the struggle between Greek and Phoenician. Thus the Norman
occupation ended the struggle between Greek and Saracen.
Of this last came the long connexion between Sicily and southern
Italy under several dynasties. Lastly comes the late absorption
of Sicily in the modern kingdom of Italy. The result of these
various forms of Italian influence has been that all the other
tongues of the island have died out before the advance of a
peculiar dialect of Italian. In religion again both Islam and the
Eastern form of Christianity have given way to its Italian form.
Like the British Isles, Sicily came under a Norman dynasty;
under Norman rule the intercourse between the two countries
was extremely close, and the last time that Sicily was the seat
of a separate power it was under British protection.
The Phoenician, whether from old Phoenicia or from Carthage,
came from lands which were mere strips of sea-coast with a
boundless continent behind them. The Greek of old Hellas
came from a land of islands, peninsulas and inland seas. So
did the Greek of Asia, though he had, like the Phoenician, a
vast continent behind him. In Sicily they all found a strip
of sea-coast with an inland region behind; but the strip of sea-
coast was not like the broken coast of Greece and Greek Asia,
and the inland region was not a boundless continent like Africa
or Asia. In Sicily therefore the Greek became more continental,
and the Phoenician became more insular. Neither people
ever occupied the whole island, nor was either people ever
able to spread its dominion over the earlier inhabitants very
far inland. Sicily thus remained a world of its own, with
interests and disputes of its own, and divided among inhabitants
of various nations. The history of the Greeks of Sicily is con-
stantly connected with the history of old Hellas, but it runs
a separate course of its own. The Phoenician element ran an
opposite course, as the independent Phoenician settlements
in Sicily sank into dependencies of Carthage. The entrance
of the Romans put an end to all practical independence on the
part of either nation. But Roman ascendancy did not affect
Greeks and Phoenicians in the same way. Phoenician life
gradually died out. But Roman ascendancy nowhere crushed
out Greek life where it already existed, and in some ways it
strengthened it. Though the Greeks never spread their dominion
over the island, they made a peaceful conquest of it. This
process was in no way hindered by the Roman dominion.
The question now comes, Who were the original inhabitants
of Sicily? The island itself, SueXta, Sicilia, plainly takes
its name from the Sicels (SuceXot, Siculi), a people whom we
find occupying a great part of the island, chiefly east of the
river Gela. They appear also in Italy (see SICULI),
in the toe of the boot, and older history or tradition Original
spoke of them as having in earlier days held a large gn^
place in Latium and elsewhere in central Italy. They
were believed to have crossed the strait into the island about
300 years before the beginning of the Greek settlements, that is
to say in the nth century B.C. They found in the island a
people called Sicans (cf. Odyssey, xxiv. 306), who claimed to be
avroxOovts (i.e. to have originated in the island itself) , but whose
name, we are told, might pass for a dialectic form of their own,
did not the ancient writers expressly affirm them to be a wholly
distinct people, akin to the Iberians. Sicans also appear with
the Ligurians among the early inhabitants of Italy (Virg. Aen.
vii. 795, viii. 328, xi. 317, and Servius's note). That the Sicels
spoke a tongue closely akin to Latin is plain from several Sicel
words which crept into Sicilian Greek, and from the Siceliot
system of weights and measures — utterly unlike anything in
old Greece. When the Greek settlements began, the Sicans,
we are told, had hardly got beyond the life of villages on hill-tops
(Dion. Hal. v. 6). Hyccara, on the north coast, is the one
exception; it was probably a fishing settlement. The more
advanced Sicels had their hill-forts also, but they had learned
the advantages of the sea, and they already had settlements
on the coast when the Greeks came. As we go on, we hear of
both Sicel and Sican towns;1 but we may suspect that any
approach to true city life was owing to Greek influences. Neither
people grew into any form of national unity. They were there-
fore partly subdued, partly assimilated, without much effort.
The investigations of Professor Orsi, director of the museum
at Syracuse, have thrown much light on the primitive peoples
of south-eastern Sicily. Of palaeolithic man hardly any traces
are to be found; but, though western Sicily has been com-
paratively little explored, and the results hardly published at
all, in several localities neolithic remains, attributable to the
Sicani, have been discovered. The later Siculi do not appear
to be a distinct race (cf. P. Orsi in Notizie degli scavi, 1898, 223),
and probably both are branches of the Libyco-Iberian stock.
Whereas other remains attributable to their villages or settle-
ments are rare, their rock-hewn tombs are found by the thousand
in the limestone cliffs of south-eastern Sicily. Those of the
earliest period, the lower limit of which is put about 1500 B.C.,
are aeneolithic, metal being, however, rare and only found in the
form of small ornaments; pottery with linear decoration is
abundant. The second period (1500-1000 B.C.) shows a great
increase in the use of bronze, and the introduction of gold and
silver, and of imported Mycenaean vases. The chief cemeteries
of this period have been found on Plemmyrium, the promontory
south of Syracuse, at Cozzo Pantano, at Thapsus, at Pantalica
near Palazzolo, at Cassibile, south of Syracuse, and at Molinello
near Augusta. The third period (1000-500 B.C.) in its first
phase (1000-700) shows a continual increase of the introduction
of objects of Greek origin; the pottery is at first imported
geometric, and then vases of local imitation appear. Typical
cemeteries are those of Monte Finocchito near Noto, of Noto
itself, of Pantalica and of Leontini. In the second phase (700-
500 B.C.), sometimes called the fourth period, proto-Corinthian
and Attic black figured vases are sometimes, though rarely,
found, while local geometric pottery develops considerably. But
the form of the tombs always remains the same, a small low
chamber hewn in the rock, with a rectangular opening about
2 by 2j ft., out of which open other chambers, each with its
separate doorway; and inhumation is adopted without excep-
tion, whereas in a Greek necropolis a low percentage of cases of
1 Leontini, Megara, Naxos, Syracuse, Zancle are all recorded as
sites where the Sicel gave way to the Greek (in regard to Syracuse
[q.v.] this has recently been proved to be true), while many other
towns remained Sicel longer, among them Abacaenum, Agyrium,
Assorus, Centuripae, Cephaloedium, Engyum, Hadranum, Halaesa,
Henna, Herbessus, Herbita, Hybla Galeatis, Inessa, Kale Akte,
Menaenum, Morgantina. The sites of several of these towns are
doubtful.
SICILY
cremation is always present. Typical cemeteries of this period
have been found at Licodia Eubea, Ragusa and Grammichele.
After the failure of Ducetius to re-establish the Sicel nation-
ality, Greek civilization triumphed over that of the Sicels
entirely, and it has not yet been possible to trace the survivals
of the latter. See Orsi in Romische Mitteilungen, 1898, 305
sqq., and Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche
(Rome, April 1903); also Archeologia (Rome, 1904, 167-191).
In the north-west corner of the island we find a small territory
occupied by a people who seem to have made much greater
advances towards civilized life. The Elymi were a people of
uncertain origin, but they claimed a mixed descent, partly
Trojan, partly Greek. Thucydides, however, unhesitatingly
reckons them among barbarians. They had considerable towns,
as Segesta and Eryx, and the history, as well as the remains, of
Segesta, shows that Greek influences prevailed among them
very early, while at Eryx Phoenician influence was stronger.
But, as we have already seen, the Greeks were not the first
colonizing people who were drawn to the great island. As in
Cyprus and in the islands of the Aegean, the Phoenicians
were before them. And it is from this presence of the highest
forms of Aryan and of Semitic man that the history of Sicily
draws its highest interest. Of Phoenician occupation there are
Early two> or ratner three, marked periods. We must always
Phoenician remember that Carthage — the new city — was one of
settle- the latest of Phoenician foundations, and that the days
meats. Qf ^e Carthaginian dominion show us only the latest
form of Phoenician life. Phoenician settlement in Sicily began
before Carthage became great, perhaps before Carthage came
into being. A crowd of small settlements from the old Phoenicia,
settlements for trade rather than for dominion, factories rather
than colonies, grew up on promontories and small islands all
round the coast (Thuc. vi. 2). These were unable to withstand
the Greek settlers, and the Phoenicians of Sicily withdrew step
by step to form three considerable towns in the north-west corner
of the island near to the Elymi, on whose alliance they relied,
and at the shortest distance by sea from Carthage — Motya,
Solous or Soluntum, and Panormus (see PALERMO).
Our earlier notices of Sicily, of Sicels and Sicans, in the Homeric
poems and elsewhere, are vague and legendary. Both races
appear as given to the buying and selling of slaves
nreek (QJ xx_ ^83, xxiv. 21). The intimate connexion be-
tween old Hellas and Sicily begins with the foundation
of the Sicilian Naxos by Chalcidians of Euboea under
Theocles, which is assigned to 735 B.C. (Thuc. v. 3-5). The site, a
low promontory on the east coast, immediately below the height
of Tauromenium, marks an age which had advanced beyond
the hill-fortress and which thoroughly valued the sea. The next
year Corinth began her system of settlement in the west: Corcyra,
the path to Sicily, and Syracuse on the Sicilian coast were
planted as parts of one enterprise. From this time, for about
150 years, Greek settlement in the island, with some intervals,
goes steadily on. Both Ionian and Dorian colonies were planted,
both from the older Greek lands and from the older Sicilian
settlements. The east coast, nearest to Greece and richest in
good harbours, was occupied first. Here, between Naxos and
Syracuse, arose the Ionian cities of Leontini and Catana (728
B.C.), and the Dorian Megara Hyblaea (726 B.C.). Settlement on
the south-western coast began about 688 B.C. with the joint
Cretan and Rhodian settlement of Gela, and went on in the
foundation of Selinus (the most distant Greek city on this side),
of Camarina, and in 582 B.C. of the Geloan settlement of Acragas
(Agrigentum, Girgenti), planted on a high hill, a little way from
the sea, which became the second city of Hellenic Sicily. On
the north coast the Ionian Himera (founded in 648 B.C.) was
the only Greek city in Sicily itself, but the Cnidians founded
Lipara in the Aeolian Islands. At the north-east corner,
opposite to Italy, and commanding the strait, arose Zancle, a
city of uncertain date (first quarter of the 7th century B.C.) and
mixed origin, better known as Messana (Messene, Messina).
Thus nearly all the east coast of Sicily, a great part of the
south coast, and a much smaller part of the north, passed into
the hands of Greek settlers — Siceliots (SiwXuorat), as dis-
tinguished from the native Sicels. This was one of the greatest
advances ever made by the Greek people. The Greek element
began to be predominant in the island. Among the earlier
inhabitants the Sicels were already becoming adopted Greeks.
Many of them gradually sank into a not wholly unwilling subjec-
tion as cultivators of the soil under Greek masters. But there
were also independent Sicel towns in the interior, and there was
a strong religious intercommunion between the two races. Sicel
Henna (Enna, Castrogiovanni) is the special seat of the worship
of Demeter and her daughter.
The Phoenicians, now shut up in one corner of the island,
with Selinus on one side and Himera on the other founded right
in their teeth, are bitter enemies; but the time of
their renewed greatness under the headship of Carthage Prosperous
has not yet come. The 7th century B.C. and thep™;oA
early part of the 6th were a time in which the Greek
cities of Sicily had their full share in the general prosperity
of the Greek colonies everywhere. For a while they outstripped
the cities of old Greece. Their political constitutions were
aristocratic; that is, the franchise was confined to the descend-
ants of the original settlers, round whom an excluded body
(ftjjuos or plebs) was often growing .up. The ancient kingship
was perhaps kept on or renewed in some of the Siceliot and
Italiot towns; but it is more certain that civil dissensions led
very early to the rise of tyrants. The most famous if not the
first * is Phalaris (q.v.) of Acragas (Agrigentum), whose exact
date is uncertain, whose letters are now cast aside, and whose
brazen bull has been called in question, but who clearly rose to
power very soon after the foundation of Acragas. Under his
rule the city at once sprang to the first place in Sicily, and he
was the first Siceliot ruler who held dominion over two Greek
cities, Acragas and Himera. This time of prosperity was also
a time of intellectual progress. To say nothing of lawgivers
like Charondas, the line of Siceliot poets began early, and the
circumstances of the island, the adoption of many of its local
traditions and beliefs — perhaps a certain intermingling of
native blood — gave the intellectual life of Sicily a character in
some things distinct from that of old Hellas. Stesichorus of
Himera (c. 632-556 B.C.) holds a great place among the lyric
poets of Greece, and some place in the political history of Sicily
as the opponent of Phalaris. The architecture and sculpture
of this age have also left some of their most remarkable monu-
ments among the Greek cities of Sicily. The remains of the old
temples of Selinus, with- their archaic metopes, attributed to the
6th century B.C., show us the Doric style in its earlier state. In
this period, too, begins the fine series of Sicilian coins (see
NUMISMATICS: Sicily).
This first period of Sicilian history lasts as long as Sicily remains
untouched from any non-Hellenic quarter outside, and as long
as the Greek cities in Sicily remain as a rule independent
of one another. A change begins in the 6th century
and is accomplished early in the sth. The Phoe-
nician settlements in Sicily become dependent on Carthage,
whose growing power begins to be dangerous to the Greeks
of Sicily. Meanwhile the growth of tyrannies in the Greek
cities was beginning to group several towns together under a
single master, and thus to increase the greatness of particular
cities at the expense of their freedom. Thus Thero of Acragas
(488-472), who bears a good character there, acquired also,
like Phalaris, the rule of Himera. One such power held dominion
both in Italy and Sicily. Anaxilaus of Rhegium, by a long and
strange tale of treachery, occupied Zancle and changed its name
to Messana. But the greatest of the Siceliot powers, that of
the Deinomenid dynasty, began at Gela in 505, and was in 485
translated by Gelo (q.v.) to Syracuse. That city now Og]o
became the centre of a greater dominion over both
Greeks and Sicels than the island had ever before seen. But
Gelo, like several later tyrants of Syracuse, takes his place —
and it is the redeeming point in the position of all of them — as
' ' Panaetius of Leontini (608 B.C.) is said to have been the earliest
tyrant in Sicily.
SICILY
the champion of Hellas against the barbarian. The great double
invasion of 480 B.C. was planned in concert by the barbarians
of the East and the West (Diod. xi. i; schol. on Find., Pyth. i.
146; Grote v. 294). While the Persians threatened old Greece,
Carthage threatened the Greeks of Sicily. There were Siceliots
who played the part of the Medizers in Greece : Selinus was on
the side of Carthage, and the coming of Hamilcar was immediately
brought about by a tyrant of Himera driven out by Thero. But
the united power of Gelo and Thero, whose daughter Damarete
Gelo had married, crushed the invaders in the great battle of
Himera, won, men said, on the same day as Salamis, and the
victors of both were coupled as the joint deliverers of Hellas
(Herod, vii. 165-167; Diod. xx. 20-25; Find. Pyth. i. 147-156;
Simonides, fr. 42; Polyaenus i. 27). But, while the victory
of Salamis was followed by a long war with Persia, the peace
which was now granted to Carthage stayed in force for seventy
years. Gelo was followed by his brother Hiero (478-467), the
special subject of the songs of Pindar. Acragas
meanwhile flourished under Thero; but a war between
him and Hiero led to slaughter and new settlement at Himera.
These transplantings from city to city began under Gelo and
went on under Hiero (q.v.). They made speakers in old Greece
(Thuc. vi. 17) contrast the permanence of habitation there with
the constant changes in Sicily.
None of these tyrannies was long-lived. The power of Thero
fell to pieces under his son Thrasydaeus. When the power of
Hiero passed in 467 B.C. to his brother Thrasybulus the freedom
of Syracuse was won by a combined movement of Greeks and
Sicels, and the Greek cities gradually settled down as they had
been before the tyrannies, only with a change to democracy
in their constitutions. The mercenaries who had received
citizenship from the tyrants were settled at Messana. About
fifty years of great prosperity followed. Art, science, poetry had
all been encouraged by the tyrants. To these was added the
special growth of freedom — the art of public speaking, in which
the Sicilian Greeks became especially proficient, Corax being
the founder of the rhetorical school of Sicily. Epicharmus
(540-450), carried as a babe to Sicily, is a link between native
Siceliots and the stranger's invited by Hiero; as the founder of
the local Sicilian comedy, he ranks among Siceliots. After
him Sophron of Syracuse gave the Sicilian mimes a place among
the forms of Greek poetry. But the intellect of free Sicily
struck out higher paths. Empedocles of Acragas is best known
from the legends of his miracles and of his death in the fires
of Aetna; but he was not the less philosopher, poet and physician,
besides his political career. Gorgias (q.v.) of Leontini had a still
more direct influence on Greek culture, as father of the technical
schools of rhetoric throughout Greece. Architecture too ad-
vanced, and the Doric style gradually lost somewhat of its ancient
massiveness. The temple at Syracuse, which is now the metro-
politan church, belongs to the earlier days of this time. It is
followed by the later temples at Selinus, among them the temple
of Apollo, which is said to have been the greatest in Sicily, and
by the wonderful series at Acragas (see AGRIGENTUM) .
During this time of prosperity there was no dread of
Carthaginian inroads. Diodorus's account of a war between
Segesta and Lilybaeum is open to considerable suspicion. We
have, on the other hand, Pausanias's evidence for the exist-
ence in his day at Olympia of statues offered by Acragas
out of spoil won from Motya, assigned to Calamis, an artist of
this period (Freeman ii. 552), and the evidence of contemporary
Condition inscriptions (i) for a Selinuntine victory over some un-
of siceis known enemy (possibly over Motya also),(2)for dealings
*aa between Athens and Segesta with reference to Halicyae,
a Sican town. The latter is important as being the
first appearance of Athens in Sicily. As early as 480 (Freeman
iii. 8) indeed Themistocles seems to have been looking westward.
Far more important are our notices of the earlier inhabitants.
For now comes the great Sicel movement under Ducetius, who,
between force and persuasion, came nearer towards uniting his
people into one body than had ever been done before. From
his native hill-top of Menae, rising above the lake dedicated to
the Palici, the native deities whom Sicels and Greeks alike
honoured, he brought down his people to the new city of Palicae
in the plain. His power grew, and Acragas could withstand
him only by the help of Syracuse. Alternately victorious and
defeated, spared by the Syracusans on whose mercy he cast
himself as a suppliant (451), sent to be safe at Corinth, he came
back to Sicily only to form greater plans than before. War
between Acragas and Syracuse, which arose on account of his
return, enabled him to carry out his schemes, and, with the
help of another Sicel prince of Herbita, who bore the Greek name
of Archonides, he founded Kale Akte on the northern coast.
But his work was cut short by his death in 440; the hope of
the Sicel people now lay in assimilation to their Hellenic neigh-,
bours. Ducetius's own foundation of Kale Akte lived on, and
we presently hear of Sicel towns under kings and tyrants, all
marking an approach to Greek life. Roughly speaking, while
the Sicels of the plain country on the east coast became subject
to Syracuse, most of those in other parts of the island remained
independent. Of the Sicans we hear less; but Hyccara in the
north-west was an independent Sican town on bad terms with
Segesta. .On the whole, setting aside the impassable barrier
between Greek and Phoenician, other distinctions of race within
the island were breaking down through the spread of the Hellenic
element, but among the Greek cities themselves the distinction
between the Dorian and the Ionian or Chalcidian settlements
was still keenly felt.
Up to this time the Italiot and Siceliot Greeks have formed
part of the general Greek world, while within that world they
have formed a world of their own, and Sicily has again
formed a world of its own within that. Wars and l°te
conquests between Greeks and Greeks, especially on the Athens.
part of Syracuse, though not wanting, have been on the
whole less constant than in old Greece. It is even possible to
appeal to a local Sicilian patriotism (Thuc. vi. 64, 74). Presently
this state of Sicilian isolation was broken in upon by the great
Peloponnesian War. The Siceliot cities were drawn into alliance
with one side or the other, till the main interest of Greek history
gathers for a while round the Athenian attack on Syracuse. At
the very beginning of the war the Lacedaemonians looked for
help from the Dorian Siceliots. But the first active inter-
vention came from the other side. Conquest in Sicily was a
favourite dream at Athens (see PELOPONNESIAN WAR). But
it was only in 427 an opportunity for Athenian interference
was found in a quarrel between Syracuse and Leontini and
their allies. Leontini craved help from Athens on the ground
of Ionian kindred. Her envoy was Gorgias; his peculiar style
of rhetoric was now first heard in old Greece (Diod. xii. 53, 54),
and his pleadings were successful. For several years from this
time (427-422) Athens plays a part, chiefly unsuccessful, in
Sicilian affairs. .But the particular events are of little import-
ance, except as leading the way to the greater events that follow.
The far more memorable interference of Athens in Sicilian
affairs in the year 415 was partly in answer to the cry of the
exiles of Leontini, partly to a quite distinct appeal from the
Elymian Segesta. That city, an ally of Athens, asked for
Athenian help against its Greek neighbour Selinus. In a dispute,
partly about boundaries, partly about the right of intermarriage
between the Hellenic and the Hellenizing city, Segesta was hard
pressed. She vainly asked for help at Acragas — some say at
Syracuse (Diod. xii. 82) — and even at Carthage. The last
appeal was to Athens.
The details of the great Athenian expedition (415-413) belong
partly to the political history of Athens (q.v.), partly to that
of Syracuse (q.v.). But its results make it a marked
epoch in Sicilian history, and the Athenian plans, if e*i£dlfioa.
successful, would have changed the whole face of the
West. If the later stages of the struggle were remarkable for the
vast number of Greek cities engaged on both sides, and for the
strange inversion of relations among them on which Thucydides
(vii. 57, 58) comments, the whole war was yet more remarkable
for the large entrance of the barbarian element into the Athenian
reckonings. The war was undertaken on behalf of Segesta;
SICILY
27
the Sicels gave Athens valuable help; the greater barbarian
powers out of Sicily also came into play. Some help actually
came from Etruria. But Carthage was more far-sighted. If
Syracuse was an object of jealousy, Athens, succeeding to her
dominion, creating a power too nearly alike to her own, would
have provoked far greater jealousy. So Athens found no active
support save at Naxos and Catana, though Acragas, if she would
not help the invaders, at least gave no help to her own rival.
But after the Spartan Gylippus came, almost all the other Greek
cities of Sicily were on the side of Syracuse. The war is instruc-
tive in many ways. It reminds us of the general conditions of
Greek seamanship when we find that Corcyra was the meeting-
place for the allied fleet, and that Syracuse was reached only by
a coasting voyage along the shores of Greek Italy. We are
struck also by the low military level of the Sicilian Greeks. The
Syracusan heavy-armed are as far below those of Athens as those
of Athens are below those of Sparta. The gwaw-continental
character of Sicily causes Syracuse, with its havens and its
island, to be looked on, in comparison with Athens, as a land
power (Tjirtipwrai, Thuc. vii. 21). That is to say, the Siceliot
level represents the general Greek level as it stood before the
wars in which Athens won and defended her dominion. The
Greeks of Sicily had had no such military practice as the Greeks
of old Greece; but an able commander could teach both Siceliot
soldiers and Siceliot seamen to out-manoeuvre Athenians. The
main result of the expedition, as regards Sicily, was to bring the
island more thoroughly into the thick of Greek affairs. Syracuse,
threatened with destruction by Athens, was saved by the zeal
of her metropolis Corinth in stirring up the Peloponnesian rivals
of Athens to help her, and by the advice of Alcibiades after
his withdrawal to Sparta. All chance of Athenian dominion in
Sicily or elsewhere in the west came to an end. Syracuse repaid
the debt by good service to the Peloponnesian cause, and from
that time the mutual influence of Sicily and old Greece is
far stronger than in earlier times.
But before the war in old Greece was over, seventy years
after the great victory of Gelo (410), the Greeks of Sicily
had to undergo barbarian invasion on a vaster scale than
Phoenician ever. The disputes between Segesta and Selinus
invasion called in these enemies also. Carthage, after a long
under period of abstention from intervention in Sicilian
Hannibal. affajrs> ancj tne observance of a wise neutrality during
the war between Athens and Syracuse, stepped in as the ally of
Segesta, the enemy of her old ally Selinus. Her leader was
Hannibal, -grandson and avenger of the Hamilcar who had died
at Himera. In 409, at the head of a vast mercenary host, he
sailed to Sicily, attacked Selinus (q.v.), and stormed the town
after a murderous assault of nine days. Thence he went to
Himera, with the object of avenging his grandfather. By this
time the other Greek cities were stirred to help, while Sicels
and Sicans joined Hannibal. At last Himera was stormed, and
3000 of its citizens were solemnly slaughtered on the spot where
Hamilcar had died. Hannibal then returned to Carthage after
an absence of three months only. The Phoenician possessions in
Sicily now stretched across the island from Himera to Selinus.
The next victim was Acragas, against which another expedition
sailed in 406 under Hannibal and Himilco; the town was sacked
and the walls destroyed.
Meanwhile the revolutions of Syracuse affected the history
of Sicily and of the whole Greek world. Dionysius (q.v.) the
tyrant began his reign of thirty-eight years in the first
montns of 4Oj Almost at the same moment, the new
Carthaginian commander, Himilco, attacked Gela and
Camarina. Dionysius, coming to the help of Gela, was defeated,
and was charged (no doubt with good ground) with treachery. He
now made the mass of the people of both towns find shelter at
Syracuse. But now a peace, no doubt arranged at Gela, was
formally concluded (Freeman iii. 587). Carthage was confirmed
in her possession of Selinus, Himera and Acragas, with some
Sican districts which had opposed her. The people of Gela
and Camarina were allowed to occupy their unwalled towns as
tributaries of Carthage. Leontini, latterly a Syracusan fort, as
Dioaysius
well as Messana and all the Sicels, were declared independent,
while Dionysius was acknowledged as master of Syracuse
(Diodorus xiii. 114). No war was ever more grievous to freedom
and civilization. More than half Sicily was now under barbarian
dominion; several of its noblest cities had perished, and a
tyrant was established in the greatest. The 5th century B. c.,
after its central years of freedom and prosperity, ended in far
deeper darkness than it had begun. The minuter account of
Dionysius belongs to Syracusan history; but his position, one
unlike anything that had been before seen in. Sicily or elsewhere
in Hellas, forms an epoch in the history of Europe. His only
bright side is his championship of Hellas against the Phoenician,
and this is balanced by his settlements of barbarian mercenaries
in several Greek cities. Towards the native races his policy
varied according to momentary interests; but on the whole
his reign tended to bring the Sicels more and more within the
Greek pale. His dominion is Italian as well as Sicilian; his
influence, as an ally of Sparta, is important in old Greece; while,
as a hirer of mercenaries everywhere, he had wider relations
than any earlier Greek with the nations of western Europe. He
further opened new fields for Greek settlement on both sides of
the Adriatic. In short, under him Sicily became for the first
time the seat of a great European power, while Syracuse, as its
head, became the greatest of European cities. His reign was
unusually long for a Greek tyrant, and his career furnished a
model for other rulers and invaders of Sicily. With him in
truth begins that wider range of Greek warfare, policy and
dominion which the Macedonian kingdoms carry on.
The reign of Dionysius (405-367) is divided into marked
periods by four wars with Carthage, in 398-397, 392, 383-378
and 368. Before the first war his home power was all
but overthrown; he was besieged in Syracuse itself "'*ftwar
in 403; but he lived through the storm, and extended Carthage.
his dominion over Naxos, Catana and Leontini. All
three perished as Greek cities. Catana was the first Siceliot
city to receive a settlement of Campanian mercenaries, while
others settled in non-Hellenic Entella. Naxos was settled by
Sicels; Leontini was again merged in Syracuse. Now begin the
dealings of Dionysius with Italy, where the Rhegines, kinsmen
of Naxos and Catana, planned a fruitless attack on him in
common with Messana. He then sought a wife at Rhegium,
but was refused with scorn, while Locri gladly gave him Doris.
The two cities afterwards fared accordingly. In the first war with
Carthage the Greek cities under Carthaginian dominion or
dependence helped him; so did Sicans and Sicels, which last
had among them some stirring leaders; Elymian Segesta clave
to Carthage. Dionysius took the Phoenician stronghold of
Motye; but Himilco recovered it, destroyed Messana, founded
the hill-town of Tauromenium above Naxos for Sicels who had
joined him, defeated the fleet of Dionysius off Catana and besieged
Syracuse. Between invasion and home discontent, the tyrant
was all but lost; but the Spartan Pharacidas stood his friend;
the Carthaginians again suffered from pestilence in the marshes
of Lysimelia; and after a masterly combined attack by land
and sea by Dionysius Himilco went away utterly defeated,
taking with him his Carthaginian troops and forsaking his allies.
Gela, Camarina, Himera, Selinus, Acragas itself, became subject
allies of Dionysius. The Carthaginian dominion was cut down
to what it had been before Hannibal's invasion. Dionysius
then planted mercenaries at Leontini, conquered some Sicel
towns, Henna among them, and made alliances with others. He
restored Messana, peopling it with motley settlers, among whom
were some of the old Messenians from Peloponnesus. But the
Spartan masters of the old Messenian land grudged this possible
beginning of a new Messenian power. Dionysius therefore
moved his Messenians to a point on the north coast, where
they founded Tyndaris. He clearly had a special eye to that
region. He took the Sicel Cephaloedium (Cefalii), and even
the old Phoenician border-fortress of Solous was betrayed to him.
He beat back a Rhegine expedition; but his advance was
checked by a failure to take the new Sicel settlement of Tauro-
menium. His enemies of all races now declared themselves.
SICILY
Many of the Sicels forsook him; Acragas declared herself
independent ; Carthage herself again took the field.
The Carthaginian war of 392-391 was not very memorable.
Both sides failed in their chief enterprises, and the main interest
of the story comes from the glimpses which we get of the Sicel
states. Most of them joined the Carthaginian leader Mago;
but he was successfully withstood at Agyrium by Agyris, the
ally of Dionysius, who is described as a tyrant second in power
to Dionysius himself. This way of speaking would imply that
Agyrium had so far advanced in Greek ways as to run the usual
course of a Greek commonwealth. The two tyrants drove
Carthage to a peace by which she abandoned all her Sicel allies
to Dionysius. This time he took Tauromenium and settled
it with his mercenaries. For new colonists of this kind the
established communities of all races were making way. Former
transportations had been movements of Greeks from one Greek
site to another. Now all races are confounded.
Dionysius, now free from Phoenician warfare, gave his mind
to enterprises which raised his power to its greatest height.
In the years 390-387 he warred against the Italiot cities in alliance
with their Lucanian enemies. Rhegium, Croton, the whole toe
of the boot, were conquered. Their lands were given to Locri;
their citizens were taken to Syracuse, sometimes as slaves,
sometimes as citizens. The master of the barbarians fell below
the lowest Hellenic level when he put the brave Rhegine general
Phyton to a lingering death, and in other cases imitated the
Carthaginian cruelty of crucifixion. Conqueror of southern
Italy, he turned his thoughts yet further, and became the first
ruler of Sicily to stretch forth his hands towards the eastern
peninsula. In the Adriatic he helped Hellenic extension, desiring
no doubt to secure the important trade route into central
Europe. He planted directly and indirectly some settlements
in Apulia, while Syracusan exiles founded the more famous
Ancona. He helped the Parians in their settlements of Issa and
Pharos; he took into his pay Illyrian warriors with Greek arms,
and helped the Molossian Alcetas to win back part of his kingdom.
He was even charged with plotting with his Epirot ally to
plunder Delphi. This even Sparta would not endure; Dionysius
had to content himself with sending a fleet along the west coast
of Italy, to carry off the wealth of the great temple of Caere.
In old Greece men now said that the Greek folk was hemmed
in between the barbarian Artaxerxes on the one side and
Dionysius, master and planter of barbarians, on the other.
These feelings found expression when Dionysius sent his embassy
to the Olympic games of 384, and when Lysias bade Greece rise
against both its oppressors. Dionysius vented his wrath on
those who were nearest to him, banishing many, among them
his brother Leptines and his earliest friend Philistus, and putting
many to death. He was also once more stirred up to play the
part of a Hellenic champion in yet another Punic war.
In this war (383-378) Dionysius seems for once to have had
his head turned by a first success. His demand that Carthage
should altogether withdraw from Sicily was met by a crushing
defeat. Then came a treaty by which Carthage kept Selinus
and part of the land of Acragas. The Halycus became the
boundary. Dionysius had also to pay 1000 talents, which
caused him to be spoken of as becoming tributary to the bar-
barians. In the last years of his reign we hear dimly of both
Syracusan and Carthaginian operations in southern Italy.
He also gave help to Sparta against Thebes, sending Gaulish
and Iberian mercenaries to take part in Greek warfare. His
last war with Carthage, which began with an invasion of western
Sicily, and which was going on at his death in 367 B.C., was ended
by a peace by which the Halycus remained the boundary.
The tyranny of Dionysius fell, as usual, in the second genera-
tion; but it was kept up for ten years after his death by the
energy of Philistus, now minister of his son Dionysius
the Younger. It fell with the coming back of the
exile Dion in 357. The tyranny had lasted so long
that it was less easy than at the overthrow of the
elder tyrants to fall back on an earlier state of things. It had
been a time of frightful changes throughout Sicily, full of breaking
Dion.
up of old landmarks, of confusion of races, and of movements
of inhabitants. But it also saw the foundation
of new cities. Besides Tyndaris and Tauromenium, .
the foundation of Halaca marks another step in
Sicel progress towards Hellenism, while the Carthaginians
founded their strong town and fortress of Lilybaeum in place
of Motya. Among these changes the most marked is the settle-
ment of Campanian mercenaries in Greek and Sicel towns.
Yet they too could be brought under Greek influences; they
were distant kinsfolk of the Sicels, and the forerunners of Rome.
They mark one stage of migration from Italy into Sicily.
The reign of Dionysius was less brilliant in the way of art
and literature than that of Hiero. Yet Dionysius himself
sought fame as a poet, and his success at Athens shows that his
compositions did not deserve the full scorn of his enemies.
The dithyrambic poet Philoxenus, by birth of Cythera, won his
fame in Sicily, and other authors of lost poems are mentioned
in various Siceliot cities. One of the greatest losses in all Greek
history is thatjof the writings of Philistus (436-356), the Syracusan
who had seen the Athenian siege and who died in the warfare
between Dion and the younger Dionysius. Through the time
of both tyrants, he was, next to the actual rulers, the first man
in Sicily; but of his record of his own times we have only what
filters through the recasting of Diodorus. But the most remark-
able intellectual movement in Sicily at this time was the influence
of the Pythagorean philosophy, which still lived on in southern
Italy. It led, through Dion, to the several visits of Plato to
Sicily under both the elder and the younger Dionysius.
The time following the Dionysian tyranny was at Syracuse a
time full of the most stirring local and personal interest, under
her two deliverers Dion and Timoleon. It is less easy _.
to make out the exact effect on the rest of Sicily of
the three years' career of Dion. Between the death of Dion
in 354 and the coming of Timoleon in 344 we hear of a time of
confusion in which Hellenic life seemed likely to die out. The
cities, Greek and Sicel, were occupied by tyrants. The work of
Timoleon (q.v.), whose headquarters were first at Tauromenium,
then at Hadranum, was threefold — the immediate deliverance
of Syracuse, the restoration of Sicily in general to freedom and
Greek life, and the defence of the Greek cities against Carthage.
The great victory of the Crimissus in 339 led to a peace with
Carthage with the old frontier; but all Greek cities were to be
free, and Carthage was to give no help to any tyrant. Timoleon
drove out all the tyrants, and it specially marks the fusion of the
two races that the people of the Sicel Agyrium were admitted
to the citizenship of free Syracuse. From some towns he drove
out the Campanians, and he largely invited Greek settlement,
especially from the Italiot towns, which were hard pressed by
the Bruttians. The Corinthian deliverer gave, not only Syracuse,
but all Greek Sicily, a new lease of life, though a short one.
We have unluckily no intelligible account of Sicily during
the twenty years after the death of Timoleon (337-317). His
deliverance is said to have been followed by great
immediate prosperity, but wars and dissensions very
soon began again. The Carthaginians played off one
city and party against another, and Agathocles,1 following the
same policy, became in 317, by treachery and massacre, undis-
puted tyrant of Syracuse, and spread his dominion over many
other cities. Acragas, strengthened by Syracusan exiles, now
stands out again as the rival of Syracuse. The Carthaginian
Hamilcar won many Greek cities to the Punic alliance.
Agathocles, however, with Syracuse blockaded by a Carthaginian
fleet, formed the bold idea of carrying the war into Africa.
For more than three years (310-307) each side carried on
warfare in the land of the other. Carthage was hard pressed
by Agathocles, while Syracuse was no [less hard pressed by
Hamilcar. The force with which Agathocles invaded Africa
was far from being wholly Greek; but it was representatively
European. Gauls, Samnites, Tyrrhenians, fought for him, while
mercenary Greeks and Syracusan exiles fought for Carthage. He
won many battles and towns; he quelled mutinies of his own
1 See Tillyard, Agathocles (1908)
SICILY
29
troops; by inviting and murdering Ophelias, lord of Cyrene,
he doubled his army and brought Carthage near to despair.
Meanwhile Syracuse, all but lost, had driven back Hamilcar,
and had taken him prisoner in an unsuccessful attack on
Euryelus, and slain him when he came again with the help of
the Syracusan exile Deinocrates. Meanwhile Acragas, deeming
Agathocles and the barbarians alike weakened, proclaimed
freedom for the Sicilian cities under her own headship. Many
towns, both Greek and Sicel, joined the confederacy. It has
now become impossible to distinguish the two races; Henna and
Herbessus are now the fellows of Camarina and Leontini. But
the hopes of Acragas perished when Agathocles came back from
Africa, landed at Selinus, and marched to Syracuse, taking one
town after another. A new scheme of Sicilian union was taken
up by Deinocrates, which cut short his dominion. But he now
relieved Syracuse from the Carthaginian blockade; his mer-
cenaries gained a victory over Acragas; and he sailed again for
Africa, where fortune had turned against his son Archagathus,
as it now did against himself. He left his sons and his army
to death, bondage or Carthaginian service, and came back to
Sicily almost alone. Yet he could still gather a force which
enabled him to seize Segesta, to slay or enslave the whole
population, and to settle the city with new inhabitants. This
change amounts to the extinction of one of the elements in the
old population of Sicily. We hear no more of Elymi; indeed
Segesta has been practically Greek long before this. Deinocrates
and Agathocles came to a kind of partnership in 304, and a peace
with Carthage, with the old boundary, secured Agathocles in
the possession of Syracuse and eastern Sicily (301).
At some stage of his African campaigns Agathocles had
taken the title of king. Earlier tyrants were well pleased to
be spoken of as kings; but no earlier rulers of Sicily put either
their heads or their names on the coin. Agathocles now put his
name, first without, and then with, the kingly title, though
never his own likeness — Hiero II. was the first to do this. This
was in imitation of the Macedonian leaders who divided the
dominion of Alexander. The relations between the eastern
and western Greek worlds are drawing closer. Agathocles in
his old age took a wife of the house of Ptolemy; he gave his
daughter Lanassa to Pyrrhus, and established his power east of
Hadria, as the first Sicilian ruler of Corcyra. Alike more daring
and more cruel than any ruler before him, he made the island
the seat of a greater power than any of them.
On the death of Agathocles tyrants sprang up in various
cities. Acragas, under its king Phintias, won back for the
Period moment somewhat of its old greatness. By a new
after depopulation of Gela, he founded the youngest of
Agatho- Siceliot cities, Phintias, by the mouth of the southern
des. Himera. And Hellas was cut short by the seizure
of Messana by the disbanded Campanian mercenaries of
Agathocles (c. 282), who proclaimed themselves a new people in
a new city by the name of Mamertines, children of Mamers or
Mars. Messana became an Italian town — " Mamertina civitas."
The Campanian occupation of Messana is the first of the
chain of events which led to the Roman dominion in Sicily. As
Pvrrhus ye' R°me nas hardly been mentioned in Sicilian story.
The Mamertine settlement, the war with Pyrrhus,
bring us on quickly. Pyrrhus (q.v.) came as the champion of
the western Greeks against all barbarians, whether Romans
in Italy or Carthaginians in Sicily. His Sicilian war (278-276)'
was a mere interlude between the two acts of his war with Rome.
As son-in-law of Agathocles, he claimed to be specially king
of Sicily, and he held the Sicilian conquest of Corcyra as the
dowry of Lanassa. With such a deliverer, deliverance meant
submission. Pyrrhus is said to have dreamed of kingdoms of
Sicily and of Italy for his two sons, the grandsons of Agathocles,
and he himself reigned for two years in Sicily as a king who came
to be no less hated than the tyrants. Still as Hellenic champion
in Sicily he has no peer.
The Greek king, on his way back to fight for Tarentum against
Rome, had to cut his way through Carthaginians and Mamertines
1 For the ensuing years cf. ROME: History, II. "The Republic."
in Roman alliance. His saying that he left Sicily as a wrestling-
ground for Romans and Carthaginians was the very truth of the
matter. Very soon came the first war between Rome and
Carthage (the " First Punic War "). It mattered much, now
that Sicily was to have a barbarian master, whether that
master should be the kindred barbarian of Europe or the bar-
barian of Asia transplanted to the shore of Africa.
Sicily in truth never had a more hopeful champion than
Hiero II. of Syracuse. The established rule of Carthage in
western Sicily was now something that could well be tHentti
endured alongside of the robber commonwealth at
Messana. The dominion of the freebooters was spreading.
Besides the whole north-eastern corner of the island, it reached
inland to Agyrium and Centoripa. The Mamertines leagued
with other Campanian freebooters who had forsaken the service
of Rome to establish themselves at Rhegium. But a new
Syracusan power was growing up to meet them. Hiero, claiming
descent from Gelo, pressed the Mamertines hard. He all but
drove them to the surrender of Messana; he even helped Rome
to chastise her own rebels at Rhegium. The wrestling-ground
was thus opened for the two barbarian commonwealths. Car-
thaginian troops held the Messanian citadel against Hiero,
while another party in Messana craved the help of the head of
Italy. Rome, chastiser of the freebooters of Rhegium, saw
Italian brethren in the freebooters of Messana.
The exploits of Hiero had already won him the kingly title
(270) at Syracuse, and he was the representative of Hellenic life
and independence throughout the island. Partly in this char-
acter, partly as direct sovereign, he was virtual ruler of a large
part of eastern Sicily. But he could not aspire to the dominion
of earlier Syracusan rulers. The advance of Rome after the
retreat of Pyrrhus kept the new king from all hope of their
Italian position. And presently the new kingdom exchanged
independence for safety. When Rome entered Sicily as the
ally of the Mamertines, Hiero became the ally of Carthage. But
in the second year of the war (263) he found it needful to change
sides. His alliance with Rome marks a great epoch in the
history of the Greek nation. The kingdom of Hiero was the
first-fruits out of Italy of the system by which alliance with
Rome grew into subjection to Rome. He was the first of
Rome's kingly vassals. His only burthen was to give help to
the Roman side in war; within his kingdom he was free, and
his dominions flourished as no part of Sicily had flourished
since the days of Timoleon.
During the twenty-three years of the First Punic War (264-
241) the rest of the island suffered greatly. The war for Sicily
was fought in and round Sicily, and the Sicilian cities
were taken and retaken by the contending powers
(see PUNIC WARS). The highest calling of the Greek
had now, in the western lands, passed to the Roman.
By the treaty which ended the war in 241 Carthage ceded to
Rome all her possessions in Sicily. As that part of the island
which kept a national Greek government became the
first kingdom dependent on Rome, so the share of BiC<
Carthage became the first Roman province. Messana
alone remained an Italian ally of Rome on Sicilian soil.
We have no picture of Sicily in the first period of Roman
rule. One hundred and seventy years later, several towns
within the original province enjoyed various degrees of freedom,
which they had doubtless kept from the beginning. Panormus,
Segesta, with Centoripa, Halesa and Halikye, once Sicel but now
Hellenized, kept the position of free cities (liberae et immunes,
Cic. Verr. iii. 6). The rest paid tithe to the Roman people as
landlord. The province was ruled by a praetor sent yearly
from Rome. It formed, as it had even from the Carthaginian
period, a closed customs district. Within the Roman province
the new state of things called forth much discontent; but
Hiero remained the faithful ally of Rome through a long life.
On his death (216) and the accession of his grandson Hieronymus,
his dynasty was swept away by the last revolution of Greek
Syracuse. The result was revolt against Rome, the great siege
and capture of the city, the addition of Hiero's kingdom to the
war.
SICILY
Roman province. Two towns only, besides Messana, which
had taken the Roman side, Tauromenium and Netos, were
admitted to the full privileges of Roman alliance. Tauromenium
indeed was more highly favoured than Messana. Rome had a
right to demand ships of Messana, but not of Tauromenium.
Some towns were destroyed; the people of Henna were
massacred. Acragas, again held for Carthage, was for four
years (214-210) the centre of an active campaign. The story
of Acragas ended in plunder, slaughter and slavery; three
years later, the story of Agrigentum began.
The reign of Hiero was the last time of independent Greek
culture in Sicily. His time marks the growth of a new form of
local Sicilian genius. The spread of Hellenic culture among the
Sicels had in return made a Greek home for many Sicel beliefs,
traditions and customs. Bucolic poetry is the native growth of
Sicily; in the hands of Theocritus it grew out of the germs
supplied by Epicharmus and Sophron into a distinct and finished
form of the art. The poet, himself of Syracuse, went to and fro
between the courts of Hiero and Ptolemy Philadelphus; but his
poetry is essentially Sicilian. So is that of his successors,
both the Syracusan Moschus and Bion of Smyrna, who came
to Sicily as to his natural school.
With the incorporation of the kingdom of Hiero into the
Roman province independent Sicilian history comes to an
end for many ages. In one part of the island the
SRomaa Roman people stepped into the position of Carthage, in
another part into that of King Hiero. The allied cities
kept their several terms of alliance; the free cities kept their
freedom; elsewhere the land paid to the Roman people, accord-
ing to the law of Hiero, the tithe which it had paid to Hiero.
But, as the tithe was let out to publicani, oppression was easy.
The praetor, after the occupation of Syracuse, dwelled there in
the palace of Hiero, as in the capital of the island. But, as a
survival of the earlier state of things, one of his two quaestors
was quartered at Eryx, the other being in attendance on himself.
Under the supreme dominion of Rome even the unprivileged
cities kept their own laws, magistrates and assemblies, provision
being made for suits between Romans and Sicilians and between
Sicilians of different cities (Verr. ii. 16). In Latin the one name
Siculi takes in all the inhabitants of the island; no distinction
is drawn between Greek and Sicel, or even between Greek and
Phoenician cities. It is assumed that all Siculi are Greeks (Verr.
ii. 3, 29, 49, 52, 65; iii. 37, 40, 73). Even in Greek, 2tKeXoi is
now sometimes used instead of Si/ceXuoroi. All the persons
spoken of by Cicero have Greek names save — a most speaking
exception — Gaius Heius of Mamertina civitas. Inscriptions too
from Sicel and Phoenician cities are commonly Greek, even when
they commemorate men with Phoenician names, coupled perhaps
with Greek surnames. The process of Hellenization which had
been so long going on had at last made Sicily thoroughly Greek.
Roman conquest itself, which everywhere carried a Greek
element with it, would help this result. The corn of the fertile
island was said even then to feed the Roman people. It was this
character of Sicily which led to its one frightful piece of local
history. The wars of Rome, and the systematic piracy
and kidnapping that followed them, filled the Mediter-
ranean lands with slaves of all nations. Sicily stood
out before the rest as the first land to be tilled by slave-gangs,
on the estates both of rich natives and of Roman settlers. It
became the granary of Rome and the free population naturally
degenerated and died out. The slaves were most harshly treated,
and even encouraged by their masters to rob. The land was
full of disorder, and the praetors shrank from enforcing the law
against offenders, many of whom, as Roman knights, might be
their own judges. Of these causes came the two great slave-
revolts of the second half of the 2nd century B.C. The first lasted
from 134 to 132, the time of Tiberius Gracchus and the fall of
Numantia. Enna and Tauromenium were the headquarters of
the revolt. The second (the centre of which was Triocala, the
modern S. Anna, 9 m. N.E. of Sciacca) lasted from 102 to 99,
the time of the Cimbrian invasion. At other times the power of
Rome might have quelled the revolt more speedily.
Slave
revolts.
The slave wars were not the only scourge that fell on Sicily.
The pirates troubled the coast, and all other evils were out-
done by the three years' government of Verres (73-70 Later
B.C.). Besides the light which the great impeachment Roman
throws on the state of the island, his administration rule la
seems really to have dealt a lasting blow to its Sicily.
prosperity. The slave wars had not directly touched the great
cities; Verres plundered and impoverished everywhere, re-
moving anything of value, especially works of art, that took his
fancy, and there is hardly a city that had not to complain of
what it suffered at his hands. Another blow was the occupation
of Messana by Sextus Pompeius in 43 B.C. He was master of
Sicily for seven years, and during this period the corn supply of
Rome was seriously affected, while Strabo (vi. 2, 4) attributed
to this war the decayed state of several cities. To undo this
mischief Augustus planted Roman colonies at Palermo, Syracuse,
Tauromenium, Thermae, Tyndaris and Catana. The island
thus received another Italian infusion; but, as elsewhere, Latin
in no way displaced Greek; it was simply set up alongside of it
for certain purposes. Roman tastes now came in; Roman
buildings, especially amphitheatres, arose. The Mamertines
were Roman citizens, and Netum, Centuripae and Segesta had
become Latin, perhaps by a grant of Caesar himself, but in any
case before the concession of Latin rights to the rest of Sicily;
this was followed by M. Antonius's grant of full citizenship to
the whole island. But Sicily never became thoroughly Roman;
no roads were constructed, so that not a single Roman milestone
has been found in the whole island. In the division of provinces
between Augustus and the senate, Sicily fell to the latter. Under
the empire it has practically no history. Few emperors visited
Sicily; Hadrian was there, as everywhere, in A.D. 126, and
ascended Etna, and Julian also (C.D. 10). In its provincial
state Sicily fell back more than some other provinces. Ausonius
could still reckon Catana and fourfold Syracuse (" quadruplices
Syracusas ") among the noble cities; but Sicily is not, like
Gaul, rich in relics of later Roman life, and it is now Egypt
rather than Sicily that feeds Rome. The island has no internal
history beyond a very characteristic fact, a third revolt of slaves
and bandits, which was quelled with difficulty in the days of
Gallienus. External history there could be none in the central
island, with no frontier open to Germans or Persians. There
was a single Prankish attack under Probus (276-282). In the
division of Constantine, when the word " province " had lost its
meaning, when Italy itself was mapped out into provinces,
Sicily became one of these last. Along with Africa, Raetia and
western Illyricum, it became part of the Italian praefecture;
along with the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, it became part of
the Italian diocese. It was now ruled by a corrector, afterwards
by a consular under the authority of the vicar of the Roman
city (Not. Imp. 14, 5).
Sicilian history began again when the wandering of the
nations planted new powers, not on the frontier of the empire,
but at its heart. The powers between which Sicily
now passed to and fro were Teutonic powers. The masters
earlier stages of Teutonic advance could not touch
Sicily. Alaric thought of a Sicilian expedition, but a storm
hindered him. Sicily was to be reached only by a Teutonic
power which made its way through Gaul, Spain and Africa. The
Vandal now dwelt at Carthage instead of the Canaanite. Gaiseric
(429-477) subdued the great islands for which Roman and
Phoenician had striven. Along with Sardinia, Corsica and
the Balearic Isles, Sicily was again a possession of a naval power
at Carthage. Gaiseric made a treaty with Odoacer almost like
that which ended the First Punic War. He gave up (Victor
Vitensis i. 4) the island on condition of a tribute, which was
hardly paid by Theodoric. Sicily was now ruled by a Gothic
count, and the Goths claimed to have treated the land with
special tenderness (Procopius, Bell. Goth. iii. 16). The island,
like the rest of Theodoric's dominions, was certainly well looked
after by the great king and his minister; yet we hear darkly of
disaffection to Gothic rule (Cass. Var. i. 3). Theodoric gave
back Lilybaeum to the Vandal king Thrasamund as the dowry
SICILY
of his sister Analafrida (Proc. Bell. Vand. i. 8). Yet Lilybaeum
was a Gothic possession when Belisarius, conqueror of Africa,
demanded it in vain as part of the Vandal possessions (Proc.
Bell. Vand. ii. 5; Bell. Goth. i. 3). In the Gothic war Sicily
was the first land to be recovered for the empire, and that with
the good will of its people (535). Panormus alone was stoutly
defended by its Gothic garrison. In 550 Totila took some
fortresses, but the great cities all withstood him, and the Goths
were driven out the next year.
Sicily was thus won back to the Roman dominion. Belisarius
Sicily was Pyrrhus and Marcellus in one. For 430 years
under the some part of Sicily, for 282 years the whole of it,
Eastern again remained a Roman province. To the Gothic
Empire. count again succeeded, under Justinian, a Roman
praetor, in Greek orpariiyos. That was the official title;
we often hear of a patrician of Sicily, but patrician (q.v.)
was in strictness a personal rank. In the later mapping out of
the empire into purely military divisions, the theme (0eyua) of
Sicily took in both the island and the nearest peninsula of the
mainland, the oldest Italy. The island itself was divided for
financial purposes, almost as in the older times, into the two
divisions of Syracuse and Lilybaeum. The revolutions of Italy
hardly touched a land which looked steadily to the eastern Rome
as its head. The Lombard and Prankish masters of the peninsula
never fixed themselves in the island. When the Frank took
the imperial crown of the west, Sicily still kept its allegiance to
the Augustus who reigned at Constantinople, and was only
torn away piecemeal from the empire by the next race of
conquerors.
This connexion of Sicily with the eastern division of the
empire no doubt largely helped to keep up Greek life in the
Efcksi- island. This was of course strengthened by union with
astical a power which had already a Greek side, and where the
relations Greek side soon became dominant. Still the connexion
with Italy. ^^ Italy was close, especially the ecclesiastical
connexion. Some things tend to make Sicily look less Greek
than it really was. The great source of our knowledge of
Sicily in the century which followed the reconquest by Beli-
sarius is the Letters of Pope Gregory the Great, and they naturally
show the most Latin side of things. The merely official use of
Latin was, it must be remembered, common to Sicily with
Constantinople. Gregory's Letters are largely occupied with the
affairs of the great Sicilian estates held by the Roman church,
as by the churches of Milan and Ravenna. But they deal with
many other matters. Saint Paul's visit to Syracuse naturally
gave rise to many legends; but the Christian church undoubtedly
took early root in Sicily. We hear of Manichaeans (C.D. 163);
Jews were plentiful, and Gregory causes compensation to be
made for the unlawful destruction of synagogues. Many
Christian catacombs and Byzantine rock-cut villages, churches
and tombs have been explored of recent years. See the compre-
hensive work by the late J. Fiihrer and V. Schultze, " Die
altchristlichen Grabstatte Siziliens " (Berlin, 1907, Jahrbuch
des K.D. archdologischen Insiiluts, Erganzungsheft vii.): and
several articles by P. Orsi in the Notizie degli scavi, and in
Byzantinische Zeitschrift (1898, i; 1899, 613). Of paganism
we find no trace, save that pagan slaves, doubtless not natives
of the island, were held by Jews (C.D. 127). Herein is a contrast
between Sicily and Sardinia, where, according to a letter from
Gregory to the empress Constantina, wife of the emperor
Maurice (594-595), praying for a lightening of taxation in both
islands, paganism still lingered (C.D. 121). Sicily belonged to
77 829 tne Latin patriarchate; but we already (C.D. 103)
see glimmerings of the coming disputes between the
Eastern and Western Churches. Things were changed when
Leo the Isaurian confiscated the Sicilian and Calabrian estates
of the Roman Church (Theoph. i. 631).
In the gth, loth and nth centuries the old drama of Sicily
was acted again. The island is again disputed between Europe
and Asia, transplanted to Africa between Greek and Semitic
dwellers on her own soil. Panormus and Syracuse are again
the headquarters of races and creeds, of creeds yet more than
Saracen
conquest.
of races. The older religious differences were small compared
with the strife for life and death between Christendom and
Islam. Gregory and Mahomet were contemporaries,
and, though Saracen occupation did not begin in Early
Sicily till more than two centuries after Gregory's inroads.
death, Saracen inroads began much sooner. In
655 (Theoph. i. 532) part of Sicily was plundered, and its
inhabitants carried to Damascus. Then came the strange
episode of the visit of Constans II. (641-668), the first emperor,
it would seem, who had set foot in Sicily since Julian. After a
war with the Lombards, after twelve days' plunder of Rome,
he came on to Syracuse, where his oppressions led to his murder
in 668. Sicily now saw for the first time the setting up of a
tyrant in the later sense. Mezetius, commander of the Eastern
army of Constans, revolted, but Sicily and Roman Italy kept
their allegiance to the new emperor Constantine Pogonatus,
who came in person to destroy him. Then came another Saracen
inroad from Alexandria, in which Syracuse was sacked (Paul.
Diac. v. 13). Towards the end of the 8th century, though Sicily
itself was untouched, its patricians and their forces play a part
in the affairs of southern Italy as enemies of the Frankish power.
Charlemagne himself was believed (Theoph. i. 736) to have
designs on Sicily; but, when it came to Saracen invasion, the
sympathies of both pope and Caesar lay with the invaded
Christian land (Mon. Car. 323, 328).
In 813 a peace for ten years was made between the Saracens
and the patrician Gregory. A few years after it expired Saracen
settlement in the island began. About this time Crete
was seized by Spanish adventurers. But the first
Saracen settlers in Sicily were the African neighbours
of Sicily, and they were called to the work by a home treason.
The story has been tricked out with many romantic details
(Chron. Salem. 60, ap. Pertz, iii. 498; Theoph. Cent. ii. 272;
George Cedrenus, ii. 97); but it seems plain that Euphemius
or Euthymius of Syracuse, supported by his own citizens,
revolted against Michael the Stammerer (820-829), and, when
defeated by an imperial army, asked help of Ziyadet Allah, the
Aghlabite prince of Ifairawan, and offered to hold the island of
him. The struggle of 138 years now began. Euphemius, a
puppet emperor, was led about by his Saracen allies much as
earlier puppet emperors had been led about by Alaric and
Ataulf, till he was slain in one of the many sieges. The second
Semitic conquest of Sicily began in 827 at Mazzara on the old
border of Greek and Phoenician. The advance of the invaders
was slow. In two years all that was done was to occupy
Mazzara and Mineum — the old Menae cf Ducetius — strange
points certainly to begin with, and seemingly to destroy
Agrigentum, well used to destruction. Attacks on Syracuse
failed; so did attacks on Henna — Caslrum Ennae,
now changing into Caslrum Johannis (perhaps Kaorpo-
Lavvrj), Castrogiovanni. The actual gain was small; but the
invaders took seizin alike of the coast and of the island.
A far greater conquest followed when new invaders came from
Spain and when Theodotus was killed in 830. The next year
Panormus pased away for ever from Roman, for 230 years from
Christian, rule. Syracuse was for fifty years, not only, as of old,
the bulwark of Europe, but the bulwark of Christendom. By
the conquest of Panormus the Saracens were firmly rooted in
the island. It became the seat of the amir or lord of Sicily.
We hear dimly of treasonable dealings with them on the part
of the strategos Alexius, son-in-law of the emperor Theophilus;
but we see more clearly that Saracen advance was largely
hindered by dissensions between the African and the Spanish
settlers. In the end the Moslem conquests in Sicily became
an Aghlabite principality owning at best a formal superiority
in the princes of ijairawan. With the Saracen occupation
begins a new division of the island, which becomes convenient
in tracing the progress of Saracen conquest. This is into three
valleys, known in later forms of language as Val di Mazzara
or Mazza in the N.W., Val di Noto in the S.E. and Val
Demone (a name of uncertain origin) in the N.E. (see Amari,
Musulmani in Sicilia, i. 465). The first Saracen settlement
829-1060.
SICILY
of Val di Mazzara answers roughly to the old Carthaginian
possessions. From Panormus the amir or lord of Sicily,
Mahommed ibn Abdallah, sent forth his plunderers throughout
Sicily and even into southern Italy. There, however, they made
no lasting settlements.
The chief work of the next ten years was the conquest of the
Val di Noto, but the first great advance was made elsewhere.
In 843 the Saracens won the Mamertine city, Messana, and thus
stood in the path between Italy and Sicily. Then the work
of conquest, as described by the Arabic writers, went on, but
slowly. At last, in 859, the very centre of the island, the strong-
hold of Henna, was taken, and the main part of Val di Noto
followed. But the divisions among the Moslems helped the
Christians; they won back several towns, and beat off all
attacks on Syracuse and Tauromenium. It is strange that the
reign of Basil the Macedonian (867), a time of such renewed
vigour in the empire, was the time of the greatest of all losses
in Sicily. In Italy the imperial frontier largely advanced;
in Sicily imperial fleets threatened Panormus. But in 875 the
accession of Ibrahim ibn Ahmad in Africa changed the face of
things. The amir in Sicily, Ja'far ibn Ahmad, received strict
orders to act vigorously against the eastern towns. In 877
began the only successful Semitic siege of Syracuse. The next
year the city passed for the first time under the yoke of
strangers to the fellowship of Europe.
Thus in fifty-one years the imperial and Christian territory in
Sicily was cut down to a few points on or near the eastern coast,
to the Val Demone in short without Messana. But between
Moslem dissension and Christian valour the struggle had still
to be waged for eighty-seven years. Henna had been the chief
centre of Christian resistance a generation earlier; its place
was now taken by the small fort of Rametta not far from Messina.
The Moslems of Sicily were busy in civil wars; Arabs fought
against Berbers, both against the African overlord. In 900
Panormus had to be won by a son of Ibrahim from Moslem rebels
provoked by his father's cruelty. But when Ibrahim himself
came into Sicily, renewed efforts against the Christians led to the
first taking of Tauromenium (908), of Rametta and of other
points. The civil war that followed his death, the endless
revolutions of Agrigentum, where the weaker side did not scruple
to call in Christian help, hindered any real Saracen occupation
of eastern Sicily. The emperors never gave up their claims to
Sicily or their hopes of recovering it. Besides the struggle with
the Christians in the island, there was often direct warfare
between the empire and the Saracens; but such warfare was
more active in Italy than in Sicily. In 956 a peace or truce was
made by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. A few
years later, Otho the Great, the restorer of the Western empire,
looked to Sicily as a land to be won back for Christendom.
It had not yet wholly passed away; but the day soon came.
Strange to say, as Syracuse fell in the reign of Basil the Mace-
donian, the Saracen occupation was completed in the reign of
Nikephoros Phokas (Nicephorus Phocas), the deliverer of Crete.
In the year of his accession (963) Tauromenium was taken, and
became for a hundred years a Mahommedan possession. Rametta
was the last stronghold to fall (965).
Thus in 138 years the Arab did what the Canaanite had never
done. The whole island was a Semitic, that is a Mahommedan,
possession. Yet the complete Saracen possession of Sicily
may seem a thing of a moment. Its first and longest period
lasted only 73 years. In that time Mahommedan Sicily was
threatened by a Western emperor; the Arabic writers claim
Kecoa- tne Saracen army by which Otho II. was beaten back
quest by in 982 as a Sicilian army. A mightier enemy was
Eastern threatening in the East. Basil II. planned the recovery
Empire. of gjcjjy jn gOO(j earnest. In 1027 he sent a great army ;
but his death stopped their progress before they reached the
island. But the great conqueror had left behind him men
trained in his school, and eleven years later the eagles of the new
Rome again marched to Sicilian victories. The ravages of
the Sicilian Saracens in the Greek islands were more frightful
than ever, and George Maniaces, the first captain of his time,
la 1038.
was sent to win back the lost land. He too was helped by Saracen
dissensions. The amir Abul-afar became a Roman vassal, and,
like Alaric of old, became magister militum in the
Roman army. His brother and rival Abuhaf as brought
help from Africa; and finally all joined against the Christians.
Four years of Christian victory (1038-1042) followed. In the
host of Maniaces were men of all races — Normans, who had
already begun to show themselves in south Italy, and the
Varangian guard, the best soldiers of the empire, among whom
Harold Hardrada himself is said to have held a place. Town
after town was delivered, first Messana, then Syracuse, then a
crowd of others. The exact extent of the reconquest is uncertain ;
Byzantine writers claim the deliverance of the whole island;
but it is certain that the Saracens never lost Panormus. But
court influence spoiled everything: Maniaces was recalled;
under his successor Stephen, brother-in-law of the emperor
Michael, the Saracens won back what they had lost. Messana
alone held out, for how long a time is uncertain. But a con-
queror came who had no empresses to thwart him. In 1060
began the thirty years' work of the first Roger.
Thus for 263 years the Christian people of some part or other
of Sicily were in subjection to Moslem masters. But that
subjection differed widely in different times and places. gictty
The land was won bit by bit. One town was taken under
by storm; another submitted on terms harsher or Saracen
more favourable. The condition of the Christians ruje'
varied from that of personal slaves to that of communities
left free on the payment of tribute. The great mass were in the
intermediate state usual among the non-Mahommedan subjects
of a Mahommedan power. The dhimmi of Sicily were in
essentially the same case as the rayahs of the Turk. While
the conquest was going on, the towns that remained unconquered
gained in point of local freedom. They became allies rather
than subjects of the distant emperor. So did the tributary
districts, as long as the original terms were kept. But, as ever,
the condition of the subject race grew worse. After the complete
conquest of the island, while the mere slaves had turned Mahom-
medans, 'there is nothing more heard of tributary districts. At
the coming of the Normans the whole Christian population
was in the state of rayahs. Still Christianity and the Greek
tongue never died out; churches and monasteries received
and held property; there still are saints and scholars. It
would be rash to deny that traces of other dialects may not have
lingered on; but Greek and Arabic were the two written tongues
of Sicily when the Normans came. The Sicilian Saracens were
hindered by their internal feuds from ever becoming a great
power; but they stood high among Mahommedan nations.
Their advance in civilization is shown by their position
under the Normans, and above all by their admirable style
of architecture (see PALERMO). They had a literature which
Norman kings studied and promoted. The Normans in short
came into the inheritance of the two most civilized nations of
the time, and allowed them to flourish side by side.
The most brilliant time for Sicily as a power in the world
begins with the coming of the Normans. Never before or after
was the island so united or so independent. Some of
the old tyrants had ruled out of Sicily; none had
ruled over all Sicily. The Normans held all Sicily as
the centre of a dominion which stretched far beyond it. The
conquest was the work of one man, Count Roger of the
house of Hauteville (see ROGER I.). The conquests of the
Normans in Italy and Sicily form part of one enterprise; but
they altogether differ in character. In Italy they overthrew the
Byzantine dominion; their own rule was perhaps not worse,
but they were not deliverers. In Sicily they were welcomed
by the Christians as deliverers from infidel bondage.
As in the Saracen conquest of Sicily, as in the Byzantine
recovery, so in the Norman conquest, the immediate occasion was
given by a home traitor. Count Roger had already m ade {g6g Jg9g
a plundering attack, when Becumen of Catania, driven
out by his brother, urged him tb serious invasion. Messina was
taken in 1060, and became for a while the Norman capital. The
Norman
conquest.
SICILY
33
Christians everywhere welcomed the conqueror. But at Troina
they presently changed their minds, and joined with the Saracens
to besiege the count in their citadel. At Catania Becumen was
set up again as Roger's vassal, and he did good service till he
was killed. Roger soon began to fix his eye on the Saracen
capital. Against that city he had Pisan help, as the inscription
on the Pisan duomo witnesses (cf. Geoff. Mai. ii. 34). But
Palermo was not taken until 1071, and then only by the
help of Duke Robert, who kept the prize to himself. Still
its capture was the turning-point in the struggle. Taormina
(Tauromenium) was won in 1078. Syracuse, under its amir
Benarvet, held out stoutly. He retook Catania by the help
of a Saracen to whom Roger had trusted the city, and whom
he himself punished. Catania was won back by the count's
son Jordan. But progress was delayed by Jordan's rebellion
and by the absence of Roger in his brother's wars. In
1085 Syracuse was won. Next year followed Girgenti and
Castrogiovanni, whose chief became a Christian. Noto held
out till 1090. Then the whole island was won, and Roger
completed his conquest by a successful expedition to Malta.
Like the condition of the Greeks under the Saracens, so the
condition of the Saracens under the Normans differed in different
Saraceas places according to the circumstances of each conquest.
under The Mahommedan religion was everywhere tolerated,
Norman in many places much more. But it would seem that,
™/e> just as under the Moslem rule, conversions from
Christianity to Islam were forbidden. On the other hand,
conversions from Islam to Christianity were not always en-
couraged; Saracen troops were employed from the beginning,
and Count Roger seems to have thought them more trustworthy
when unconverted. At Palermo the capitulation secured to
the Saracens the full enjoyment of their own laws; Girgenti
was long mainly Saracen; in Val di Noto the Saracens kept
towns and castles of their own. On the other hand, at Messina
there were few or none, and we hear of both Saracen and Greek
villeins, the latter doubtless abiding as they were in Saracen
times. But men of both races were trusted and favoured accord-
ing to their deserts. The ecclesiastical relations between Greeks
and Latins are harder to trace. At the taking of Palermo the
Greek bishop was restored; but his successors were Latins, and
Latin prelates were placed in the bishoprics which Count Roger
founded. Urban II. visited Sicily to promote the union of the
church, and he granted to the count those special ecclesiastical
powers held by the counts and kings of Sicily as hereditary
legates of the Holy See which grew into the famous Sicilian
monarchy (Geoff. Mai. iv. 29). But Greek worship went on; at
Messina it lingered till the i$th century (Pirro, Sicilia sacra,
i. 420, 431, 449), as it has been since brought back by the
Albanian colonists. But the Greeks of Sicily have long been
united Greeks, admitting the authority of the see of Rome.
In its results the Norman conquest of Sicily was a Latin
conquest far more thorough than that which had been made
by the Roman commonwealth. The Norman princes
Linguistic protected all the races, creeds and tongues of the
island, Greek, Saracen and Jew. But new races came
to settle alongside of them, all of whom were Latin
as far as their official speech was concerned. The Normans
brought the French tongue with them; it remained the
court speech during the i2th century, and Sicily was thrown
open to all speakers of French, many of whom came from
England. There was constant intercourse between the two
great islands, both ruled by Norman kings, and many natives of
England filled high places in Sicily. But French was only a
language of society, not of business or literature. The languages
of inscriptions and documents are Greek, Arabic and Latin, in
private writings sometimes Hebrew. The kings understood
Greek and Arabic, and their deeds and works were commemorated
in both tongues. Hence'Comes the fact, at first sight so strange,
that Greek, Arabic and French have all given way to a dialect
of Italian. But the cause is not far to seek. The Norman
conquest opened Sicily to settlers from Italy, above all from
the Norman possessions in Italy. Under the name of Lombards,
XXV. 2
elements
In Sicily.
they became an important, in some parts a dominant, element.
Thus at Messina, where we hear nothing of Saracens, we hear
much of the disputes between Greeks and Lombards. The
Lombards had hardly a distinct language to bring with them.
At the time of the conquest, it was already found out that French
had become a distinct speech from Latin; Italian hardly was
such. The Lombard element, during the Norman reign, shows
itself, not in whole documents or inscriptions, but in occasional
words and forms, as in some of the mosaics at Monreale. And,
if any element, Latin or akin to Latin, had lingered on through
Byzantine and Saracen rule, it would of course be attracted to
the new Latin element, and would help to strengthen it. It
was this Lombard element that had the future before it. Greek
and Arabic were antiquated, or at least isolated, in a land which
Norman conquest had made part of western Europe and Latin
Christendom. They could grow only within the island; they
could gain no strength from outside. Even the French element
was in some sort isolated, and later events made it more so. But
the Lombard element was constantly strengthened by settlement
from outside. In the older Latin conquest, the Latin carried
Greek with him, and the Greek element absorbed the Latin.
Latin now held in western Europe the place which Greek had
held there. Thus, in the face of Italian, both Greek and Arabic
died out. Step by step, Christian Sicily became Latin in speech
and in worship. But this was not till the Norman reigns were
over. Till the end of the i2th century Sicily was the one land
where men of divers creeds and tongues could live side by side.
Hence came both the short-lived brilliancy of Sicily and its
later decay. In Sicily there were many nations all protected
by the Sicilian king; but there was no Sicilian nation. Greek,
Saracen, Norman, Lombard and Jew could not be fused into
one people; it was the boast of Sicily that each kept his laws
and tongue undisturbed. Such a state of things could live on
only under an enlightened despotism; the discordant elements
could not join to work out really free and national institutions.
Sicily had parliaments, and some constitutional principles
were well understood. But they were assemblies of barons,
or at most of barons and citizens; they could only have repre-
sented the Latin elements, Norman and Lombard, in the island.
The elder races, Greek and Saracen, stand outside the relations
between the Latin king and his Latin subjects. Still, as long
as Greek and Saracen were protected and favoured, so long
was Sicily the most brilliant of European kingdoms. But its
greatness had no groundwork of national life; for lack of it
the most brilliant of kingdoms presently sank below the level
of other lands.
Four generations only span the time from the birth of Count
Roger, about 1030, to the death of the emperor Frederick II.
in 1250. Roger, great count of Sicily, was, at his
death in 1101, succeeded by his young son Simon,
and he in 1105 by the second Roger, the first king. He inherited
all Sicily, save half Palermo — the other half had been given up —
and part of Calabria. The rest of Palermo was soon granted;
the Semitic capital became the abiding head of Sicily. On the
death of his cousin Duke William of Apulia, Roger gradually
founded (1127-1140) a great Italian dominion. To the Apulian
duchy he added (1136) the Norman principality of Capua,
Naples (1138), the last dependency of the Eastern empire in
Italy, and (1140) the Abruzzi, an undoubted land of the Western
empire. He thus formed a dominion which has been divided,
united and handed over from one prince to another oftener than
any other state in Europe, but whose frontier has hardly changed
at all. In 1130 Roger was crowned at Palermo, by authority
of the antipope Anacletus, taking the strange title of " king of
Sicily and Italy." This, on his reconciliation with Pope Innocent
II., he exchanged for " king of Sicily and of the duchy of Apulia
and of the principality of Capua." By virtue of the old relations
between the popes and the Normans of Apulia, he held bis
kingdom in fief of the Holy See, a position which on the whole
strengthened the royal power. But his power, like that of
Dionysius and Agathocles, was felt in more distant regions.
His admiral George of Antioch, Greek by birth and creed, warred
34
SICILY
Tancred.
against the Eastern empire, won Corfu (Korypho; the name of
Korkyra is forgotten) for a season, and carried off the silk-workers
from Thebes and Peloponnesus to Sicily. But Manuel Comnenus
ruled in the East, and, if Roger threatened Constantinople,
Manuel threatened Sicily. In Africa the work of Agathocles was
more than renewed; Mahdia and other points were won and kept
as long as Roger lived. These exploits won him the name of
the " terror of Greeks and Saracens." To the Greeks, and still
more to the Saracens, of his own island he was a protector and
something more. His love for mathematical science, geography,
&c., in which the Arabs excelled, is noteworthy.
Roger's son William, surnamed the Bad, was crowned in his
father's lifetime in 1151. Roger died in 1154, and William's
sole reign lasted till 1 166. It was a time of domestic re-
rrtlltatn /. i • n • i i • » i I •
anil u. Demons, chiefly against the king s unpopular ministers,
and it is further marked by the loss of Roger's African
conquests. After William the Bad came (1166-1189) ms son
William the Good. Unlike as were the two men in themselves,
in their foreign policy they are hardly to be distinguished. The
Bad William has a short quarrel with the pope; otherwise
Bad and Good alike appear as zealous supporters of Alexander
III. and as enemies of both empires. The Eastern warfare of the
Good is stained by the frightful sack of Thessalonica; it is
marked also by the formation of an Eastern state under Sicilian
supremacy (1186). Corfu, the possession of Agathocles and
Roger, with Durazzo, Cephalonia and Zante, was granted by
William to his admiral Margarito with the strange title of king
of the Epeirots. He founded a dynasty, though not of kings,
in Cephalonia and Zante. Corfu and Durazzo were to be more
closely connected with the Sicilian crown.
The brightest days of Sicily ended with William the Good.
His marriage with Joanna, daughter of Henry of Anjou and
England, was childless, and William tried to procure
the succession of his aunt Constance and her husband,
King Henry VI. of Germany, son of the emperor Frederick I.
But the prospect of German rule was unpopular, and on William's
death the crown passed to Tancred, an illegitimate grandson
of King Roger, who figures in English histories in the story of
Richard III.'s crusade. In 1191 Henry, now emperor, asserted
his claims; but, while Tancred lived, he did little, in Sicily
nothing, to enforce them. On the death of Tancred (1194)
and the accession of his young son William III., the emperor
came and conquered Sicily and the Italian possessions, with
an amount of cruelty which outdid any earlier war or
revolution. First of four Western emperors who wore
the Sicilian crown, Henry died in 1197, leaving the
kingdom to his young son Frederick, heir of the Norman kings
through his mother.
The great days of the Norman conquest and the Norman
reigns have been worthily recorded by contemporary historians.
For few times have we richer materials. The oldest is Aime
or Amato of Monte Cassino, who exists only in an Old-French
translation. We have also for the Norman conquest the halting
hexameters of William of Apulia, and for the German conquest
the lively and partial verses of Peter of Eboli.1 Of prose writers
we have Geoffrey Malaterra, Alexander abbot of Telesia, Romuald
archbishop of Salerno, Falco of Benevento, and above all Hugo
Falcandus, one of the very foremost of medieval writers. Not
one of these Latin writers was a native of the island, and we have
no record from any native Greek. Occasional notices we of
course have in the Byzantine writers, and Archbishop Eustathius's
account of the taking of Thessalonica is more than occasional.
And the close connexion between Sicily and England leads to
many occasional references to Sicilian matters in English writers.
The relations between the various races of the islands are most
instructive. The strong rule of Roger kept all in order. He
called himself the defender of Christians; others, on account
of his favour to the Saracens, spoke of him as a pagan. He
certainly encouraged Saracen art and literature in every shape.
1 Petri Ansplini de Ebtilo de rebus Siculis carmen (republished in
the new edition of Muratori's Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, by
E. Rota, torn, xxxi., Citta di Castello, 1904).
'
His court was full of eunuchs, of whom we hear still more under
William the Bad. Under William the Good the Saracens,
without any actual oppression, seem to be losing their position.
Hitherto they had been one element in the land, keeping their
own civilization alongside of others. By a general outbreak
on the death of William the Good, the Saracens, especially those
of Palermo, were driven to take shelter in the mountains, where
they sank into a wild people, sometimes holding points of the
island against all rulers, sometimes taking military service under
them. The Jews too begin to sink into bondmen. Sicily is
ceasing to be the land of many nations living side by side on
equal terms.
The Germans who helped Henry to win the Sicilian crown
did not become a new element in the island, but only a source
of confusion during the minority of his son. Frederick
— presently to be the renowned emperor Frederick II., BmPer°r
.... .,.,.„' Frederick
Fndencus stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis — u
was crowned at Palermo in 1198; but the child,
deprived of both parents, was held to be under the protection
of his lord Pope Innocent III. During his minority the land was
torn in pieces by turbulent nobles, revolted Saracens, German
captains seeking settlements, the maritime cities of Italy, and
professed French deliverers. In 1210 the emperor Otto IV.,
who had overrun the continental dominions, threatened the
island. In 1212, just when Frederick was reaching an age to be
of use in his own kingdom, he was called away to dispute the
crown of Germany and Rome with Otto. Eight years more of
disorder followed; in 1220 the emperor-king came back. He
brought the Saracens of the mountains back again to a life in
plains and cities, and presently planted a colony of them on the
mainland at Nocera, when they became his most trusty soldiers.
His necessary absences from Sicily led to revolts. He came back
in 1 233 from his crusade to suppress a revolt of the eastern '
cities, which seem to have been aiming at republican indepen-
dence. A Saracen revolt in 1243 is said to have been followed
by a removal of the whole remnant to Nocera. Some, however,
certainly stayed or came back; but their day was over.
Under Frederick the Italian or Lombard element finally
prevailed in Sicily. Of all his kingdoms Sicily was the
best-beloved. He spoke all its tongues; he protected,
as far as circumstances would allow, all its races. The
heretic alone was persecuted; he was the domestic rebel
of the church; Saracen and Jew were entitled to the rights
of foreigners. Yet Frederick, patron of Arabic learning, sus-
pected even of Moslem belief, failed to check the decline of the
Saracen element in Sicily. The Greek element had no such
forces brought against it. It was still a chief tongue of the island,
in which Frederick's laws were put forth as well as in Latin.
But it was clearly a declining element. Greek and Saracen were
both becoming survivals in an island which was but one of the
many kingdoms of its king. The Italian element advanced at
the cost of all others. Frederick chose it as the court speech
of Sicily, and he made it the speech of a new-born literature.
Sicily, strangely enough, became the cradle of Italian song.
Two emperors had now held the Sicilian crown. On
Frederick's death in 1250 the crown passed to his son Conrad,
not emperor indeed, but king of the Romans. He was
nominally succeeded by his son Conradin. The real
ruler under both was Frederick's natural son Manfred. In 1258,
on a false rumour of the death of Conradin, Manfred was himself
crowned king of Palermo. He had to found the kingdom afresh.
Pope Innocent IV. had crossed into Sicily, to take advantage
of the general discontent. The cities, whose growing liberties
had been checked by Frederick's legislation, strove for practical,
if not formal, independence, sometimes for dominion over their
fellows. The 5th century B.C. seemed to have come back.
Messina laid waste the lands of Taormina, because Taormina
would not obey the bidding of Messina. Yet, among these and
other elements of confusion, Manfred succeeded in setting up
again the kingly power, first for his kinsmen and then for himself.
His reign continued that of his father, so far as a mere king
could continue the reign of such an emperor. The king of Sicily
Maatred.
SICILY
35
was the first potentate of Italy, and came nearer than any prince
since Louis II. to the union of Italy under Italian rule. He
sought dominion too beyond the Adriatic: Corfu, Durazzo, and
a strip of the Albanian coast became Sicilian possessions as the
dowry of Manfred's Greek wife. But papal enmity was too
much for him. His overlord claimed to dispose of his crown,
and hawked it about among the princes of the West. Edmund
of England bore the Sicilian title for a moment. More came of
the grant of Urban IV. (1264) to Charles, count of Anjou, and
through his wife sovereign count of Provence. Charles,
Charles of ju • u j * * i
Aoiou crowned by the pope m 1266, marched to take posses-
sion of his lord's grant. Manfred was defeated and
slain at Benevento. The whole Sicilian kingdom became the
spoil of a stranger who was no deliverer to any class of its people.
The island sank yet lower. Naples, not Palermo, was the head
of the new power; Sicily was again a province. But a province
Sicily had no mind to be. In the continental lands Charles
founded a dynasty; the island he lost after sixteen years. His
rule was not merely the rule of a stranger king surrounded by
stranger followers; the degradation of the island was aggravated
by gross oppression, grosser than in the continental lands. The
continental lands submitted, with a few slight efforts at resist-
ance. The final result of the Angevin conquest of Sicily was its
separation from the mainland.
Sicilian feeling was first shown in the support given to the
luckless expedition of Conradin in 1268. Frightful executions
in the island followed his fall. The rights of the Swabian house
were now held to pass to Peter (Pedro), king of Aragon, husband
of Manfred's daughter Constance. The connexion with Spain,
which has so deeply affected the whole later history of Sicily,
now begins. Charles held the Greek possessions of Manfred
and had designs both on Epeiros and on Constantinople. The
emperor Michael Palaeologus and Peter of Aragon became allies
against Charles; the famous John of Procida acted as an agent
between them; the costs of Charles's eastern warfare caused
great discontent, especially in an island where some might still
look to the Greek emperor as a natural deliverer. Peter and
Michael were doubtless watching the turn of things in Sicily;
but the tale of a long-hidden conspiracy between them and the
whole Sicilian people has been set aside by Amari. The actual
outbreak of 1282, the famous Sicilian Vespers, was stirred up by
the wrongs of the moment. A gross case of insult offered by a
Frenchman to a Sicilian woman led to the massacre at Palermo,
and the like scenes followed elsewhere. The strangers were cut
off; Sicily was left to its own people. The towns and districts
left without a ruler by no means designed to throw off the
authority of the overlord; they sought the good will of Pope
Martin. But papal interests were on the side of Charles; and
he went forth with the blessing of the church to win back his
lost kingdom.
Angevin oppression had brought together all Sicily in a
common cause. There was at last a Sicilian nation, a nation
for a while capable of great deeds. Sicily now stands out as a
main centre of European politics. But the land has lost its
character; it is becoming the plaything of powers, instead of
the meeting-place of nations. The tale, true or false, that
Frenchmen and Provencals were known from the natives by
being unable to frame the Italian sound of c shows how
thoroughly the Lombard tongue had overcome the other tongues
of the island. In Palermo, once city of threefold speech, a Greek,
a Saracen, a Norman who spoke his own tongue must have died
with the strangers.
Charles was now besieging Messina; Sicily seems to have
put on some approach to the form of a federal commonwealth.
Meanwhile Peter of Aragon was watching and pre-
Aragon. paring. He now declared himself. 'To all, except
the citizens of the great cities, a king would be accept-
able; Peter was chosen with little opposition in a parliament at
Palermo, and a struggle of twenty-one years began, of which
Charles and Peter saw only the first stage. In fact, after Peter
had helped the Sicilians to relieve Messina, he was very little
in Sicily; he had to defend his kingdom of Aragon, which Pope
Martin had granted to another French Charles. He was repre-
sented by Queen Constance, and his great admiral Roger de
Loria kept the war away from Sicily, waging it wholly in Italy,
and making Charles, the son of King Charles, prisoner. In 1285
both the rival kings died. Charles had before his death been
driven to make large legislative concessions to his subjects to
stop the tendency shown, especially in Naples, to join the
revolted Sicilians. By Peter's death Aragon and Sicily were
separated; his eldest son Alphonso took Aragon, and his second
son James took Sicily, which was to pass to the third james
son Frederick, if James died childless. James was
crowned, and held his reforming parliament also. With the
popes no terms could be made. Charles, released in 1 288 under
a deceptive negotiation, was crowned king of Sicily by Honorius
IV.; but he had much ado to defend his continental dominions
against James and Roger. In 1291 James succeeded Alphonso
in the kingdom of Aragon, and left Frederick not king, according
to the entail, but only his lieutenant in Sicily.
Frederick was the real restorer of Sicilian independence. He
had come to the island so young that he felt as a native. He
defended the land stoutly, even against his brother.
For James presently played Sicily false. In 1295 he "**'
was reconciled to the church and released from all French
claims on Aragon, and he bound himself to restore Sicily to
Charles. But the Sicilians, with Frederick at their head, dis-
owned the agreement, and in 1296 Frederick was crowned king.
He had to defend Sicily against his brother and Roger de Loria,
who forsook the cause, as did John of Procida. Hitherto the
war had been waged on. the mainland; now it was transferred
to Sicily. King James besieged Syracuse as admiral of the
Roman Church; Charles sent his son Robert in 1299 as his
lieutenant in Sicily, where he gained some successes. But in the
same year the one great land battle of the war, that of Falconaria,
was won for Sicily. The war, chiefly marked by another great
siege of Messina, went on till 1302, when both sides were
thoroughly weakened and eager for peace. By a treaty, con-
firmed by Pope Boniface VIII. the next year, Frederick was
acknowledged as king of Trinacria for life. He was to marry
the daughter of the king of Sfcily, to whom the island kingdom
was to revert at his death. The terms were never meant to be
carried out. Frederick again took up the title of king pgfer
of Sicily, and at his death in 1337 he was succeeded
by his son Peter. VThere were thus two Sicilian kingdoms and
two kings of Sicily. The king of the mainland is often spoken
of for convenience as king of Naples, but that description was
never borne 'as a formal title save in the i6th century by Philip,
king of England and Naples, and in the igth by Joseph Buona-
parte and Joachim Murat. The strict distinction was between
Sicily on this side the Pharos (of Messina) and Sicily beyond it.
Thus the great island of the Mediterranean again became
an independent power. And, as far as legislation could make it,
Sicily became one of the freest countries in Europe. By the
laws of Frederick parliaments were to be regularly held, and
without their consent the king could not make war, peace or
alliance. The treaty of 1302 was not confirmed by parliament,
and in 1337 parliament called Peter to the crown. But Sicily
never rose to the greatness of its Greek or its Norman days,
and its old character had passed away. Of Greeks and Saracens
we now hear only as a degraded remnant, to be won over, if it
may be, to the Western Church. The kingdom had no foreign
possessions; yet faint survivals of the days of Agathocles and
Roger lingered on. The isle of Gerba off the African coast was
held for a short time, and traces of the connexion with Greece
went on in various shapes. If the kings of Sicily on this side the
Pharos kept Corfu down to 1386, those beyond the Pharos
became in 1311 overlords of Athens, when that duchy was
seized by Catalan adventurers, disbanded after the wars of Sicily.
In 1530 the Sicilian island of Malta became the shelter of the
Knights of Saint John driven by the Turk from Rhodes, and
Sicily has received several colonies of Christian Albanians, who
have replaced Greek and Arabic by yet another tongue. (See
NAPLES, KINGDOM OF.) (E. A. F.; T. As.)
SICKINGEN— SICULI
SICKINGEN, FRANZ VON (1481-1523), German knight, one
of the most notable figures of the first period of the Reformation,
was born at Ebernburg near Worms. Having fought for the
emperor Maximilian I. against Venice in 1508, he inherited large
estates on the Rhine, and increased his wealth and reputation by
numerous private feuds, in which he usually posed as the friend
of the oppressed. In 1513 he took up the quarrel of Balthasar
Schlor, a citizen who had been driven out of Worms, and attacked
this city with 7000 men. In spite of the imperial ban, he devas-
tated its lands, intercepted its commerce, and only desisted
when his demands were granted. He made war upon Antony,
duke of Lorraine, and compelled Philip, landgrave of Hesse,
to pay him 35,000 gulden. In 1518 he interfered in a civil
conflict in Metz, ostensibly siding with the citizens against the
governing oligarchy. He led an army of 20,000 men against the
city, compelled the magistrates to give him 20,000 gold gulden
and a month's pay for his troops. In 1518 Maximilian released
him from the ban, and he took part in the war carried on by the
Swabian League against Ulrich I., duke of Wiirttemberg. In the
contest for the imperial throne upon the death of Maximilian in
1519, Sickingen accepted bribes from Francis I., king of France,
but when the election took place he led his troops to Frankfort,
where their presence assisted to secure the election of Charles V.
For this service he was made imperial chamberlain and councillor,
and in 1521 he led an expedition into France, which ravaged
Picardy, but was beaten back from Mezieres and forced to
retreat. About 1517 Sickingen became intimate with Ulrich
von Hutten, and gave his support to Hutten's schemes. In
1519 a threat from him freed John Reuchlin from his enemies,
the Dominicans, and his castles became in Hutten's words a refuge
for righteousness. Here many of the reformers found shelter,
and a retreat was offered to Martin Luther. After the failure
of the French expedition, Sickingen, aided by Hutten, formed,
or revived, a large scheme to overthrow the spiritual princes
and to elevate the order of knighthood. He hoped to secure this
by the help of the towns and peasants, and to make a great
position for himself. A large army was soon collected, many
nobles from the upper Rhineland joined the standard, and
at Landau, in August 1522, Sickingen was formally named
commander. He declared war against his old enemy, Richard of
Greiffenklau, archbishop of Trier, and marched against that
city. Trier was loyal to the archbishop, and the landgrave of
Hesse and Louis V., count palatine of the Rhine, hastened to his
assistance. Sickingen, who had not obtained the help he wished
for, was compelled to fall back on his castle of Landstuhl, near
Kaiserslautern, collecting much booty on the way. On the
22nd of October 1522 the council of regency placed him under
the ban, to which he replied, in the spring of 1523, by plundering
Kaiserslautern. The rulers of Trier, Hesse and the Palatinate
decided to press the campaign against him, and having obtained
help from the Swabian League, marched on Landstuhl. Sickingen
refused to treat, and during the siege was seriously wounded.
This attack is notable as one of the first occasions on which
artillery was used, and by its aid breaches were soon made in an
otherwise impregnable fortress. On the 6th of May 1523 he was
forced to capitulate, and on the following day he died. He was
buried at Landstuhl, and in 1889 a splendid monument was
raised at Ebernburg to his memory and to that of Hutten.
His son Franz Conrad was made a baron of the empire (Reichs-
freiherr) by Maximilian II., and a descendant was raised in 1773
to the rank of count (Reichsgraf). A branch of the family still
exists in Austria and Silesia.
See H. Ulmann, Franz von Sickingen (Leipzig, 1872); F. P.
Bremer, Sickingens Fehde gegen Trier (Strassburg, 1885); H. Prutz,
" Franz von Sickingen " in Der neue Plutarch (Leipzig, 1880), and the
" Flersheimer Chronik " in Hutten's Deutsche Schriften, edited by
O. Waltz und Szamatolati (Strassburg, 1891).
SICKLES, DANIEL EDGAR (1825- ), American soldier
and diplomatist, was born in New York City on the 2oth of
October 1825. He learned the printer's trade, studied in the
university of the City of New York (now New York University),
was admitted to the bar in 1846, and was a member of the state
Assembly in 1847. In 1853 he became corporation counsel of
New York City, but resigned soon afterward to become secretary
of the U.S. legation in London, under James Buchanan. He
returned to America in 1855, was a member of the state Senate
in 1856-1857, and from 1857 to 1861 was a Democratic repre-
sentative in Congress. In 1859 he was tried on a charge of
murder, having shot Philip Barton Key, U.S. attorney for the
District of Columbia, whom Sickles had discovered to have a
liaison with his wife; but was acquitted after a dramatic trial
lasting twenty days. At the outbreak of the Civil War Sickles
was active in raising United States volunteers in New York, and
was appointed colonel of a regiment. He became a brigadier-
general of volunteers in September 1 861 , led a brigade of the Army
of the Potomac with credit up to the battle of Antietam, and then
succeeded to a divisional command. He took part with dis-
tinction in the battle of Fredericksburg, and in 1863 as a major-
general commanded the III. army corps. His energy and
ability were conspicuous in the disastrous battle of Chancellors-
ville (q.v.); and at Gettysburg (q.v.) the part played by the III.
corps in the desperate fighting around the Peach Orchard was one
of the most noteworthy incidents in the battle. Sickles himself
lost a leg and his active military career came to an end. He was,
however, employed to the end of the war, and in 1867 received the
brevets of brigadier-general U.S.A. and major-general U.S.A.
for his services at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg respectively.
General Sickles was one of the few successful volunteer generals
who served on either side. Soon after the close of the Civil War
he was sent on a confidential mission to Colombia to secure its
compliance with a treaty agreement (of 1846) permitting the
United States to convey troops across the Isthmus of Panama.
In 1866-1867 ne commanded the department of the Carolinas.
In 1866 he was appointed colonel of the 42nd infantry (Veteran
Reserve Corps), and in 1869 he was retired with the rank of
major-general. He was minister to Spain from 1869 to 1873, and
took part in the negotiations growing out of the " Virg'inius
Affair " (see SANTIAGO, CUBA). General Sickles was president of
the New York State Board of Civil Service Commissioners in
1888-1889, was sheriff of New York in 1890, and was again a
representative in Congress in 1893-1895.
SICULI, an ancient Sicilian tribe, which in historical times
occupied the eastern half of the island to which they gave their
name. It plays a large though rather shadowy part in the early
traditions of pre-Roman Italy. There is abundant evidence that
the Siculi once lived in Central Italy east and even north of
Rome (e.g. Servius ad Aen. vii. 795; Dion. Hal. i. 9. 22; Thucy-
dides vi. 2). Thence they were dislodged by the Umbro-Safme
tribes, and finally crossed to Sicily. Archaeologists are not yet
agreed as to the particular stratum of remains in Italy to which
the name of the Siculi should be attached (see for instance
B. Modestov, Introduction a I'histoire romaine, Paris, 1907,
pp. 135 sqq.). They were distinct from the Sicani (q.v.; Virg.
Aen. viii. 328) who inhabited the western half of the island,
and who according to Thucydides came from Spain, but whom
Virgil seems to recognize in Italy. Both traditions may be true
(cf. W. Ridgeway, Who were the Romans? London, 1908, p. 23).
Of the language of the Siculi we know a very little from glosses
preserved to us by ancient writers, most of which were collected
by E. A. Freeman (Sicily, vol. i. App. note iv.), and from an
inscription upon what is presumably an ornamental earthen-
ware wine vessel, which has very much the shape of a tea-pot,
preserved and transcribed by R. S. Conway in the Collection of
the Grand Duke of Baden at Karlsruhe (Winnefeld, Grossherzogl.
vereinigte Sammlungen, 1887, 120), which has been discussed by
R. Thurneysen (Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xxxv. 214). The inscription
was found at Centuripa, and the alphabet is Greek of the sth or
6th century B.C. We have not enough evidence to make a
translation possible, despite Thurneysen's valiant effort, but the
recurrence of the phrase hemiton esti durom in a varied order
(durom hemiton esti) — presumably a drinking song or proverb,
" half a cup is sorry cheer," though it is possible that the sign
read as m may really denote some kind of i — makes the division
of these three words quite certain, and renders it highly probable
that we have to do with an Indo-European language. None of
SICYON— SIDDONS
37
the groups of sounds occurring in the rest of the inscription,
nor any of the endings of words so far as they may be guessed,
present any reason for doubting this hypothesis; and the glosses
already mentioned can one and all be easily connected with Greek
or Latin words (e.g. noirov, mutuum) ; in fact it would be
difficult to rebut the contention that they should all be regarded
as mere borrowings. (R. S. C.)
The towns of the Siculi, like those of the Sicani, formed no
political union, but were under independent rulers. They played
an important part in the history of the island after the arrival of
the Greeks (see SICILY). Their agricultural pursuits and the
volcanic nature of the island made them worshippers of the gods
of the nether world, and they have enriched mythology with
some distinctly national figures. The most important of these
were the Palici, protectors of agriculture and sailors, who had a
lake and temple in the neighbourhood of the river Symaethus,
the chief seat of the Siceli; Adranus, father of the Palici, a god
akin to Hephaestus, in whose temple a fire was always kept
burning; Hybla (or Hyblaea), after whom three towns were
named, whose sanctuary was at Hybla Gereatis. The connexion
of Demeter and Kore with Henna (the rape of Proserpine) and of
Arethusa with Syracuse is due to Greek influence. The chief
Sicel towns were: Agyrium (San Filippo d' Argiro); Centuripa
(or Centuripae; Centorbi)', Henna (Caslrogiovanni, a corruption
of Castrum Hennae through the Arabic Casr-janni) ; Hybla,
three in number, (a) Hybla Major, called Geleatis or Gereatis, on
the river Symaethus, probably the Hybla famous for its honey,
although according to others this was (b) Hybla Minor, on the E.
coast N. of Syracuse, afterwards the site of the Dorian colony of
Megara, (c) Hybla Heraea in the S. of the island.
For authorities see SICILY.
SICYON, or SECYON (the latter being the older form used by
the natives), an ancient Greek city situated in northern Pelopon-
nesus between Corinthia and Achaea. It was built on a low
triangular plateau about 2 m. from the Corinthian Gulf, at the
confluence of the Asopus and the Helisson, whose sunken beds
protected it on E. and W. Between the city and its port lay a
fertile plain with olive-groves and orchards. Sicyon's primitive
name Aegialeia indicates that its original population was Ionian;
in the Iliad it appears as a dependency of Agamemnon, and its
earjy connexion with Argos is further proved by the myth and
surviving cult of Adrastus. After the Dorian invasion the com-
munity was divided anew into the ordinary three Dorian tribes
and an equally privileged tribe of lonians, besides which a class
of Kopvvii6poi or Ka.TC>jva.Ko6pm lived on the land as serfs. For
some centuries Sicyon remained subject to Argos, whence its
Dorian conquerors had come; as late as 500 B.C. it acknowledged
a certain suzerainty. But its virtual independence was estab-
lished in the yth century, when a line of tyrants arose and initiated
an anti-Dorian policy. This dynasty, known after its founder
Orthagoras as the Orthagoridae, exercised a mild rule, and there-
fore lasted longer than any other succession of Greek tyrants
(about 665-565 B.C.). Chief of these rulers was the founder's
grandson Cleisthenes — the uncle of the Athenian legislator of that
name (see CLEISTHENES, 2). Besides reforming the city's con-
stitution to the advantage of the lonians and replacing Dorian
cults by the worship of Dionysus, Cleisthenes gained renown as
the chief instigator and general of the First Sacred War (590)
in the interests of the Delphians. From Herodotus' famous
account of the wooing of Agariste it may be inferred that he
held intercourse with many commercial centres of Greece and
south Italy. About this time Sicyon developed the various
industries for which it was noted in antiquity. As the abode of
the sculptors Dipoenus and Scyllis it gained pre-eminence in wood-
carving and bronze work such as is still to be seen in the archaic
metal facings found at Olympia. Its pottery, which resembled
the Corinthian ware, was exported with the latter as far as
Etruria. In Sicyon also the art of painting was supposed to have
been " invented." After the fall of the tyrants their institutions
survived till the end of the 6th century, when the Dorian supre-
macy was re-established, perhaps by the agency of Sparta, and
the city was enrolled in the Peloponnesian League. Henceforth
its policy was usually determined either by Sparta or by its
powerful neighbour Corinth. During the Persian wars Sicyon
could place 3000 heavy-armed men in the field; its school of
bronze sculptors still flourished, and produced in Canachus (q.v.)
a master of the late archaic style. In the 5th century it suffered
like Corinth from the commercial rivalry of Athens in the western
seas, and was repeatedly harassed by flying squadrons of Athenian
ships. In the Peloponnesian war Sicyon followed the lead of
Sparta and Corinth. When these two powers quarrelled after the
peace of Nicias it remained loyal to the Spartans; but the
latter thought it prudent to stiffen the oligarchic government
against a nascent democratic movement. Again in the Corinthian
war Sicyon sided with Sparta and became its base of operations
against the allied troops round Corinth. In 369 it was captured
and garrisoned by the Thebans in their successful attack on the
Peloponnesian League. On this occasion a powerful citizen
named Euphron effected a democratic revolution and established
himself tyrant by popular support. His deposition by the
Thebans and subsequent murder freed Sicyon for a season, but
new tyrants arose with the help of Philip II. of Macedon. Never-
theless during this period Sicyon reached its zenith as a centre
of art: its school of painting gained fame under Eupompus
and attracted the great masters Pamphilus and Apelles as
students; its sculpture was raised to a level hardly surpassed in
Greece by Lysippus and his pupils. After participating in the
Lamian war and the campaigns of the Macedonian pretenders the
city was captured (303) by Demetrius Poliorcetes, who trans-
planted all the inhabitants to the Acropolis and renamed the site
Demetrias. In the 3rd century it again passed from tyrant to
tyrant, until in 251 it was finally liberated and enrolled in the
Achaean League by Aratus (q.v.). The destruction of Corinth
( 1 46) brought Sicyon an acquisition of territory and the presidency
over the Isthmian games; yet in Cicero's time it had fallen deep
into debt. Under the empire it was quite obscured by the re-
stored cities of Corinth and Patrae; in Pausanias' age (A.D. 150)
it was almost desolate. In Byzantine times it became a bishop's
seat, and to judge by its later name" Hellas " it served as a refuge
for the Greeks from the Slavonic immigrants of the 8th century.
The village of Vasiliko which now occupies the site is quite
insignificant. On the plateau parts of the ancient fortifications
are still visible, including the wall between town and Acropolis
near the southern apex. A little north of this wall are remains
of a theatre and stadium, traces of aqueducts and foundations
of buildings. The theatre, which was excavated by the American
School of Archaeology in 1886-1887, 1891 and 1898, was built in
the slope towards the Acropolis, probably in the first half of the
4th century, and measured 400 ft. in diameter; the stage was
rebuilt in Roman times. The side entrances to the auditorium
were covered in with vaults of Greek construction; a curious
feature is a tunnel from below the stage into the middle of the
auditorium.
AUTHORITIES. — Strabo, pp. 382, 389; Herodotus v. 67-68, vi. 92,
ix. 28; Thucydides i. 108, in; iv. 70, 101 ; v. 52, 82; Xenophon,
Hellenica, iv., vi., vii. ; Diodorus xviii. II, xx. 102 ; Pausanias
ii. 5-11; W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea (London, 1830), iii.
PP- 35!-38l; E. Curtius, Peloponnesos (Gotha, 1851), ii. pp.
482-505; American Journal of Archaeology, v. (1889) pp. 267-303,
viii. (1893) PP- 288-400, xx. (1905) pp. 263-276; L. Dyer in the
Journal of Hellenic Studies (1906), pp. 76-83; for coins, B. V. Head,
Historia numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 345-346; also NUMIS-
MATICS, section Greek, § " Patrae, Sicyon." (M. O. B. C.)
SIDDONS, SARAH (1755-1831), English actress, the eldest
of twelve children of Roger Kemble, was born in the
" Shoulder of Mutton " public-house, Brecon, Wales, on the sth
of July 1755. Through the special care of her mother in sending
her to the schools in the towns where the company played,
Sarah Kemble received a remarkably good education, although
she was accustomed to make her appearance on the stage while
still a child. She became attached to William Siddons, an
actor of the company; but this was discountenanced by her
parents, who wished her to accept the offer of a squire. Siddons
was dismissed from the company, and she was sent to a situation
as lady's maid to Mrs Greathead at Guy's Cliff in Warwickshire.
Here she recited Shakespeare, Milton and Rowein the servants'
SIDE— SIDEBOARD
hall, and occasionally before aristocratic company, and here also
she began to develop a capacity for sculpture which was sub-
sequently developed (between 1789 and 1790), and of which
she provided samples in busts of herself and of her son. The
necessary consent to her union with Siddons was at last obtained,
and the marriage took place at Trinity Church, Coventry, on the
a6th of November 1773. It was while playing at Cheltenham
in the following year that Mrs Siddons met with the earliest
decided recognition of her powers as an actress, when by her
representation of Belvidera in Otway's Venice Preserved she
moved to tears a party of " people of quality " who had come
to scoff. Her merits were made known by them to Garrick, who
sent his deputy to Cheltenham to see her as Calista in Rowe's
Fair Penitent, the result being that she was engaged to appear
at Drury Lane at a salary of £5 a week. Owing to inex-
perience as well as other circumstances, her first appearances as
Portia and in other parts were unfortunate, and when, after
playing with success in Birmingham, she was about to return to
town she received a note from the manager of Drury Lane stating
that her services would not be required. Thus, in her own words,
" banished from Drury Lane as a worthless candidate for fame
and fortune," she again in the beginning of 1777 went on " the
circuit " in the provinces. After a very successful engagement at
Bath, beginning in 1778 and lasting five years, she again accepted
an offer from Drury Lane, when her appearance as Isabella ih
Garrick's version of Southerne's Fatal Marriage, on the loth of
October 1782, was a triumph, only equalled in the history of the
English stage by that of Garrick's first night at Drury Lane in
1741 and that of Edmund Kean's in 1814. In her earlier years
it was in scenes of a tender and melting character that she
exercised the strongest sway over an audience; but in the
performance of Lady Macbeth, in which she appeared on the
and of February 1785 for the first time in London, it was the
grandeur of her exhibition of the more terrible passions as related
to one awful purpose that held them spellbound. In Lady
Macbeth she found the highest and best scope for her gifts.
It fitted her as no other character did, and as perhaps it will never
fit another actress. Her extraordinary and peculiar physical
endowments — tall and striking figure, brilliant beauty, power-
fully expressive eyes, and solemn dignity of demeanour — en-
abled her to confer a weird majesty on the character which in-
expressibly heightened the tragic awe surrounding her fate.
After Lady Macbeth she played Desdemona, Rosalind and
Ophelia, all with great success; but it was in Queen Catherine
— which she first played on the occasion of her brother John
Kemble's spectacular revival of Henry VIII. in 1788 — that she
discovered a part almost as well adapted to her peculiar powers
as that of Lady Macbeth. As Volumnia in Kemble's version of
Coriolanus she also secured a triumph. In her early life she had
attempted comedy, but her gifts in this respect were very limited.
It was of course inevitable that comparisons should be made
between her and her only peer, Rachel, who undoubtedly
excelled her in intensity and the portrayal of fierce passion, but
was a less finished artist and lacked Mrs Siddons' dignity and
pathos. Though Mrs Siddons' minute and systematic study
perhaps gave a certain amount of stiffness to her representations,
it conferred on them a symmetry and proportion to which
Rachel never attained. Mrs Siddons formally retired from the
stage in 1812, but occasionally appeared on special occasions even
when advanced in years. Her last appearance was on the oth of
June 1819 as Lady Randolph in Home's Douglas, for the benefit
of Mr and Mrs Charles Kcmble. Her most striking impersona-
tions, besides the r61es already mentioned, were those of Zara in
Congreve's Mourning Bride, Constance in King John, Mrs
Haller in The Stranger, and Elvira in Pizarro. In private life
Mrs Siddons enjoyed the friendship and respect of many of the
most eminent persons of her time. Horace Walpole at first
refused to join the fashionable chorus of her praise, but he was
ultimately won over. Dr Johnson wrote his name on the hem
of her garment in the famous picture of the actress as the Tragic
Muse by Reynolds (now in the Dulwich Gallery). " I would not
lose," he said, " the honour this opportunity afforded to me for
my name going down to posterity on the hem of your garment."
Mrs Siddons died in London on the 8th of June 1831, and was
buried in Paddington churchyard.
On the 1 4th of June 1897 Sir Henry Irving unveiled at Pad-
dington Green a marble statue of her by Chavalliaud, after the
portrait by Reynolds. There is also a large statue by Chantrey
in Westminster Abbey. Portraits by Lawrence and Gains-
borough are in the National Gallery, and a portrait ascribed to
Gainsborough is in the Garrick Club, London, which also possesses
two pictures of the actress as Lady Macbeth by George Henry
Harlow.
See Thomas Campbell, Life of Mrs Siddons (2 vols., 1834); Fitz-
gerald, The Kembles ( 3 vols., 1871); Frances Ann Kemble, Records
of a Girlhood (3 vols., 1878).
SIDE (mod. Eski Adalia), an ancient city on the Pamphylian
coast about 12 m. E. of the mouth of the Eurymedon. Possessing
a good harbour in the days of small craft, it was the most im-
portant place in Pamphylia. Alexander visited and occupied it,
and there the Rhodian fleet defeated that of Antiochus the Great,
and in the succeeding century the Cilician pirates established
their chief seat. An inscription found on the site shows it to
have had a considerable Jewish population in early Byzantine
times. The great ruins, among the most notable in Asia Minor,
have been re-occupied by some 200 families of Cretan Moslems.
They cover a large promontory, fenced from the mainland by a
ditch and wall which has been repaired in medieval times and is
singularly perfect. Within this is a maze of structures out of
which rises the colossal ruin of the theatre, built up on arches
like a Roman amphitheatre for lack of a convenient hill-side
to be hollowed out in the usual Greek fashion. The auditorium
is little less perfect than that of Aspendus and very nearly as
large; but the scena wall has collapsed over stage and proscenium
in a cataract of loose blocks. The arches now afford shelter and
stabling for the Cretans. Besides the theatres, three temples,
an aqueduct and a nymphaeum are noticeable.
See C. Lanckorouski, Les Villes de la Pamphylie et de la Pisidie, i.
(1890). (D. G..H.)
SIDEBOARD, a high oblong table fitted with drawers, cup-
boards or pedestals, and used for the exposition or storage of
articles required in the dining-room. Originally it was what
its name implies — a side- table, to which the modern dinijer-
wagon very closely approximates. Then two- or three-tiered
sideboards were in use in the Tudor period, and were perhaps the
ancestors, or collaterals, of the court-cupboard, which in skeleton
they much resembled. Early in the i8th century they began to
be replaced by side-tables properly so called. They were one of
the many revolutions in furniture produced by the introduction
of mahogany, and those who could not afford the new and costly
wood used a cheap substitute stained to resemble it. In the
beginning these tables were entirely of wood and comparatively
slight, but before long it became the fashion to use a marble slab
instead of a wooden top, which necessitated a somewhat more
robust construction; here again there was a field for imitation,
and marble was sometimes replaced by scagliola. Many of the
sideboard tables of this period were exceedingly handsome,
with cabriole legs, claw or claw and bill feet, friezes of acanthus,
much gadrooning and mask pendants. Many such tables came
from Chippendale's workshops, but although that great genius
beautified the type he found, he had no influence upon the
evolution of the sideboard. That evolution was brought about
by the growth of domestic needs. Save upon its surface, the side-
board-table offered no accommodation; it usually lacked even
a drawer. Even, however, in the period of Chippendale's zenith
separate " bottle cisterns " and " lavatories " for the convenience
of the butler in washing the silver as the meals proceeded were,
sparsely no doubt, in use. By degrees it became customary to
place a pedestal, which was really a cellarette or a plate-warmer,
at each end of the sideboard-table. One of them would contain
ice and accommodation for bottles, the other would be a cistern.
Sometimes a single pedestal would be surmounted by a wooden
vase lined with metal and filled with water, and fitted with a
tap. To whom is due the brilliant inspiration of attaching the
SIDGWICK— SIDI-BEL-ABBES
39
pedestals to the table and creating a single piece of furniture out
of three components there is nothing to show with certainty.
It is most probable that the credit is due to Shearer, who unques-
^ionably did much for the improvement of the sideboard;
Hepplewhite and the brothers Adam distinguished themselves
in the same field. The pedestals, when incorporated as an integral
part of the piece, became cupboards and the vases knife-boxes,
and, with the drawers, which had been occasionally used much
earlier, the sideboard, in what appears to be its final form, was
completed. Pieces exist in which the ends have been cut away
to receive the pedestals. If Shearer and Hepplewhite laid its
foundations, it was brought to its full floraison by Sheraton.
By the use of fine exotic woods, the deft employment of satin
wood and other inlays, and by the addition of gracefully orna-
mented brass- work at the back, sometimes surmounted by candles
to light up the silver, Sheraton produced effects of great elegance.
But for sheer artistic excellence in the components of what
presently became the sideboard, the Adams stand unrivalled,
some of their inlay and brass mounts being almost equal to the
first work of the great French school. By replacing the straight
outline with a bombe front, Hepplewhite added still further to
the grace of the late 18th-century sideboard. No art remains
long at its apogee, and in less than a quarter of a century the
sideboard lost its grace, and, influenced by the heavy feeling of
the Empire manner, grew massive and dull. Since the end of
the 1 8th century there has indeed been no advance, artistically
speaking, in this piece of furniture.
SIDGWICK, HENRY (1838-1900), English philosopher, was
born at Skipton in Yorkshire, where his father, the Rev. W.
Sidgwick (d. 1841), was headmaster of the grammar-school, on
the 3ist of May 1838. He was educated at Rugby (where his
cousin, subsequently his brother-in-law, E. W. Benson — after-
wards archbishop — was a master), and at Trinity, Cambridge,
where his- career was a brilliant one. In 1859 he was senior
classic, 33rd wrangler, chancellor's medallist and Craven scholar.
In the same year he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity, and
soon afterwards appointed to a classical lectureship there. This
post he held for ten years, but in 1869 exchanged his lectureship
for one in moral philosophy, a subject to which he had been turn-
ing his attention more and more. In the same year, finding that
he could no longer declare himself a member of the Church of
England, he resigned his fellowship. He retained his lectureship,
and in 1881 was elected an honorary fellow. In 1874 he published
his Method of Ethics (6th ed. 1901, containing emendations written
just before his death), which first won him a reputation outside
his university. In 187 5 he was appointed praclector on moral and
political philosophy at Trinity, in 1883 he was elected Knight-
bridge professor of moral philosophy, and in 1885, the religious
Jest having been removed, his college once more elected him to a
fellowship on the foundation. Besides his lecturing and literary
labours, Sidgwick took an active part in the business of the
university, and in many forms of social and philanthropic work.
He was a member of the General Board 'of Studies from its
foundation in 1882 till 1899; he was also a member of the Council
of the Senate of the Indian Civil Service Board and the Local
Examinations and Lectures Syndicate, and chairman of the
Special Board for Moral Science. He was one of the founders and
first president of the Society for Psychical Research, and was a
member of the Metaphysical Society. None of his work is more
closely identified with his name than the part he took in pro-
moting the higher education of women. He helped to start the
higher local examinations for women, and the lectures held at
Cambridge in preparation for these. It was at his suggestion and
with his help that Miss Clough opened a house of residence for
students; and when this had developed into Newnham College,
and in 1880 the North Hall was added, Mr Sidgwick, who had
in 1876 married Eleanor Mildred Balfour (sister of A. J. Balfour),
went with his wife to live there for two years. After Miss Clough 's
death in 1892 Mrs Sidgwick became principal of the college,
and she and her husband resided there for the rest of his life.
During this whole period Sidgwick took the deepest interest in
the welfare of the college. In politics he was a Liberal, and
became a Liberal Unionist in 1886. Early in 1900 he was forced
by ill-health to resign his professorship, and he died on the
28th of August of the same year.
Though in many ways an excellent teacher he was primarily
a student, and treated his pupils as fellow-learners. He was
deeply interested in psychical phenomena, but his energies were
primarily devoted to the study of religion and philosophy.
Brought up in the Church of England, he gradually drifted from
orthodox Christianity, and as early as 1862 he described himself
as a theist. For the rest of his life, though he regarded Chris-
tianity as " indispensable and irreplaceable — looking at it from a
sociological point of view," he found himself unable to return to
it as a religion. In political economy he was a Utilitarian on
the lines of Mill and Bentham; his work was the careful investiga-
tion of first principles and the investigation of ambiguities
rather than constructive. In philosophy he devoted himself
to ethics, and especially to the examination of the ultimate
intuitive principles of conduct and the problem of free will.
He gave up the psychological hedonism of Mill, and adopted
instead a position which may be described as ethical hedonism,
according to which the criterion of goodness in any given action
is that it produces the greatest possible amount of pleasure.
This hedonism, however, is not confined to the self (egoistic),
but involves a due regard to the pleasure of others, and is,
therefore, distinguished further as universalistic. Lastly, Sidg-
wick returns to the principle that no man should act so as to
destroy his own happiness, and leaves us with a somewhat
unsatisfactory dualism.
His chief works are Principles of Political Economy (1883, 3rd ed.
1901) ; Scope and Method of Economic Science (1885) ; Outlines of the
History of Ethics (1886, 5th ed. 1902), enlarged from his article
ETHICS in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; Elements of Politics (1891,
2nd ed. 1897), an attempt to supply an adequate treatise on the
subject starting from the old lines of Bentham and Mill. The
following were published posthumously: Philosophy; its Scope and
Relations (1902) ; Lectitres on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr Herbert
Spencer and J. Martineau (1902); The Development of European
Polity (1903); Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses (1904); Lectures
on the Philosophy of Kant (1905).
His younger brother, ARTHUR SIDGWICK, had a brilliant school
and university career, being second classic at Cambridge in 1863
and becoming fellow of Trinity; but he devoted himself thence-
forth mainly to work as a teacher. After being for many years
a master at Rugby, he became in 1882 fellow and tutor of Corpus,
Oxford; and from 1894 to 1906 was Reader in Greek in the uni-
versity. He published a number of admirable classical school-
books, including Greek Prose (1876) and Greek Verse (1882),
and texts (Virgil, 1890; Aeschylus, 1880-1903), and was well
known as a consummate classical scholar, remarkable for literary
taste and general culture. In the college life of Corpus he took
the deepest interest and had the most stimulating influence;,
and he also played an active part in social and political move-
ments from an advanced Liberal point of view.
A Memoir of Henry Sidgwick, written by his brother with the
collaboration of his widow, was published in 1906.
SIDI-BEL-ABBES, chief town of an arrondissement in the
department of Oran, Algeria, 48 m. by rail S. of Oran, 1552 ft.
above the sea, on the right bank of the Mekerra. Pop. (1906) of
the town, 24,494 (of whom three-fourths are French or Spaniards) ;
of the commune, 29,088; of the arrondissement, which includes
17 communes, 98,309. The town, which occupies an important
strategic position in the plain dominated by the escarpments of
Mount Tessala, has barrack accommodation for 6000 troops, and
is the headquarters of the ier regiment etranger, one of the two
regiments known as the Foreign Legion. It is encircled by a
crenellated and bastioned wall with a fosse, and has four gates,
named after Oran, Daia, Mascara and Tlemcen respectively.
Starting from the gates, two broad streets, shaded by plane trees,
traverse the town east to west and north to south, the latter
dividing the civil from the military quarters. There are numerous
fountains fed by the Mekerra. Sidi-bel-Abbes is also an im-
portant agricultural centre, wheat, tobacco and alfa being the
chief articles of trade. There are numerous vineyards and olive-
SIDMOUTH, IST VISCOUNT- -SIDNEY, A.
groves in the vicinity. The town, founded by the French,
derives its name from the kubba (tomb) of a marabout named
Sidi-bel-Abbes, near which a redoubt was constructed by General
Bedeau in 1843. The site of the town, formerly a swamp, has
been thoroughly drained. The surrounding country is healthy,
fertile and populous.
SIDMOUTH, HENRY ADDINGTON, IST VISCOUNT (1757-
1844), English statesman, son of Dr Anthony Addington,
was born on the 3Oth of May 1757. Educated at Winchester
College and Brasenose College, Oxford, he graduated in 1778,
and took the chancellor's prize for an English essay in 1779.
Owing to his friendship with William Pitt he turned his attention
to politics, and after his election as member of parliament for
Devizes in 1784 gave a silent but steady support to the ministry
of his friend. By close attention to his parliamentary duties,
he obtained a wide knowledge of the rules and procedure of the
House of Commons, and this fact together with his intimacy
with Pitt, and his general popularity, secured his election as
Speaker in June 1789. Like his predecessors, Addington con-
tinued to be a partisan after his acceptance of this office, took
part at times in debate when the house was in committee; and
on one occasion his partiality allowed Pitt to disregard the
authority of the chair. He enjoyed the confidence of George III.,
and in the royal interest tried to induce Pitt to withdraw his
proposal for a further instalment of relief to Roman Catholics.
Rather than give way on this question Pitt resigned office early
in 1801, when both he and the king urged Addington to form
a government. Addington consented, and after some delay
caused by the king's illness, and by the reluctance of several
of Pitt's followers to serve under him, became first lord of the
treasury and chancellor of the exchequer in March 1801. The
new prime minister, who was specially acceptable to George,
was loyally supported by Pitt; and his first important work,
the conclusion of the treaty of Amiens in March 1802, made him
popular in the country. Signs, however, were not wanting that
the peace would soon be broken, and Pitt, dissatisfied with the
ministry for ignoring the threatening attitude of Napoleon, and
making no preparations for a renewal of the war, withdrew his
support. Addington then took steps to strengthen the forces of
the crown, and suggested to Pitt that he should join the cabinet
and that both should serve under a new prime minister. This
offer was declined, and a similar fate befell Addington's subsequent
proposal to serve under Pitt. When the struggle with France
was renewed in May 1803, it became evident that as a war
minister Addington was not a success; and when Pitt became
openly hostile, the continued confidence of the king and of a
majority in the House of Commons was not a sufficient counter-
poise to the ministry's waning prestige. Although careful and
industrious, Addington had no brilliant qualities, and his medi-
ocrity afforded opportunity for attack by his enemies. Owing
to his father's profession he was called in derision " the doctor,"
and George Canning, who wrote satirical verses at his expense,
referred to him on one occasion as " happy Britain's guardian
gander." Without waiting for defeat in the House he resigned
office in April 1804, and became the leader of the party known
as the " king's friends." Pitt, who now returned to office, was
soon reconciled with his old friend; in January 1805 Addington
was created Viscount Sidmouth, and became lord president of
the council. He felt aggrieved, however, because his friends
were not given a larger share of power, and when Pitt complained
because some of them voted against the ministry, Sidmouth left
the cabinet in July 1805. In February 1806 he became lord privy
seal in the ministry of Fox and Grenville, but resigned early in
1807 when the government proposed to throw open commissions
in the army and navy to Roman Catholics and Protestant
dissenters; in 1812 he joined the cabinet of Spencer Perceval as
lord president of the council, becoming home secretary when the
ministry was reconstructed by the earl of Liverpool in the follow-
ing June. The ten years during which he held this office coincided
with much misery and unrest among the labouring classes, and
the government policy, for which he was mainly responsible,
was one of severe repression. In 1817 the Habeas Corpus Act
was suspended, and Sidmouth issued a circular to the lords-
lieutenant declaring that magistrates might apprehend and hold
to bail persons accused on oath of seditious libels. For this step
he was severely attacked in parliament, and was accused of
fomenting rebellion by means of his spies. Although shaken by
the acquittal of William Hone on a charge of libel the govern-
ment was supported by parliament; and after the " Manchester
massacre " in August 1819 the home secretary thanked the
magistrates and soldiers for their share in quelling the riot. He
was mainly responsible for the policy embodied in the " Six Acts "
of 1819. In December 1821 Sidmouth resigned his office, but
remained a member of the cabinet without official duties until
1824, when he resigned owing to his disapproval of the recognition
of the independence of Buenos Aires. Subsequently he took
very little part in public affairs; but true to his earlier principles
he spoke against Catholic emancipation in April 1829, and voted
against the Reform Bill in 1832. He died at his residence in Rich-
mond Park on the i$th of February 1844, and was buried at
Mortlake. In 1781 he married Ursula Mary, daughter of Leonard
Hammond of Cheam, Surrey, who died in 1811, leaving a son,
William Leonard, who succeeded his father as Viscount Sidmouth,
and four daughters. In 1823 he married secondly Marianne,
daughter of William Scott, Baron Stowell (d. 1836), and widow
of Thomas Townsend of Honington, Warwickshire. Sidmouth
suffers by comparison with the great men of his age, but he was
honest and courageous in his opinions, loyal to his friends, and
devoted to church and state.
The 2nd Viscount Sidmouth (1794-1864) was a clergyman of
the Church of England; he was succeeded as 3rd Viscount by his
son, William Wells Addington (b. 1824).
See Hon. G. Pellew, Life of Sidmouth (London, 1847); Lord John
Russell, Life and Times of C. J. Fox (London, 1859-1866); Earl
Stanhope, Life of Pitt (London, 1861-1862); Sir G. C. Lewis, Essays
on the Administrations of Great Britain (London, 1864) ; Spencer
Walpole, History of England (London, 1878-1886). (A. W. H.*)
SIDMOUTH, a market town and watering-place in the Honiton
parliamentary division of Devonshire, England, on the river Sid
and the English Channel, 167! m. W. by S. of London, by the
London & South-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901)
4201. Lying in a hollow, the town is shut in by hills which ter-
minate in the forelands of Salcombe and High Peak, two sheer cliffs
of a deep red colour. The shore line curves away, beyond these,
westward to the Start and eastward to Portland — both visible
from Sidmouth beach. The restored church of St Nicholas,
dating from the i3th century, though much altered in the i$th,
contains a window given by Queen Victoria in 1866 in memory
of her father, the duke of Kent, who lived at Woolbrook Glen,
close by, and died there in 1820. An esplanade is built along the
sea-wall, and the town possesses golf links and other recreation
grounds. The bathing is good, the climate warm. Formerly o(
some importance, the harbour can no longer be entered by large
vessels, and goods are transhipped into flat-bottomed lighters
for conveyance ashore. Fishing is extensively carried on and
cattle fairs are held. In the i3th century Sidmouth was a borough
governed by a port-reeve. Tradition tells of an older town
buried under the sea; and Roman coins and other remains have
been washed up on the beach. Traces of an ancient camp exist
on High Peak.
SIDNEY (or SYDNEY), ALGERNON (1622-1683), English
politician, second son of Robert, 2nd earl of Leicester, and of
Dorothy Percy, daughter of Henry, gth earl of Northumberland,
was born at Penshurst, Kent, in 1622. As a boy he showed
much talent, which was carefully trained under his father's eye.
In 1632 with his elder brother Philip he accompanied his father
on his mission as ambassador extraordinary to Christian IV. of
Denmark, whom he saw at Rendsburg. In May 1636 Sidney
went with his father to Paris, where he became a general favourite,
and from there to Rome. In October 1641 he was given a troop
in his father's regiment in Ireland, of which his brother, known
as Lord Lisle, was in command. In August 1643 the brothers
returned to England. At Chester their horses were taken by the
Royalists, whereupon they again put out to sea and landed
at Liverpool. Here they were detained by the Parliamentary
SIDNEY, A.
commissioners, and by them sent up to London for safe custody.
Whether this was intended by Sidney or no, it is certain that
from this time he ardently attached himself to the Parliamentary
cause. On the loth of May 1644 he was made captain of horse in
Manchester's army, under the Eastern Association. He was
shortly afterwards made lieutenant-colonel, and charged at the
head of his regiment at Marston Moor (2nd July), where he was
wounded and rescued with difficulty. On the 2nd of April 1645
he was given the command of a cavalry regiment in Cromwell's
division of Fairfax's army, was appointed governor of Chichester
on loth May, and in December was returned to parliament for
Cardiff. In July 1646 he went to Ireland, where his brother
was lord-lieutenant, and was made lieutenant-general of horse
in that kingdom and governor of Dublin. Leaving London on
ist of February 1647, Sidney arrived at Cork on the 22nd. He
was soon (8th April), however, recalled by a resolution of the
House passed through the interest of Lord Inchiquin. On the
7th of May he received the thanks of the House of Commons*
On the I3th of October 1648 he was made lieutenant of Dover
castle, of which he had previously been appointed governor. He
was at this time identified with the Independents as opposed to
the Presbyterian party. He was nominated one of the com-
missioners to try Charles I., but took no part in the trial, retiring
to Penshurst until sentence was pronounced. That Sidney
approved of the trial, though not of the sentence, there can,
however, be little doubt, for in Copenhagen he publicly and
vigorously expressed his concurrence. On the i$th of May 1649
he was a member of the committee for settling the succession
and for regulating the election of future parliaments. Sidney lost
the governorship of Dover, however, in March 1651, in conse-
quence, apparently, of a quarrel with his officers. He then went
to the Hague, where he quarrelled with Lord Oxford at play,
and a duel was only prevented by their friends. He returned to
England in the autumn, and henceforward took an active share
in parliamentary work. On the 25th of November Sidney was
elected on the council of state and was evidently greatly con-
sidered. In the usurpation of Cromwell, however, he utterly re-
fused all concurrence, nor would he leave his place in parliament
except by force when Cromwell dispersed it on the 2oth of April
1653. He immediately retired to Penshurst, where he was con-
cerned chiefly with family affairs. In 1654 he again went to the
Hague, and there became closely acquainted with De Witt.
On his return he kept entirely aloof from public affairs, and it is
to this period that the Essay on Love is ascribed.
Upon the restoration of the Long Parliament, in May 1659,
Sidney again took his seat, and was placed on the council of state.
He showed himself in this office especially anxious that the
military power should be duly subordinated to the civil. In June
he was appointed one of three commissioners to mediate for a
peace between Denmark, supported by Holland, and Sweden.
He was probably intended to watch the conduct of his colleague,
Admiral Montagu (afterwards ist earl of Sandwich), who was in
command of the Baltic squadron. Of his character we have
an interesting notice from Whitelocke, who refused to accompany
him on the ground of his " overruling temper and height."
Upon the conclusion of the treaty he went to Stockholm as
plenipotentiary ; and in both capacities he behaved with
resolution and address. When the restoration of Charles II. took
place Sidney left Sweden, on the 28th of June 1660, bringing
with him from the king of Sweden a rich present in testimony
of the estimation in which he was held. Sidney went first to
Copenhagen, and then, being doubtful of his reception by the
English court, settled at Hamburg. From there he wrote a
celebrated letter vindicating his conduct, which will be found in
the Somers Tracts. He shortly afterwards left Hamburg, and
passed through Germany by way of Venice to Rome. His stay
there, however, was embittered by misunderstandings with his
father and consequent straits for money. Five shillings a day,
he says, served him and two men very well for meat, drink and
firing. He devoted himself to the study of books, birds and trees,
and speaks of his natural delight in solitude being largely in-
creased. In 1663 he left Italy, passed through Switzerland,
xxv. 2 a
where he visited Ludlow, and came to Brussels in September,
where his portrait was painted by van Egmondt; it is now at
Penshurst. He had thoughts of joining the imperial service,
and offered to transport from England a body of the old Common-
wealth men; but this was refused by the English court. It is
stated that the enmity against him was so great that now, as on
other occasions, attempts were made to assassinate him. On the
breaking out of the Dutch war, Sidney, who was at the Hague,
urged an invasion of England, and shortly afterwards went to
Paris, where he offered to raise a rebellion in England on receipt
of 100,000 crowns. Unable, however, to come to terms with the
French government, he once more went into retirement in 1666, —
this time to the south of France. In August 1670 he was again in
Paris, and Arlington proposed that he should receive a pension
from Louis; Charles II. agreed, but insisted that Sidney should
return to Languedoc. In illustration of his austere principles it
is related that, Louis having taken a fancy to a horse belonging to
him and insisting on possessing it, Sidney shot the animal, which,
he said, " was born a free creature, had served a free man, and
should not be mastered by a king of slaves." His father was now
very ill, and after much difficulty Sidney obtained leave to come
to England in the autumn of 1677. Lord Leicester died in
November; and legal business connected with other portions
of the succession detained Sidney from returning to France as he
had intended. He soon became involved in political intrigue,
joining, in general, the country party, and holding close com-
munication with Barillon, the French ambassador. In the
beginning of 1679 he stood for Guildford, and was warmly
supported by William Penn, with whom he had long been in-
timate, and to whom he is said (as is now thought, erroneously)
to have afforded assistance in drawing up the constitution of
Pennsylvania. He was defeated by court influence, and his
petition to the House, complaining of an undue return, never
came to a decision. His Letters to Henry Savile, written at this
period, are of great interest. He was in Paris, apparently only
for a short while, in November 1679. Into tne prosecution of the
Popish Plot Sidney threw himself warmly, and was among those
who looked to Monmouth, rather than to Orange, to take the
place of James in the succession, though he afterwards dis-
claimed all interest in such a question. He now stood for
Bramber (Sussex), again with Penn's support, and a double
return was made. He is reported on the loth of August 1679 as
being elected for Amersham (Buckingham) with Sir Roger Hill.
When parliament met, however, in October 1680, his election was
declared void. But now, under the idea that an alliance between
Charles and Orange would be more hostile to English liberty
than would the progress of the French arms, he acted with
Barillon in influencing members of parliament in this sense, and
is twice mentioned as receiving the sum of 500 guineas from the
ambassador. Of this there is no actual proof, and it is quite
possible that Barillon entered sums in his accounts with Louis
which he never paid away. In any case it is to be remembered
that Sidney is not charged with receiving money for advocating
opinions which he did not enthusiastically hold.
Upon the dissolution of the last of Charles's parliaments
the king issued a justificatory declaration. This was at once
answered by a paper entitled A Just and Modest Vindication,
&c., the first sketch of which is imputed to Sidney. It was then,
too, that his most celebrated production, the Discourses con-
cerning Government, was concluded, in which he upholds the
doctrine of the mutual compact and traverses the High Tory
positions from end to end. In especial he vindicates the pro-
priety of resistance to kingly oppression or misrule, upholds the
existence of an hereditary nobility interested in their country's
good as the firmest barrier against such oppression, and main-
tains the authority of parliaments. In each point the English
constitution, which he ardently admires, is, he says, suffering:
the prerogatives of the crown are disproportionately great;
the peerage has been degraded by new creations; and parlia-
ments are slighted.
For a long while Sidney kept himself aloof from the duke of
Monmouth, to whom he was introduced by Lord Howard. After
SIDNEY, SIR HENRY
the death of Shaftesbury, however, in November 1682, he entered
into the conferences held between Monmouth, Russell, Essex,
Hampden and others. That treasonable talk went on seems
certain, but it is probable that matters went no further. The
watchfulness of the court was, however, aroused, and on the
discovery of the Rye House Plot, Sidney, who had always been
regarded in a vague way as dangerous, was arrested while at
dinner on the 26th of June 1683. His papers were carried off,
and he was sent at once to the Tower on a charge of high treason.
For a considerable while no evidence could be found on which
to establish a charge. Jeffreys, however, was made lord chief-
justice in September; a jury was packed; and, after consulta-
tions between the judge and the crown lawyers, Sidney was
brought to listen to the indictment on the 7th of November.
The trial began on the 2ist of November: Sidney was refused a
copy of the indictment, in direct violation of law, and he was
refused the assistance of counsel. Hearsay evidence and the
testimony of the perjured informer Lord Howard, whom Sidney
had been instrumental in introducing to his friends, were first
produced. This being insufficient, partial extracts from papers
found in Sidney's study, and supposed only to be in his hand-
writing, in which the lawfulness of resistance to oppression was
upheld, were next relied on. He was indicted for " conspiring
and compassing the death of the king/' Sidney conducted his
case throughout with great skill; he pointed especially to the
fact that Lord Howard, whose character he easily tore to shreds,
was the only witness against him as to treason, whereas the law
required two, that the treason was not accurately defined, that
no proof had been given that the papers produced were his,
and that, even if that were proved, these papers were in no way
connected with the charge. Against the determination to secure
a conviction, however, his courage, eloquence, coolness and skill
were of no avail, and the verdict of " guilty " was given. On
the 25th of November Sidney presented a petition to the king,
praying for an audience, which, however, under the influence of
James and Jeffreys, Charles refused. On the 26th he was brought
up for judgment, and again insisted on the illegality of his con-
viction. Upon hearing his sentence he gave vent to his feelings
in a few noble and beautiful words. Jeffreys having suggested
that his mind was disordered, he held out his hand and bade the
chief-justice feel how calm and steady his pulse was. By the
advice of his friends he presented a second petition, offering,
if released, to leave the kingdom at once and for ever. The
supposed necessity, however, of checking the hopes of Mon-
mouth's partisans caused the king to be inexorable. The last
days of Sidney's life were spent in drawing up his Apology and
in discourse with Independent ministers. He was beheaded on
the morning of the 7th of December 1683. His remains were
buried at Penshurst. (O. A.)
SIDNEY, SIR HENRY (1520-1586), lord deputy of Ireland,
was the eldest son of Sir William Sidney, a prominent politician
and courtier in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.,
from both of whom he received extensive grants of land, in-
cluding the manor of Penshurst in Kent, which became the
principal residence of the family. Henry was brought up at court
as the companion of Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward
VI.; and he continued to enjoy the favour of the sovereign
throughout the reigns of Edward and Mary. In 1 556 he went to
Ireland with the lord deputy, the earl of Sussex, who in the
previous year had married his sister Frances Sidney; and from
the first he had a large share in the administration of the country,
especially in the military measures taken by his brother-in-law
for bringing the native Irish chieftains into submission to the
English Crown. In the course of the lord deputy's Ulster
expedition in 1557 Sidney devastated the island of Rathlin; and
during the absence of Sussex in England in the following year
Sidney was charged with the sole responsibility for the govern-
ment of Ireland, which he conducted with marked ability and
success. A second absence of the lord deputy from Ireland,
occasioned by the accession of Queen Elizabeth, threw the chief
control into Sidney's hands at the outbreak of trouble with Shane
O'Neill, and he displayed great skill in temporizing with that
redoubtable chieftain till Sussex reluctantly returned to his
duties in August 1559. About the same time Sidney resigned
his office of vice-treasurer of Ireland on being appointed president
of the Welsh Marches, and for the next few years he resided
chiefly at Ludlow Castle, with frequent visits to the court in
London.
In 1565 Sidney was appointed lord deputy of Ireland in place
of Sir Nicholas Arnold, who had succeeded the earl of Sussex in
the previous year. He found the country in a more impoverished
and more turbulent condition than when he left it, the chief
disturbing factor being Shane O'Neill in Ulster. With difficulty
he persuaded Elizabeth to sanction vigorous measures against
O'Neill; and although the latter successfully avoided a decisive
encounter, Sidney restored O'Neill's rival Calvagh O'Donnell
to his rights, and established an English garrison at Derry which
did something to maintain order. In 1567 Shane was murdered
by the MacDonnells of Antrim (see O'NEILL), and Sidney was
then free to turn his attention to the south, where with vigour
and determination he arranged the quarrel between the earls of
Desmond and Ormonde, and laid his hand heavily on other dis-
turbers of the peace; then, returning to Ulster, he compelled
Turlough Luineach O'Neill, Shane's successor in the clan chief-
tainship, to make submission, and placed garrisons at Belfast
and Carrickfergus to overawe Tyrone and the Glynns. In the
autumn of 1567 Sidney went to England, and was absent from
Ireland for the next ten months. On his return he urged upon
Cecil the necessity for measures to improve the economic con-
dition of Ireland, to open up the country by the construction of
roads and bridges, to replace the Ulster tribal institutions by a
system of freehold land tenure, and to repress the ceaseless
disorder prevalent in every part of the island. In pursuance of
this policy Sidney dealt severely with the unruly Butlers in
Munster. At Kilkenny large numbers of Sir Edmund Butler's
followers were hanged, and three of Ormonde's brothers were
attainted by an actof thelrish parliament in 1570. Enlightened
steps were taken for the education of the people, and encourage-
ment was given to Protestant refugees from the Netherlands to
settle in Ireland.
Sidney left Ireland in 1 5 7 1 , aggrieved by the slight appreciation
of his statesmanship shown by the queen; but he returned thither
in September 1575 with increased powers and renewed tokens
of royal approval, to find matters in a worse state than before,
especially in Antrim, where the MacQuillins of the Route and
Sorley Boy MacDonnell (q.v.) were the chief fomenters of disorder.
Having to some extent pacified this northern territory, Sidney
repaired to the south, where he was equally successful in making
his authority respected. He left his mark on the administrative
areas of the island by making shire divisions on the English model.
At an earlier period he had already in the north combined the
districts of the Ardes and Clandeboye to form the county of
Carrickfergus, and had converted the country of the O'Farrells
into the county of Longford; he now carried out a similar
policy in Connaught, where the ancient Irish district of Thomond
became the county Clare, and the counties of Galway, Mayo,
Sligo and Roscommon were also delimited. He suppressed a
rebellion headed by the earl of Clanricarde and his sons in 1576,
and hunted Rory O'More to his death two years later. Meantime
Sidney's methods of taxation had caused discontent among
the gentry of the Pale, who carried their grievances to Queen
Elizabeth. Greatly to Sidney's chagrin the queen censured his
extravagance, and notwithstanding his distinguished services
to the crown he was recalled in September 1578, and was coldly
received by Elizabeth. He lived chiefly at Ludlow Castle for
the remainder of his life, performing his duties as president of
the Welsh Marches, and died there on the sth of May 1 586.
Sir Henry Sidney was the ablest statesman charged with the
government of Ireland in the i6th century; and the meagre
recognition which his unrewarded services received was a con-
spicuous example of the ingratitude of Elizabeth. Sidney
married in 1551 Mary, eldest daughter of John Dudley, duke of
Northumberland, by whom he had three sons and four daughters.
His eldest son was Sir Philip Sidney (q.v.), and his second was
SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP
43
Robert Sidney, ist earl of Leicester (?.».); his daughter Mary
married Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke, and by reason of
her association with her brother Philip was one of the most
celebrated women of her time (see PEMBROKE, EARLS OF).
See Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland, Henry VIII.-
Elizabelh; Calendar of the Carew MSS.; J. O'Donovan's edition of
The Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters (7 vols., Dublin, 1851)'
Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. iii. (6 vols., London, 1807); Richard
Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors (3 vols., London, 1885) ; Calendar
of Ancient Records of Dublin, edited by Sir J. T. Gilbert, vols. i. and ii.
(Dublin, 1889) ; Sir J. T. Gilbert, History of the Viceroys of Ireland
(Dublin, 1865); J. A. Froude, History of England (12 vols., London,
1856-1870). (R. J. M.)
SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP (1554-1586), English poet, statesman
and soldier, eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and his wife Mary
Dudley, was born at Penshurst on the 3oth of November 1554.
His father, Sir Henry Sidney (1529-1586), was three times lord
deputy of Ireland, and, in 1560 became lord president of Wales.
Philip Sidney's childhood was spent at Penshurst; and before he
had completed his tenth year he was nominated by his father
lay rector of Whitford, Flintshire. A deputy was appointed, and
Philip enjoyed the revenue of the benefice for the rest of his life.
On the 1 7th of October 1 564 he was entered at Shrewsbury school,
not far from his father's official residence at Ludlow Castle, on the
same day with his life-long friend and first biographer, Fulke
Greville. An affectionate letter of advice from his father and
mother, written about 1565, was preserved and printed in 1591
(A Very Godly Letter . . . ). In 1568 Sidney was sent to Christ
Church, Oxford, where he formed lasting friendships with
Richard Hakluyt and William Camden. But his chief companion
was Fulke Greville, who had gone to Broadgates Hall (Pembroke
College). Sir Henry Sidney was already anxious to arrange
an advantageous marriage for his son, who was at that time heir
to his uncle, the earl of Leicester; and Sir William Cecil agreed
to a betrothal with his daughter Anne. But in 1571 the match
was broken off, and Anne Cecil married Edward Vere, i7th
earl of Oxford. In that year Philip left Oxford, and, after some
months spent chiefly at court, received the queen's leave in 1572
to travel abroad " for his attaining the knowledge of foreign
languages."
He was attached to the suite of the earl of Lincoln, who was
sent to Paris in that year to negotiate a marriage between Queen
Elizabeth and the due d'Alencon. He was in the house of Sir
Francis Walsingham in Paris during the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew, and the events he witnessed no doubt intensified
his always militant Protestantism. In charge of Dr Watson,
dean, and afterwards bishop, of Winchester, he left Paris for
Lorraine, and in March of the next year had arrived in Frankfort
on the Main. He lodged there in the house of the learned printer
Andrew Wechel, among whose guests was also Hubert Languet.
Fulke Greville describes Philip Sidney when a schoolboy as
characterized by " such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar
gravity, which carried grace and reverence far above greater
years." " Though I lived with him, and knew him from a child,"
he says, " yet I never knew him other than a man." These
qualities attracted to him the friendship of grave students of
affairs, and in France he- formed close connexions with the
Huguenot leaders. Languet, who was an ardent supporter of
the Protestant cause, conceived a great affection for the younger
man, and travelled in his company to Vienna. In October Sidney
left for Italy, having first of all entered into a compact with his
friend to write every week. This arrangement was not strictly
observed, but the extant letters, more numerous on Languet's
side than on Sidney's, afford a considerable insight into Sidney's
moral and political development. Languet's letters abound
with sensible and affectionate advice on his studies and his
affairs generally.
Sidney settled for some time in Venice, and in February 1574
he sat to Paolo Veronese for a portrait, destined for Languet.
His friends seem to have feared that his zeal for Protestantism
might be corrupted by his stay in Italy, and Languet exacted
from him a promise that he would not go to Rome. In July he
was seriously ill, and immediately on his recovery started for
Vienna. From there he accompanied Languet to Poland, where
he is said to have been asked to become a candidate for the vacant
crown. On his return to Vienna he fulfilled vague diplomatic
duties at the imperial court, perfecting himself meanwhile,
in company with Edward Wotton, in the art of horsemanship
under John Pietro Pugliano, whose skill and wit he celebrates
in the opening paragraph of the Defence of Poesie. He addressed
a letter from Vienna on the state of affairs to Lord Burghley,
in December 1574. In the spring of 1575 he followed the court
to Prague, where he received a summons to return home, appar-
ently because Sir Francis Walsingham, who was now secretary of
state, feared that Sidney had leanings to Catholicism.
His sister, Mary Sidney, was now at court, and he had an
influential patron in his uncle, the earl of Leicester. He accom-
panied the queen on one of her royal progresses to Kenilworth, and
afterwards to Chartley Castle, the seat of Walter Devereux, earl
of Essex. There he met Penelope Devereux, the " Stella " of the
sonnets, then a child of twelve. Essex went to Ireland in 1576 to
fill his office as earl marshal, and in September occurred his
mysterious death. Philip Sidney was in Ireland with his father at
the time. Essex on his deathbed had desired a match between
Sidney and his daughter Penelope. Sidney was often harassed
with debt, and seems to have given no serious thought to the
question for some time, but Edward Waterhouse, an agent of
Sir Henry Sidney, writing in November 1576, mentions " the
treaty between Mr Philip and my Lady Penelope " (Sidney
Papers, i. p. 147). In the spring of 1577 Sidney was sent to con-
gratulate Louis, the new elector Palatine, and Rudolf II., who
had become emperor of Germany. He received also general in-
structions to discuss with various princes the advancement of the
Protestant cause.
After meeting Don John of Austria at Louvain, March 1577,
he proceeded to Heidelberg and Prague. He persuaded the
elector's brother, John Casimir, to consider proposals for a
league of Protestant princes, and also for a conference among
the Protestant churches. At Prague he ventured on a harangue
to the emperor, advocating a general league against Spain and
Rome. This address naturally produced no effect, but does not
seem to have been resented as much as might have been expected.
On the return journey he visited William of Orange, who formed
a high opinion of Sidney. In April 1577 Mary Sidney married
Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke, and in the summer
Philip paid the first of many visits to her at her new home at
Wilton. But later in the year he was at court defending his
father's interests, particularly against the earl of Ormonde, who
was doing all he could to prejudice Elizabeth against the lord
deputy.
Sidney drew up a detailed defence of his father's Irish govern-
ment, to be presented to the queen. A rough draft of four of the
seven sections of this treatise is preserved in the British Museum
(Cotton MS., Titus B, xii. pp. 557-559), and even in its frag-
mentary condition it justifies the high estimate formed of it
by Edward Waterhouse (Sidney Papers, p. 228). Sidney watched
with interest the development of affairs in the Netherlands, but
was fully occupied in defending his father's interests at court. He
came also in close contact with many men of letters. In 1578 he
met Edmund Spenser, who in the next year dedicated to him
his Shepherdes Calendar. With Sir Edward Dyer he was a
member of the Areopagus, a society which sought to introduce
classical metres into English verse, and many strange experi-
ments were the result. In 1578 the earl of Leicester entertained
Elizabeth at Wanstead, Essex, with a masque, The Lady oj the
May, written for the occasion by Philip Sidney. But though
Sidney enjoyed a high measure of the queen's favour, he was not
permitted to gratify his desire for active employment. He was
already more or less involved in the disgrace of his uncle
Leicester, following on that nobleman's marriage with Lettice,
countess of Essex, when, in 1579, he had a quarrel on the tennis-
court at Whitehall with the earl of Oxford. Sidney proposed
a duel, which was forbidden by Elizabeth. There was more in
the quarrel than appeared on the surface. Oxford was one of the
chief supporters of the queen's proposed marriage with Alencon,
44
SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP
now due d'Anjou, and Sidney, in giving the lie to Oxford,
affronted the leader of the French party. In January 1580 he
went further in his opposition to the match, addressing to Eliza-
beth a long letter in which the arguments against the alliance
were elaborately set forth. This letter (Sidney Papers, pp. 287-
292), in spite of some judicious compliments, was regarded,
not unnaturally, by the queen as an intrusion. Sidney was
compelled to retire from court, and some of his friends feared
for his personal safety. A letter from Languet shows that he
had written to Elizabeth at the instigation of " those whom he
was bound to obey," probably Leicester and Walsingham.
Sidney retired to Wilton, or the neighbouring village of
Ivychurch, where he joined his sister in writing a paraphrase
of the Psalms. Here too he began his Arcadia, for his sister's
amusement and pleasure. In October 1580 he addressed a long
letter of advice, not without affectionate and colloquial inter-
ruptions, to his brother Robert, then about to start on his con-
tinental tour. This letter (Sidney Papers, p. 283) was printed in
Profitable Instructions for Travellers (1633). It seems that a
promise was exacted from him not to repeat his indiscretions
in the matter of the French marriage, and he returned to court.
In view of the silence of contemporary authority, it is hardly
possible to assign definite dates to the sonnets of Astrophel and
Stella. Penelope Devereux was married against her will to
Robert, Lord Rich, in 1581, probably very soon after the letter
from Penelope's guardian, the earl of Huntingdon, desiring the
queen's consent. The earlier sonnets are not indicative of over-
whelming passion, and it is a reasonable assumption that Sidney's
liking for Penelope only developed into passion when he found
that she was passing beyond his grasp. Mr A. W. Pollard assigns
the magnificent sequence beginning with No. 33 —
" I might! unhappy word — O me, I might,
And then would not, or could not, see my blisse,"-
to the period following on Stella's reappearance at court as Lady
Rich. It has been argued that the whole tenor of Philip's life
and character was opposed to an overmastering passion, and
that there is no ground for attaching biographical value to these
sonnets, which were merely Petrarchan exercises. That Sidney
was, like his contemporaries, a careful and imitative student
of French and Italian sonnets is patent. He himself confesses
in the first of the series that he " sought fit words to paint the
blackest face of woe," by " oft turning others' leaves " before he
obeyed the command of his muse to " look in his heart and write."
The account of his passion is, however, too circumstantial to be
lightly regarded as fiction. Mr Pollard sees in the sonnets a
description of a spiritual struggle between his sense of a high
political mission and a disturbing passion calculated to lessen his
efforts in a larger sphere. It seems certain, at any rate, that he
was not solely preoccupied with scruples against his love for
Stella because she was already married. He had probably been
writing sonnets to Stella for a year or more before her marriage,
and he seems to have continued to address her after his own
marriage. Thomas Nash defined the general argument epigram-
matically as " cruel chastity — the prologue Hope, the epilogue
Despair." But after Stella's final refusal Sidney recovered his
earlier serenity, and the sonnet placed by Mr Pollard at the
end of the series — " Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to
dust " — expresses the triumph of the spirit.
Meanwhile he prosecuted his duties as a courtier and as member
for Kent in parliament. On the isth and i6th of May 1581
he was one of the four challengers in a tournament arranged in
honour of the visit of the duke of Anjou. In 1579 Stephen
Gosson had dedicated to Sidney his School of Abuse, an attack
on the stage, and incidentally on poetry. Sidney was probably
moved by this treatise to write his own Apologie for Poetrie,
dating from about 1581. In 1583 he was knighted in order that
he might act as proxy for Prince John Casimir, who was to be
installed as Knight of the Garter, and in the autumn of that year
he married Frances, daughter of his friend and patron Sir Francis
Walsingham, a girl of fourteen or fifteen years of age. In 1584
he met Giordano Bruno at the house of his friend Fulke Greville,
and two of the philosopher's books are dedicated to him.
Sidney was employed about this time in the translation from
the French of his friend Du Plessis Mornay's treatise on the
Christian religion. He still desired active service and took an
eager interest in the enterprises of Martin Frobisher, Richard
Hakluyt and Walter Raleigh. In 1584 he was sent to France to
condole with Henry III. on the death of his brother, the duke of
Anjou, but the king was at Lyons, and unable to receive the
embassy. Sidney's interest in the struggle of the Protestant
princes against Spain never relaxed. He recommended that
Elizabeth should attack Philip II. in Spain itself. So keen an
interest did he take in this policy that he was at Plymouth about
to sail with Francis Drake's fleet in its expedition against the
Spanish coast (1585) when he was recalled by the queen's orders.
He was, however, given a command in the Netherlands, where he
was made governor of Flushing. Arrived at his post, he con-
stantly urged resolute action on his commander, the earl of
Leicester, but with small result. In July 1586 he made a success-
ful raid on Axel, near Flushing, and in September he joined the
force of Sir John Norris, who was operating against Zutphen.
On the 22nd of the month he joined a small force sent out to
intercept a convoy of provisions. During the fight that ensued
he was struck in the thigh by a bullet. He succeeded in riding
back to the camp. The often-told story that he refused a cup
of water in favour of a dying soldier, with the words, " Thy need
is greater than mine," is in keeping with his character. He owed
his death to a quixotic impulse. Sir William Pelham happening
to set out for the fight without greaves, Sidney also cast off his
leg-armour, which would have defended him from the fatal wound.
He died twenty-five days later at Arnheim, on the i7th of October
1 586. The Dutch desired to have the honour of his funeral, but
the body was taken to England, and, after some delay due to the
demands of Sidney's creditors, received a public funeral in St
Paul's Cathedral on the i6th of February 1587.
Sidney's death was a personal grief to people of all classes.
Some two hundred elegies were produced in his honour. Of all
these tributes the most famous is Astrophel, A Pastoral Elegie,
added to Edmund Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again
(1595). Spenser wrote the opening poem; other contributors
are Sidney's sister, the countess of Pembroke, Lodowick Bryskett
and Matthew Roydon. In the bare enumeration of Sidney's
achievements there seems little to justify the passionate admira-
tion he excited. So calm an observer as William of Orange desired
Fulke Greville to give Elizabeth " his knowledge and opinion of a
fellow-servant of his, that (as he heard) lived unemployed under
her. . . . If he could judge, her Majesty had one of the ripest and
greatest counsellors of estate in Sir Philip Sidney, that this day
lived in Europe " (Fulke Greville, Life of Sidney, ed. 1816, p. 21).
His fame was due first of all to his strong, radiant and lovable
character. Shelley placed him in Adonais among the " inheritors
of unfulfilled renown," as " sublimely mild, a spirit without
spot."
Sidney left a daughter Frances (b. 1584), who married Roger
Manners, earl of Rutland. His widow, who, in spite of the
strictures of some writers, was evidently sincerely attached to him,
married in 1590 Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, and,
after his death in 1601, Richard de Burgh, earl of Clanricarde.
Sidney's writings were not published during his lifetime. A
Worke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion, trans-
lated from the French of Du Plessis Mornay, was completed
and published by Arthur Golding in 1587.
The Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia written by Philippe Sidnei
(1590), in quarto, is the earliest edition of Sidney's famous
romance.1 A folio edition, issued in 1593, is stated to have been
revised and rearranged by the countess of Pembroke, for whose
delectation the romance was written. She was charged to destroy
the work sheet by sheet as it was sent to her. The circumstances
of its composition partly explain the difference between its
intricate sentences, full of far-fetched conceits, repetition and
antithesis, and the simple and dignified phrase of the Apologie for
Poetrie. The style is a concession to the fashionable taste in
1 For a bibliography of this and subsequent editions see the fac-
simile reprint (1891) of this quarto, edited by Dr Oskar Sommer.
SIDNEY— SIDON
45
literature which the countess may reasonably be supposed to
have shared; but Sidney himself, although he was no friend to
euphuism, was evidently indulging his own mood in this highly
decorative prose. The main thread of the story relates how the
princes Musidorus and Pyrocles, the latter disguised as a woman,
Zelmane, woo the princesses Pamela and Philoclea, daughters of
Basilius and Gynaecia, king and queen of Arcady. The shepherds
and shepherdesses occupy a humble place in the story. Sidney
used a pastoral setting for a romance of chivalry complicated
by the elaborate intrigue of Spanish writers. Nor are these
intrigues of a purely innocent and pastoral nature. Sidney
described the passion of love under many aspects, and the guilty
queen Gynaecia is a genuine tragic heroine. The loose frame-
work of the romance admits of descriptions of tournaments,
Elizabethan palaces and gardens and numerous fine speeches.
It also contains some lyrics of much beauty. Charles I. recited
and copied out shortly before his death Pamela's prayer, which
is printed in the Eikon Basilike. Milton reproached him in the
Eikonoklastes with having " borrowed to a Christian use prayers
offered to a heathen god . . . and that in no serious book, but
in the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia."
Professor Courthope (Hist, of English Poetry, i. 215) points out
that the tragedy of Sidney's life, the divorce between his ideals
of a nobly active life and the enforced idleness of a courtier's
existence, is intimately connected with his position as a pioneer
in fiction, in which the life represented is tacitly recognized as
being contrary to the order of existence. Sidney's wide acquaint-
ance with European literature is reflected in this book, but he
was especially indebted to the Arcadia of Jacopo Sannazaro, and
still more to George Montemayor's imitation of Sannazaro, the
Diana Enamorada. The artistic defects of the Arcadia in no way
detracted from its popularity. Both Shakespeare and Spenser
were evidently acquainted with it. John Day's lie of Guls, and
the plots of Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge, and of
James Shirley's Arcadia, were derived from it. The book had
more than one supplement. Gervase Markham, Sir William
Alexander (earl of Stirling) and Richard Beling wrote con-
tinuations.
The series of sonnets to Stella were printed in 1591 as Sir P.S.:
His Astrophel and Stella, by Thomas Newman, with an intro-
ductory epistle by T. Nash, and some sonnets by other writers.
In the same year Newman issued another edition with many
changes in the text and without Nash's preface. His first
edition was (probably later) reprinted by Matthew Lownes.
In 1598 the sonnets were reprinted in the folio edition of Sidney's
works, entitled from its most considerable item The Countesse
of Pembroke's Arcadia, edited by Lady Pembroke, with con-
siderable additions. The songs are placed in their proper position
among the sonnets, instead of being grouped at the end, and two
of the most personal poems (possibly suppressed out of con-
sideration for Lady Rich in the first instance), which afford the
best key to the interpretation of the series, appear for the first
time. Sidney's sonnets adhere more closely to French than to
Italian models. The octave is generally fairly regular on two
rhymes, but the sestet usually terminates with a couplet. The
Apologie for Poetrie was one of the " additions " to the countess
of Pembroke's Arcadia (1598), where it is entitled " The Defence
of Poesie." It first appeared separately in 1594 (unique copy
in the Rowfant Library, reprint 1904, Camb. Univ. Press).
Sidney takes the word " poetry " in the wide sense of any imagina-
tive work, and deals with its various divisions. Apart from the
subject matter, which is interesting enough, the book has a
great value for the simple, direct and musical prose in which it is
written. The Psalmes of David, the paraphrase in which he
collaborated with his sister, remained in MS. until 1823, when it
was edited by S. W. Singer. A translation of part of the Divine
Sepmaine of G. Salluste du Bartas is lost. There are two pastorals
by Sidney in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody (1602).
Letters and Memorials of State . . . (1746) is the title of an in-
valuable collection of letters and documents relating to the Sidney
family, transcribed from originals at Penshurst and elsewhere by
Arthur Collins. Fulke Greville's Life of the Renowned Sir Philip
Sidney is a panegyric dealing chiefly with his public policy. The
Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet was trans-
lated from the Latin and published with a memoir by Steuart A.
Pears (1845). The best biography of Sidney is A Memoir of Sir
Philip Sidney by H. R. Fox Bourne (1862). A revised life by the
same author is included in the " Heroes of the Nations " series (1891).
Critical appreciation is available in J. A. Symonds's Sir Philip
Sidney (1886), in the " English Men of Letters " series; in J. J. A.
Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (1890) ; and in
modern editions of Sidney's works, among which may be mentioned
Mr A. W. Pollard's edition (1888) of Astrophel and Stella, Professor
Arbor's reprint (1868) of An Apologie for Poetrie, and Mr Sidney Lee's
Elizabethan Sonnets (1904) in the re-issue of Professor Arber's English
Garner, where the sources of Sidney's sonnets are fully discussed.
See also a collection of Sidneiana printed for the Roxburghe Club in
1837, a notice by Mrs Humphry Ward in Ward's English Poets,
i. 341 seq., and a dissertation by Dr K. Brunhuber, Sir Philip
Sidney's Arcadia und ihre Nachlaufer (Niirnberg, 1903). A com-
plete text of Sidney's prose and poetry, edited by Albert Feuillerat,
is to be included in the Cambridge English Classics.
SIDNEY, a city and the county-seat of Shelby county, Ohio,
U.S.A., on the Miami river, about 33 m. S. by W. of Lima.
Pop. (1890) 4850; (1900) 5688, including 282 foreign-born and
108 negroes; (1910) 6607. Sidney is served by the Cleveland,
Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Cincinnati, Hamilton &
Dayton, and the Western Ohio (electric) railways. The city is
situated on an elevated tableland, in an agricultural region.
Sidney has a public library, and a monumental building, a
memorial, erected in 1875, to the soldiers in the American Civil
War, and now devoted to various public uses. The river here
provides some water-power, and the city has various manu-
factures. Sidney was laid out as the county-seat in 1819, was
incorporated as a village in 1831 and first chartered as a city
in 1897.
SIDON (Phoen. px, Hebrew p-s, Assyr. Sidunnu, Egypt.
Diduna), formerly the principal city of Phoenicia, now a small
town of about 15,000 inhabitants, situated on the Syrian coast
between Beirut and Sur (Tyre). The name, which the Arabs
now pronounce Saida, has been explained as meaning " fish-
town " (cf. Hebr. iis " to hunt," in Phoen. perhaps " to fish ");
more likely it is connected with the god Sid, who is known only
as an element in proper names (see Cooke, North-Sent. Inscrr.
p. 91); possibly both town and people were named after him.
The ancient city extended some 800 yds. inland from the shore
over ground which is now covered by fruit-gardens. From a
series of inscriptions, all giving the same text, discovered at
Bostan esh-Shekh, a little way to the N. of Saida, we learn that
the ancient city was divided into three divisions at least, one of
which was called " Sidon by the sea," and another " Sidon on the
plain " (?) (see N.-Sem. Inscrr. App. i.). In front of the flat
promontory to which the modern Sidon is confined there stretches
northwards and southwards a rocky peninsula; at the northern
extremity of this begins a series of small rocks enclosing the
harbour, which is a very bad one. The port was formerly pro-
tected on the north by the Qal'at el-Bahr (" Sea Castle "), a
building of the i3th century, situated on an island still connected
with the mainland by a bridge. On the S. side of the town lay
the so-called Egyptian harbour, which was filled up in the I7th
century in order to keep out the Turks. The wall by which
Sidon is at present surrounded is pierced by two gates; at the
southern angle, upon a heap of rubbish, stand the remains of the
citadel. The streets are very narrow, and the buildings of any
interest few; most prominent are some large caravanserais
belonging to the period of Sidon's modern prosperity, and the
large mosque, formerly a church of the knights of St John.
The inhabitants support themselves mainly on the produce of
their luxuriant gardens; but the increasing trade of Beirut
has withdrawn the bulk of the commerce from Sidon. In earlier
days Phoenicia produced excellent wine, that of Sidon being
specially esteemed; it is mentioned in an Aramaic papyrus from
Egypt (4th century B.C., N.S.I, p. 213). One of the chief in-
dustries of Sidon used to be the manufacture of glass from the
fine sand of the river Belus. To the S.E. of the town lies the
Phoenician necropolis, which has been to a great extent investi-
gated. The principal finds are sarcophagi, and next to these
sculptures and paintings. It was here that the superb Greek
46
SIEBENGEBIRGE— SIEDLCE
sarcophagi, which are now in the Imperial Museum at Constanti-
nople, were found, and the sarcophagi of the two Sidonian kings
Eshmunazar (Louvre) and Tabnith (Imperial Museum, Con-
stantinople) , both of them with important Phoenician inscriptions.
The ancient history of Sidon is discussed in the article
PHOENICIA. In A.D. 325 a bishop of Sidon attended the Council
of Nicaea. In 637-638 the town was taken by the Arabs.
During the Crusades it was alternately in the possession of the
Franks and the Mahommedans, but finally fell into the hands of
the latter in 1291. As the residence of the Druse Amir Fakhr
ud-Din, it rose to some prosperity about the beginning of the
1 7th century, but towards the close of the i8th its commerce again
passed away and has never returned. The biblical references to
Sidon are Gen. x. 15 (the people), xlix. 13; Is. xxiii. 1-14;
Ezek. xxvii. 8; Acts xxvii. 3. Sidon is nearly always mentioned
along with Tyre — Jer. xxvii. 3, xlvii. 4; Ezra iii. 7; Joel iii. 4;
Mark iii. 8 and Luke vi. 17; Mark vii. 24, 31, and Matt. xv. 21 ;
Matt. xi. 21 and Luke x. 13 f. ; Acts xii. 20. In the Old Testa-
ment, as frequently in Greek literature, " Sidonians " is used
not in a local but in an ethnic sense, and means " Phoenicians,"
hence the name of Sidon was familiar to the Greeks earlier than
that of Tyre, though the latter was the more important city
(ed. Meyer, Encycl. Bibl. col. 4505).
See Robinson, Bibl. Res. ii. 478 ff. ; Prutz, Aus Phonicien (1876),
98 ff. ; Pietschmann, Gesch. d. Phonizier (1889), 53-58; Hamdy Bey
and T. Reinach, Necropole royale a Sidon (1892-1896); A. Socin in
Baedeker, Pal. u. Syrien. (G. A. C.*)
SIEBENGEBIRGE (" The Seven Hills "), a cluster of hills in
Germany, on the Rhine, 6 m. above Bonn. They are of volcanic
origin, and form the north-western spurs of the Westerwald.
In no part of the Rhine valley is the scenery more attractive ;
crag and forest, deep dells and gentle vine-clad slopes, ruined
castles and extensive views over the broad Rhine and the plain
beyond combine to render the Siebengebirge the most favourite
tourist resort on the whole Rhine. The hills are as follows:
the steep Drachenfels (1067 ft.), abutting on the Rhine and
surmounted by the ruins of an old castle; immediately behind it,
and connected by a narrow ridge, the Wolkenburg (1076 ft.);
lying apart, and to the N. of these, the Petersberg (1096 ft.),
with a pilgrimage chapel of St Peter; then, to the S. of these
three, a chain of four — viz. the Olberg (1522 ft.), the highest of
the range; the Lowenburg (1506 ft.); the Lohrberg (1444 ft.),
and, farthest away, the Nonnenstromberg (1107 ft.). At the
foot of the Drachenfels, on the north side, lies the little town
of Konigswinter, whence a mountain railway ascends to the
summit, and a similar railway runs up the Petersberg. The
ruins which crown almost every hill are those of strongholds of
the archbishops of Cologne and mostly date from the 1 2th century.
See von Dechen, Geognostischer Fiihrer in das Siebengebirge
(Bonn, 1861); von Stiirtz, Fiihrer durch das Siebengebirge (Bonn,
1893); Laspeyres, Das Siebengebirge am Rhein (Bonn, 1901).
SIEBOLD, CARL THEODOR ERNST VON (1804-1883),
German physiologist and zoologist, the son of a physician and a
descendant of what Lorenz Oken called the " Asclepiad family
of Siebolds," was born at Wiirzburg on the i6th of February
1804. Educated in medicine and science chiefly at the university
of Berlin, he became successively professor of zoology, physiology
and comparative anatomy in Konigsberg, Erlangen, Freiburg,
Breslau and Munich. In conjunction with F. H. Stannius he
published (1845-1848) a Manual of Comparative Anatomy, and
along with R. A. Kolliker he founded in 1848 a journal which
soon took a leading place in biological literature, Zeitschrift fiir
•wissenschaftliche Zoologie. He was also a laborious and successful
helminthologist and entomologist, in both capacities contributing
many valuable papers to his journal, which he continued to
edit until his death at Munich on the 7th of April 1885. In these
ways, without being a man of marked genius, but rather an
industrious and critical observer, he came to fill a peculiarly
distinguished position in science, and was long reckoned, what
his biographer justly calls him, the Nestor of German zoology.
See Ehlers, Zeitschr. f. wiss. Zool. (1885).
SIEBOLD, PHILIPP FRANZ VON (1796-1866), scientific
explorer of Japan, elder brother of the physiologist, was born
at Wiirzburg, Germany, on the i7th of February 1796. He
studied medicine and natural science at Wiirzburg, and obtained
his doctor's diploma in 1820. In 1822 he entered the service
of the king of the Netherlands as medical officer to the East
Indian Army. On his arrival at Batavia he was attached to a
new mission to Japan, sent by the Dutch with a view to improve
their trading relations with that country. Siebold was well
equipped with scientific apparatus, and he remained in Japan
for six years, with headquarters at the Dutch settlement on the
little island of Deshima. His medical qualifications enabled him
to find favoui with the Japanese, and he gathered a vast amount
of information concerning a country then very little known,
especially concerning its natural history and ethnography. He
had comparatively free access to the interior, and his reputation
spreading far and wide brought him visitors from all parts of
the country. His valuable stores of information were enriched
by trained natives whom he sent to collect for him in the interior.
In 1824 he published De historiae naluralis in Japonia statu
and in 1832 his splendid Fauna Japonica. His knowledge of the
language enabled him also in 1826 to issue from Batavia his
Epitome linguae Japonicae. In Deshima he also laid the founda-
tion of his Catalogus librorum Japonicorum and Isagoge in
bibliothecam Japonicam, published after his return to Europe,
as was his Bibliolheca Japonica, which, with the co-operation of
J. Hoffmann, appeared at Leiden in 1833. During the visit
which he was permitted to make to Yedo (Tokio), Siebold made
the best of the rare opportunity; his zeal, indeed, outran his
discretion, since, for obtaining a native map of the country, he
was thrown into prison and compelled to quit Japan on the ist of
January 1830. On his return to Holland he was raised to the
rank of major, and in 184? to that of colonel. After his arrival
in Europe he began to give to the world the fruits of his researches
and observations in Japan. His Nippon; Archiv zur Beschrei-
bung von Japan und dessen Neben- und Schulz-Landern was issued
in five quarto volumes of text, with six folio volumes of atlas and
engravings. He also issued many fragmentary papers on various
aspects of Japan. In 1854 he published at Leiden Urkundliche
Darstellung der Bestrebungen Nicderlands und Russlands zur
Erojfnung Japans. In 1859 Siebold undertook a second journey
to Japan, and was invited by the emperor to his court. In 1861
he obtained permission from the Dutch government to enter the
Japanese service as negotiator between Japan and the powers of
Europe, and in the same year his eldest son was made interpreter
to the English embassy at Yedo. Siebold was, however, soon
obliged by various intrigues to retire from his post, and ultimately
from Japan. Returning by Java to Europe in 1862, he set up his
ethnographical collections, which were ultimately secured by
the government of Bavaria and removed to Munich. He con-
tinued to publish papers on various Japanese subjects, and
received honours from many of the learned societies of Europe.
He died at Munich on the i8th of October 1866.
See biography by Moritz Wagner, in Allgemeine Zeilung, I3th to
i6th of November 1866.
SIEDLCE (Russian Syedlets), a government of Russian Poland,
between the Vistula and the Bug, having the governments of
Warsaw on the W., Lomza on the N., Grodno and Volhynia on
the E., Lublin on the S., and Radom on the S.W. Its area is
5533 sq. m. The surface is mostly flat, only a few hilly tracts
appearing in the middle, around Biala, and in the east on the
banks of the Bug. Extensive marshes occur in the north and in
the south-east. Cretaceous, Jurassic and Tertiary strata cover
the surface, and are overlain by widely spread Glacial deposits.
The valley of the Vistula is mostly wide, with several terraces
covered with sand-dunes or peat-bogs. Siedlce is drained by the
Vistula, which borders it for 50 m. on the west ; by the Bug, which
is navigable from Opalin in Volhynia and flows for 170 m. on
the east and north-east borders; by the Wieprz, a tributary
of the Vistula, which is also navigable, and flows for 25 m. along
the southern boundary; and by the Liwiec, a tributary of the
Bug, which is navigable for some 30 m. below Wegrow. Of
the total area only 5-2% is unproductive; 48-1% is under
crops and 17-2 under meadows and pasture land. The estimated
SIEDLCE— SIEMENS
47
population in 1906 was 907,700. The inhabitants consist of
Little Russians (40%), Poles (43%), Jews (155%) and Germans
(15%). The government is divided into nine districts, the chief
towns of which are the capital Siedlce, Biala, Konstantinow,
Garwolin, Lukow, Radzyn, Sokolow, VVegrow, Wlodawa. The
main occupation is agriculture, the principal crops being rye,
wheat, oats, barley and potatoes. The area under forests
amounts to 19-6% of the total. Live-stock breeding is second
in importance to agriculture. Manufactures and trade are in-
significant.
SIEDLCE, a town of Russia, capital of the government of
the same name, 56 m. E.S.E. of the city of Warsaw, on the Brest-
Litovsk railway. It is a Roman Catholic episcopal see. The
Oginskis, to whom it belonged, have embellished it with a palace
and gardens; but it is nothing more than a large village. Pop.
23,714 (1897), two-thirds Jews.
SIEGBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine
Province, on the river Sieg, 16 m. by rail S.E. of Cologne by the
railway to Giessen. Pop. (1905) 14,878. It has a royal shell
factory, calico-printing mills, lignite mines, stone quarries and
pottery and tobacco factories. The parish church, dating from
the i3th century, possesses several richly decorated reliquaries
of the 1 2th to 1 5th centuries. The buildings of the Benedictine
abbey, founded in 1066, are now used as a prison. The town,
which was founded in the nth century, attained the height of
its prosperity in the i$th and i6th centuries owing to its pottery
wares. Siegburg pitchers (Siegburgcr Krtige) were widely famed.
Their shape was often fantastic and they are now eagerly sought
by collectors.
See R. Heinekamp, Siegburgs Vergangenheit und Gcgenwart
(Siegburg, 1897); and Renard, Die Kunstdenkmdler des Siegkreises
(Dusseldorf, 1907).
SIEGE (O. Fr. sege, siege, mod. siege, seat, ultimately from
sedere, to sit, cf . Class. Lat. obsidium, a siege), the " sitting down "
of an army or military force before a fortified place for the purpose
of taking it, either by direct military operations or by starving
it into submission (see FORTIFICATION AND SIEGECRAFT). A
special form of coin is known as a " siege-piece." These are
coins that were struck during a siege of a town when the ordinary
mints were closed or their issues were not available. Such coins
were commonly of special shape to distinguish them from the
normal coinage, and were naturally of rough workmanship.
A common shape for the siege pieces which were issued during the
Great Rebellion was the lozenge. A noteworthy example is a
shilling siege-piece struck at Newark in 1645 (see TOKEN MONEY).
SIEGEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Westphalia, situated 63 m. E. of Cologne by rail, on the Sieg,
a tributary entering the Rhine opposite Bonn. Pop. (1905)
25,201. The town contains two palaces of the former princes
of Nassau-Siegen, a technical and a mining school. The sur-
rounding district, to which it gives its name, abounds in iron-
mines, and iron founding and smelting are the most important
branches of industry in and near the town. Large tanneries
and leather works, and factories for cloth, paper and machinery,
are among the other industrial establishments.
Siegen was the capital of an early principality belonging to the
house of Nassau; and from 1606 onwards it gave name to the
junior branch of Nassau-Siegen. Napoleon incorporated Siegen
in the grand-duchy of Berg in 1806; and in 1815 the congress of
Vienna assigned it to Prussia, under whose rule it has nearly
quintupled its population. Rubens is said to have been born here
in 1577.
See Cuno, Geschichte der Stadt Siegen (Dillenburg, 1873).
SIEMENS, ERNST WERNER VON (1816-1892), German
electrician, was born on the i3th of December 1816 at Lenthe
in Hanover. After attending the gymnasium at Lubeck, he
entered the Prussian army as a volunteer, and for three years was
a pupil in the Military Academy at Berlin. In 1838 he received
a commission as lieutenant in the artillery, and six years later
he was appointed to the responsible post of superintendent of the
artillery workshops. In 1848 he had the task of protecting the
port of Kiel against the Danish fleet, and as commandant of
Friedrichsort built the fortifications for the defence, of Eckern-
fb'rde harbour. In the same year he was entrusted with the
laying of the first telegraph line in Germany, that between
Berlin and Frankfort-on-Main, and with that work his military
career came to an end. Thenceforward he devoted his energies
to furthering the interests of the newly founded firm of Siemens
and Halske, which under his guidance became one of the most
important electrical undertakings in the world, with branches
in different countries that gave it an international influence; in
the London house he was associated with Sir William Siemens,
one of his younger brothers. Although he had a decided pre-
dilection for pure research, his scientific work was naturally
determined to a large extent by the demands of his business, and,
as he said when he was admitted to the Berlin Academy of
Sciences in 1874, the filling up of scientific voids presented itself
to him as a technical necessity. Considering that his entrance
into commercial life was almost synchronous with the introduc-
tion of electric telegraphy into Germany, it is not surprising that
many of his inventions and discoveries relate to telegraphic
apparatus. In 1847, when he was a member of the committee
appointed to consider the adoption of the electric telegraph
by the government, he suggested the use of gutta-percha as
a material for insulating metallic conductors. Then he in-
vestigated the electrostatic charges of telegraph conductors and
their laws, and established methods for testing underground
and submarine cables and for locating faults in their insula-
tion; further, he carried out observations and experiments on
electrostatic induction and the retardation it produced in the
speed of the current. He also devised apparatus for duplex and
diplex telegraphy, and automatic recorders. In a somewhat less
specialized sphere, he was an early advocate of the desirability of
establishing some easily reproducible basis for the measurement
of electrical resistance, and suggested that the unit should be
taken as the resistance of a column of pure mercury one metre
high and one square millimetre in cross-section, at a temperature
of o° C. Another task to which he devoted much time was the
construction of a selenium photometer, depending on the property
possessed by that substance of changing its electrical resistance
according to the intensity of the light falling upon it. He also
claimed to have been, in 1866, the discoverer of the principle of
self-excitation in dynamo-electric machines, in which the residual
magnetism of the iron of the electro-magnets is utilized for
excitation, without the aid of permanent steel magnets or of a
separate exciting current. In another brancn of science he wrote
several papers on meteorological subjects, discussing among other
things the causation of the winds and the forces which produce,
maintain and retard the motions of the air. In 1886 he devoted
half a million marks to the foundation of the Physikalisch-
Technische Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg, and in 1888 he
was ennobled. He died at Berlin on the 6th of December 1892.
His scientific memoirs and addresses were collected and pub-
lished in an English translation in 1892, and three years later a
second volume appeared, containing his technical papers.
SIEMENS, SIR WILLIAM [KARL WILHELM] (1823-1883),
British inventor, engineer and natural philosopher, was born
at Lenthe in Hanover on the 4th of April 1823. After being
educated in the polytechnic school of Magdeburg and the uni-
versity of Gottingen, he visited England at the age of nineteen,
in the hope of introducing a process in electroplating invented
by himself and his brother Werner. The invention was adopted
by Messrs Elkington, and Siemens returned to Germany to enter
as a pupil the engineering works of Count Stolberg at Magdeburg.
In 1844 he was again in England with another invention, the
" chronometric " or differential governor for steam engines.
Finding that British patent laws afforded the inventor a pro-
tection which was then wanting in Germany, he thenceforth made
England his home; but it was not till 1859 that he formally
became a naturalized British subject. After some years spent
in active invention and experiment at mechanical works near
Birmingham, he went into practice as an engineer in 1851.
He laboured mainly in two distinct fields, the applications
of heat and the applications of electricity, and was characterized
48
SIENA
in a very rare degree by a combination of scientific comprehension
with practical instinct. In both fields he played a part which
would have been great in either alone; and, in addition to this,
he produced from time to time miscellaneous inventions and
scientific papers sufficient in themselves to have established a
reputation. His position was recognized by his election in 1862
to the Royal Society, and later to the presidency of the Institu-
tion of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Telegraph Engineers,
the Iron and Steel Institute, and the British Association; by
honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Glasgow,
Dublin and Wurzburg; and by knighthood (in 1883). He died
in London on the igth of November 1883.
In the application of heat Siemens's work began just after J. P.
Joule's experiments had placed the doctrine of the conservation of
energy on a sure basis. While Rankine, Clausius and Lord Kelvin
were developing the dynamical theory of heat as a matter of physical
and engineering theory, Siemens, in the light of the new ideas, made
a bold attempt to improve the efficiency of the steam engine as a
converter of heat into mechanical work. Taking up the regenerator
— a device invented by Robert Stirling twenty years before, the im-
portance of which had meanwhile been ignored — he applied it to the
steam engine in the form of a regenerative condenser with some
success in 1847, and in 1855 engines constructed on Siemens's plan
were worked at the Paris exhibition. Later he also attempted to
apply the regenerator to internal combustion or gas engines. In
1856 he introduced the regenerative furnace, the idea of his brother
Friedrich (1826-1904), with whom he associated himself in directing
its applications. In an ordinary furnace a very large part of the heat
of combustion is lost by being carried off in the hot gases which pass
up the chimney. In the regenerative furnace the hot gases pass
through a regenerator, or chamber stacked with loose bricks, which
absorb the heat. When the bricks are well heated the hot gases are
diverted so to pass through another similar chamber, while the air
necessary for combustion, before it enters the furnace, is made to
traverse the heated chamber, taking up as it goes the heat which has
been stored in the bricks. After a suitable interval the air currents
are again reversed. The process is repeated periodically, with the
result that the products of combustion escape only after being
cooled, the heat which they take from the furnace being in great part
carried back in the heated air. But another invention was required
before the regenerative furnace could be thoroughly successful.
This was the use of gaseous fuel, produced by the crude distillation
and incomplete combustion of coal in a distinct furnace or gas-pro-
ducer. From this the gaseous fuel passes by a flue to the regenerative
furnace, and it, as well as the entering air, is heated by the regenerative
method, four brick-stacked chambers being used instead of two.
The complete invention was applied at Chance's glass-works in
Birmingham in 1861, and furnished the subject of Faraday's farewell
lecture to the Royal Institution. It was soon applied to many
industrial processes, but it found its greatest development a few years
later at the hands of Siemens himself in the manufacture of steel.
To produce steel directly from the ore, or by melting together
wrought-iron scrap with cast-iron upon the open hearth, had been
in his mind from the first, but it was not till 1867, after two years of
experiment in " sample steel works " erected by himself for the
purpose, that he achieved success. The product is a mild steel of
exceptionally trustworthy quality, the use of which for boiler-plates
has done much to make possible the high steam-pressures that are
now common, and has consequently contributed, indirectly, to that
improvement in the thermodynamic efficiency of heat engines which
Siemens had so much at heart. Just before his death he was again
at work upon the same subject, his plan being to use gaseous fuel
from a Siemens producer in place of solid fuel beneath the boiler, and
to apply the regenerative principle to boiler furnaces. His faith in
gaseous fuel led him to anticipate that it would in time supersede
solid coal for domestic and industrial purposes, cheap gas being
supplied either from special works or direct from the pit; and among
his last inventions was a house grate to burn gas along with coke,
which he regarded as a possible cure for city smoke.
In electricity Siemens's name is closely associated with the growth
of land and submarine telegraphs, the invention and development
of the dynamo, and the application of electricity to lighting and to
locomotion. In 1860, with his brother Werner, he invented the
earliest form of what is now known as the Siemens armature; and in
1867 he communicated a paper to the Royal Society " On the Con-
version of Dynamical into Electrical Force without the aid of Per-
manent Magnetism," in which he announced the invention by
Werner Siemens of the dynamo-electric machine, an invention which
was also reached independently and almost simultaneously by Sir
Charles Wheatstone and by S. A. Varley. The Siemens-Alteneck or
multiple-coil armature followed in 1873. While engaged in con-
structing a trans-Atlantic cable for the Direct United States Tele-
graph Company, Siemens designed the very original and successful
ship " Faraday," by which that and other cables were laid. One of
the last of his works was the Portrush and Bushmills electric tram-
way, in the north of Ireland, opened in 1883, where the water-power
of the river Bush drives a Siemens dynamo, from which the electric
energy is conducted to another dynamo serving as a motor on the
car. In the Siemens electric furnace the intensely hot atmosphere
of the electric arc between carbon points is employed to melt re-
fractory metals. Another of the uses to which he turned electricity
was to employ light from arc lamps as a substitute for sunlight in
hastening the growth and fructification of plants. Among his
miscellaneous inventions were the differential governor already
alluded to, and a highly scientific modification of it, described to the
Royal Society in 1866; a water-meter which acts on the principle of
counting the number of turns made by a small reaction turbine
through which the supply of water flows; an electric thermometer
and pyrometer, in which temperature is determined by its effect on
the electrical conductivity of metals; an attraction meter for de-
termining very slight variations in the intensity of a gravity; and
the bathometer, by which he applied this idea to the problem of
finding the depth of the sea without a sounding line. In a paper
read before the Royal Society in 1882, " On the Conservation of Solar
Energy," he suggested a bold but unsatisfactory theory of the sun's
heat, in which he sought to trace on a cosmic scale an action similar
to that of the regenerative furnace. His fame, however, does not
rest on his contributions to pure science, valuable as some of these
were. His strength lay in his grasp of scientific principles, in his
skill to perceive where and how they could be applied to practical
affairs, in his zealous and instant pursuit of thought with action,
and in the indomitable persistence with which he clung to any basis of
effort that seemed to him theoretically sound.
Siemens's writings consist for the most part of lectures and papers
scattered through the scientific journals and the publications of the
Royal Society, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers, the Iron and Steel Institute, the British
Association, &c. A biography by Dr William Pole was published in
1888. (J. A. E.)
SIENA, a city and archiepiscopal see of Tuscany, Italy,
capital of the province of Siena, 59 m. by rail S. of Florence and
31 m. direct. Pop. (1901) 25,539 (town); 40,423 (commune).
The area of the city within the walls is about 23 sq. m., and the
height above sea-level 1115 ft. The plan, spreading from the
centre over three hills, closely resembles that of Perugia. The
city possesses a university, founded in 1263 and limited to the
faculties of law and medicine. Among the other public institu-
tions the following are the more important: the town library,
first opened to students in the I7th century; the Archivio, a
record office, instituted in 1858, containing a valuable and
splendidly arranged collection of documents; the Fine Arts
Institution, founded in 1816; and the natural history museum
of the Royal Academy of the Physiocritics, inaugurated in the
same year. There are also many flourishing charities, including
an excellent hospital and a school for the deaf and dumb. The
chief industries are weaving and agriculture.
The public festivals of Siena known as the " Palio delle Con-
trade " have a European celebrity. They are held in the public
square, the curious and historic Piazza del Campo (now Piazza
di Vittorio Emanuele) in shape resembling an ancient theatre, on
the 2nd of July and the i6th of August of each year; they date
from the middle ages and were instituted in commemoration of
victories and in honour of the Virgin Mary (the old title of Siena,
as shown by seals and medals, having been " Sena vetus civitas
Virginis "). In the isth and i6th centuries the celebrations
consisted of bull-fights. At the close of the i6th century these
were replaced by races with mounted buffaloes, and since
1650 by (ridden) horses. Siena is divided into seventeen
contrade (wards), each with a distinct appellation and a
chapel and flag of its own; and every year ten of these
contrade, chosen by lot, send each one horse to compete for
the prize palio or banner. The aspect of Siena during these
meetings is very characteristic, and the whole festivity bears
a medieval stamp in harmony with the architecture and history
of the town.
Among the noblest fruits of Sienese art are the public buildings
adorning the city. The cathedral, one of the" finest examples
of Italian Gothic architecture, obviously influenced in plan by
the abbey of S. Galgano (infra}, built in black and white marble,
was begun in the early years of the I3th century, but interrupted
by the plague of 1248 and wars at home and abroad, and in 1317
its walls were extended to the baptistery of San Giovanni;
a further enlargement was begun in 1339 but never carried out,
and a few ruined walls and arches alone remain to show the
SIENA
49
magnificence of the uncompleted design, which would have
produced one of the largest churches in the world.
The splendid west front, of tricuspidal form, enriched with a
multitude of columns, statues and inlaid marbles, is said to have been
begun by Giovanni Pisano, but really dates from after 1370; it
was finished in 1380, and closely resembles that of Orvieto, which is
earlier in date (begun in 1310). Both facades have been recently
restored, and the effect of them not altogether improved by modern
mosaics. The fine Romanesque campanile belongs to the first halt
of the 1 4th century. Conspicuous among the art treasures ot the
interior is the well-known octagonal pulpit by Niccola Pisano, dating
from 1266-1268. It rests on columns supported by lions, and i
finely sculptured. Numerous statues and bas-reliefs by Renaissance
artists adorn the various altars and chapels. The cathedral pave-
ment is almost unique. It is inlaid with designs in colour and black
and white, representing Biblical and legendary subjects, and is
supposed to have been begun by Duccio della Buoninsegna. But the
finest portions beneath the domes, with scenes from the history ol
Abraham, Moses and Elijah, are by Domenico Beccafumi and are
executed with marvellous boldness and effect. The choir stalls also
deserve mention: the older ones (remains of the original choir) are
in tarsia work; the others, dating from the l6th century, are carved
from Riccio's designs. The Piccolomini Library, adjoining the
duomo, was founded by Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini (afterwards
Pius III.) in honour of his uncle, Pius II. Here are Pinturicchio s
famous frescoes of scenes from the life of the latter pontiff, and the
collection of choir books (supported on sculptured desks) with
splendid illuminations by Sienese and other artists. The church of
San Giovanni, the ancient baptistery, beneath the cathedral is ap-
proached by an outer flight of marble steps built in 1451. It has a
beautiful but incomplete facade designed by Giovanni di Mino del
Pellicciaio in 1382, and a marvellous font with bas-reliefs by Dona-
tello, Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia and other 1 5th-century sculptors.
The Opera del Duomo contains Duccio's famous Madonna, painted
for the cathedral in 1308-131 1 , and other works of art.
Among the other churches are S. Maria di Provenzano, a vast
baroque building of some elegance, designed by Schifardini (1594);
Sant' Agostino, rebuilt by Vanvitelli in 1755, containing a Cruci-
fixion and Saints by Perugino, a Massacre of the Innocents by
Matteo di Giovanni, the Coming of the Magi by Sodoma, and a
St Anthony by Spagnoletto (?); the beautiful church of the Servites
(i5th century), which contains another Massacre of the Innocents by
Matteo di Giovanni and other good examples of the Sienese school ;
San Francesco, designed by Agostino and Agnolo about 1326, and
now restored, which once possessed many fine paintings by Duccio
Buoninsegna, Lorenzetti, Sodoma and Beccafumi, some of which
perished in the great fire of 1655 ; San Domenico, a fine 13th-century
building with a single nave and transept, containing Sodoma's
splendid fresco the Swoon of St Catherine, the Madonna of Guido da
Siena, 1281, and a crucifix by Sano di Pietro. This church crowns the
Fontebranda hill above the famous fountain of that name im-
mortalized by Dante, and in a steep lane below stands the house of
St Catherine, now converted into a church and oratory, and main-
tained at the expense of the inhabitants of the Contrada dell' Oca.
It contains some good pictures by_ Pacchia and other works of art,
but is chiefly visited for its historic interest and as a striking memorial
of the characteristic piety of the Sienese. The Accademia di Belle
Arti contains a good collection of pictures of the Sienese school,
illustrating its development.
The communal palace in the Piazza del Campo was begun in 1288
and finished in 1309. It is built of brick, is a fine specimen of Pointed
Gothic, and was designed by Agostino and Agnolo. The light and
elegant tower (Torre del Mangla) soaring from one side of the palace
was begun in 1338 and finished after 1348, and the chapel standing
at its foot, raised at the expense of the Opera del Duomwas a public
thank-offering after the plague of 1348, begun in 1352 and com-
pleted in 1376. This grand old palace has other attractions besides
the beauty of its architecture, for its interior is lined with works of art.
The atrium has a fresco by Bartolo di Fredi and the two ground-floor
halls contain a Coronation of the Virgin by Sano di Pietro and a
splendid Resurrection by Sodoma. In the Sala del Nove or della
Pace above are the noble allegorical frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzett
representing the effects of just and unjust government; the Sala
delle Balestre or del Mappamondo is painted by Simone di Martino
(Memmi) and others, the Cappella della Signoria by Taddeo d'
Bartolo, and the Sala del Consistorio by Beccafumi. Another hall
the Sala di Balia, has frescoes by Spinello Arctino (1408) with scenes
from the life of Pope Alexander III., while yet another has been
painted by local artists with episodes in recent Italian history. An
interesting exhibition of Sienese art, including many objects from
neighbouring towns and villages, was held here in 1904. The former
hall of the grand council, built in 1327, was converted into the chie
theatre of Siena by Riccio in 1560, and, after being twice burnt, was
rebuilt in 1753 from Bibbiena's designs. Another Sienese theatre
that of the Rozzi, in Piazza San Pellegrino, designed by A. Doveri anc
erected in 1816, although modern, has an historic interest as the work
of an academy dating from the 1 6th century, called the Congrega
de' Rozzi, that played an important part in the history of the Italian
comic stage.
The city is adorned by many other noble edifices both public
ud private, among which the following palaces may be mentioned —
Tolomei (1205); Buonsignori, formerly Tegliacci, an elegant 14th-
century construction, restored in 1848; Grottanelli, formerly Pecci
ind anciently the residence of the captain of war, recently restored
n its original style; Sansedoni; Marsilii; Piccolomini, now be-
onging to the Government and containing the state archives;1
'iccolomini delle Papesse, like the other Piccolomini mansion,
designed by Bernardo Rossellino, and now the Banca d' Italia;
:he enormous block of the Monte de' Paschi, a bank of considerable
wealth and antiquity, enlarged and partly rebuilt in the original style
jetween 1877 and 1881, the old Dogana and Salimbeni palaces; the
?alazzo Spannochi, a fine early Renaissance building by Giuliano da
Vlaiano (now the post office) ; the Loggia di Mercanzia (i 5th century),
now a club, imitating the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, with sculp-
tures of the I5th century; the Loggia del Papa, erected by Pius II.;
and other fine buildings. We may also mention the two celebrated
buntains, Fonte Gaia and Fontebranda; the former, in the Piazza
del Campo, by Jacopo della Quercia (1409-1419), but freely restored
in 1868, the much-damaged original reliefs being now in the Opera
del Duomo; the Fonte Nuova, near Porta Ovile, by Camaino di
Crescentino also deserves notice (1298). Thanks to all these archi-
tectural treasures, the narrow Sienese streets with their many wind-
ngs and steep ascents are full of picturesque charm, and, _ together
with the collections of excellent paintings, foster the local pride of the
inhabitants and preserve their taste and feeling for art. The medieval
walls and gates are still in the main preserved. The ruined Cistercian
abbey of S. Galgano, founded in 1201, with its fine church (1240-
1268) is interesting and imposing. It lies some 20 m. south-west of
;na.
History. — Siena was probably founded by the Etruscans
(a few tombs of that period have been found outside Porta
Camellia), and then, falling under the Roman rule, became a
colony in the reign of Augustus, or a little earlier, and was
distinguished by the name of Saena Julia. It has the same arms
as Rome — the she-wolf and twins. But its real importance dates
from the middle ages. Few memorials of the Roman era 2 or of
the first centuries of Christianity have been preserved (except
the legend of St Ansanus), and none at all of the interval pre-
ceding the Lombard period. We have documentary evidence
that in the 7th century in the reign of Rotaris (or Rotari), there
was a bishop of Siena named Mauro. Attempts to trace earlier
bishops as far back as the sth century have yielded only vague
and contradictory results. Under the Lombards the civil
government was in the hands of a gastaldo, under the Carolingians
of a count, whose authority, by slow degrees and a course of
events similar to what took place in other Italian communes,
gave way to that of the bishop, whose power in turn gradually
diminished and was superseded by that of the consuls and the
commonwealth.
We have written evidence of the consular government of
Siena from 1125 to 1212; the number of consuls varied from
three to twelve. This government, formed of gentiluomini
or nobles, did not remain unchanged throughout the whole period,
but was gradually forced to accept the participation of the
popolani or lower classes, whose efforts to rise to power were
continuous and determined. Thus in 1137 they obtained a third
part of the government by the Teconstitution of the general
council with 100 nobles and 50 popolani. In 1199 the institution
of a foreign podestd (a form of government which became per-
manent in 1212) gave a severe blow to the consular magistracy,
which was soon extinguished; and in 1233 the people again rose
against the nobles in the hope of ousting them entirely from
office.
The strife was largely economic, the people desiring to
deprive the nobles of the immunity of taxation which they had
enjoyed. The attempt was not completely successful; but the
government was now equally divided between the two estates by
the creation of a supreme magistracy of twenty-four citizens —
twelve nobles and twelve popolani. During the rule of the nobles
and the mixed rule of nobles and popolani the commune of
Siena was enlarged by fortunate acquisitions of neighbouring
lands and by the submission of feudal lords, such as the Scialenghi,
Aldobrandeschi, Pannocchieschi, Visconti di Campiglia, &c.
1 In these are especially interesting the painted covers of the books
of the bicchierna and gabella, or revenue and tax offices.
2 There are, however, remains of baths some 2j m. to the east; see
P. Piccolomini in Bullettino Senesede storia patria, vi. (1899).
SIENA
Before long the reciprocal need of fresh territory and frontier
disputes, especially concerning Poggibonsi and Montepulciano,
led to an outbreak of hostilities between Florence and Siena.
Thereupon, to spite the rival republic, the Sienese took the
Ghibelline side, and the German emperors, beginning with
Frederick Barbarossa, rewarded their fidelity by the grant of
various privileges.
During the i2th and I3th centuries there were continued
disturbances, petty wars, and hasty reconciliations between
Florence and Siena, until in 1254-1255 a more binding peace and
alliance was concluded. But this treaty, in spite of its apparent
stability, led in a few years to a fiercer struggle; for in 1258 the
Florentines complained that Siena had infringed its terms by giv-
ing refuge to the Ghibellines they had expelled, and on the refusal
of the Sienese to yield to these just remonstrances both states
made extensive preparations for war. Siena applied to Manfred,
obtained from him a strong body of German horse, under the
command of Count Giordano, and likewise sought the aid of its
Ghibelline allies. Florence equipped a powerful citizen army,
of which the original registers are still preserved in the volume
entitled 77 Libra di Montaperti in the Florence archives. This
army, led by the podesta of Florence and twelve burgher captains,
set forth gaily on its march towards the enemy's territories in the
middle of April 1260, and during its first campaign, ending on
the 1 8th of May, won an insignificant victory at Santa Petronilla,
outside the walls of Siena. But in a second and more important
campaign, in which the militia of the other Guelf towns of
Tuscany took part, the Florentines were signally defeated at
Montaperti on the 4th of September 1260. This defeat crushed
the power of Florence for many years, reduced the city to desola-
tion, and apparently annihilated the Florentine Guelfs. But
the battle of Benevento (1266) and the establishment of the
dynasty of Charles of Anjou on the Neapolitan throne put an
end to the Ghibelline predominance in Tuscany. Ghibelline
Siena soon felt the effects of the change in the defeat of its army
at Colle di Valdelsa (1269) by the united forces of the Guelf
exiles, Florentines and French, and the death in that battle of
her powerful citizen Provenzano Salvani (mentioned by Dante),
who had been the leading spirit of the government at the time
of the victory of Montaperti. For some time Siena remained
faithful to the Ghibelline cause; nevertheless Guelf and demo-
cratic sentiments began to make head. The Ghibellines were
on several occasions expelled from the city, and, even when a
temporary reconciliation of the two parties allowed them to
return, they failed to regain their former influence.
Meanwhile the popular party acquired increasing power in
the state. Exasperated by the tyranny of the Salimbeni and
other patrician families allied to the Ghibellines, it decreed in
1277 the exclusion of all nobles from the supreme magistracy
(consisting since 1270 of thirty-six instead of twenty-four
members) , and insisted that this council should be formed solely
of Guelf traders and men of the middle class. This constitution
was confirmed in 1 280 by the reduction of the supreme magistracy
to fifteen members, all of the humbler classes, and was definitively
sanctioned in 1285 (and 1287) by the institution of the magistracy
of nine. This council of nine, composed only of burghers,
carried on the government for about seventy years, and its rule
was sagacious and peaceful. The territories of the state were
enlarged; a friendly alliance was maintained with Florence;
trade flourished; in 1321 the university was founded, or rather
revived, by the introduction of Bolognese scholars; the principal
buildings now adorning the town were begun; and the charitable
institutions, which are the pride of modern Siena, increased and
prospered. But meanwhile the exclusiveness of the single
class of citizens from whose ranks the chief magistrates were
drawn had converted the government into a close oligarchy
and excited the hatred of every other class. Nobles, judges,
notaries and populace rose in frequent revolt, while the nine
defended their state (1295-1309) by a strong body of citizen
militia divided into terzieri (sections) and contrade (wards),
and violently repressed these attempts. But in 1355 the arrival
of Charles IV. in Siena gave fresh courage to the malcontents,
who, backed by the imperial authority, overthrew the government
of the nine and substituted a magistracy of twelve drawn from
the lowest class. These new rulers were to some extent under
the influence of the nobles who had fomented the rebellion, but
the latter were again soon excluded from all share in the govern-
ment.
This was the beginning of a determined struggle for supre-
macy, carried on for many years, between the different classes of
citizens, locally termed ordini or monti — the lower classes striving
to grasp the reins of government, the higher classes already in
office striving to keep all power in their own hands, or to divide it
in proportion to the relative strength of each monte. As this
struggle is of too complex a nature to be described in detail, we
must limit ourselves to a summary of its leading episodes.
The twelve who replaced the council of nine (as these had
previously replaced the council of the nobles) consisted — both
as individuals and as a party — of ignorant, incapable, turbulent
men, who could neither rule the state with firmness nor confer
prosperity on the republic. They speedily broke with the nobles,
for whose manoeuvres they had at first been useful tools, and
then split into two factions, one siding with the Tolomei, the
other, the more restless and violent, with the Salimbeni and the
novcschi (partisans of the nine), who, having still some influence
in the city, probably fomented these dissensions, and, as we shall
see later on, skilfully availed themselves of every chance likely
to restore them to power. In 1368 the adversaries of the twelve
succeeded in driving them by force from the public palace, and
substituting a government of thirteen — ten nobles and three
noveschi.
This government lasted only twenty-two days, from the
2nd to the 24th September, and was easily overturned by the
dominant faction of the dodicini (partisans of the twelve), aided
by the Salimbeni and the populace, and favoured by the emperor
Charles IV. The nobles were worsted, being driven from the
city as well as from power; but the absolute rule of the twelve
was brought to an end, and right of participation in the govern-
ment was extended to another class of citizens. For, on the
expulsion of the thirteen from the palace, a council of 124
plebeians created a new magistracy of twelve difensori (defenders) ,
no longer drawn exclusively from the order of the twelve, but
composed of five of the popolo minuto, or lowest populace (now
first admitted to the government), four of the twelve, and three of
the nine. But it was of short duration, for the dodicini were
ill satisfied with their share, and in December of the same year
(1368) joined with the popolo minuto in an attempt to expel the
three noveschi from the palace. But the new popular order,
which had already asserted its predominance in the council of
the riformatori, now drove out the dodicini, and for five days
(nth to i6th December) kept the government in its own hands.
Then, however, moved by fear of the emperor, who had passed
through Siena two months before on his way to Rome, and who
was about, to halt there on his return, it tried to conciliate its
foes by creating a fresh council of 150 riformatori, who replaced
the twelve defenders by a new supreme magistracy of fifteen,
consisting of eight popolani, four dodicini, and three noveschi,
entitled respectively " people of the greater number," " people
of the middle number," and " people of the less number. "
From this renewal dates the formation of the new order or monle
dei riformatori, the title henceforth bestowed on all citizens, of
both the less and the greater people, who had reformed the
government and begun to participate in it in 1368. The turbulent
action of the twelve and the Salimbeni, being dissatisfied with
these changes, speedily rose against the new government. This
'time they were actively aided by Charles IV., who, having
returned from Rome, sent his militia, commanded by the
imperial vicar Malatesta da Rimini, to attack the public palace.
But the Sienese people, being called to arms by the council of
fifteen, made a most determined resistance, routed the imperial
troops, captured the standard, and confined the emperor in the
Salimbeni palace. Thereupon Charles came to terms with the
government, granted it an imperial patent, and left the city,
consoled for his humiliation hy the gift of a large sum of money.
SIENA
In spite of its wide basis and great energy, the monte del
riformatori, the heart of the new government, could not satisfac-
torily cope with the attacks of adverse factions and treacherous
allies. So, the better to repress them, it created in 1369 a chief
of the police, with the title of esecutore, and a numerous associa-
tion of popolani — the company or casata grande of the people —
as bulwarks against the nobles, who had been recalled from
banishment, and who, though fettered by strict regulations, were
now eligible for offices of the state. But the appetite for power
of the " less people " and the dregs of the populace was whetted
rather than satisfied by the installation of the riformatori in
the principal posts of authority. Among the wool-carders — men
of the lowest class, dwelling in the precipitous lanes about the
Porta Ovile — there was an association styling itself the "company
of the worm." During the famine of 1371 this company rose
in revolt, sacked the houses of the rich, invaded the public palace,
drove from the council of fifteen the four members of the twelve
and the three of the nine, and replaced them by seven tatter-
demalions. Then, having withdrawn to its own quarter, it was
suddenly attacked by the infuriated citizens (noveschi and
dodicini), who broke into houses and workshops and put numbers
of the inhabitants to the sword without regard for age or sex.
Thereupon the popular rulers avenged these misdeeds by many
summary executions in the piazza. These disorders were only
checked by fresh changes in the council of fifteen. It was now
formed of twelve of the greater people and three noveschi, to
the total exclusion of the dodicini, who, on account of their grow-
ing turbulence, were likewise banished from the city.
Meanwhile the government had also to contend with difficulties
outside the walls. The neighbouring lords attacked and ravaged
the municipal territories; grave injuries were inflicted by the
mercenary bands, especially by the Bretons and Gascons. The
rival claims to the Neapolitan kingdom of Carlo di Durazzo and
Louis of Anjou caused fresh disturbances in Tuscany. The
Sienese government conceived hopes of gaining possession of the
city of Arezzo, which was first occupied by Durazzo's men,
and then by Enguerrand de Coucy for Louis of Anjou; but
while the Sienese were nourishing dreams of conquest the French
general unexpectedly sold the city to the Florentines, whose
negotiations had been conducted with marvellous ability and
despatch (1384). The gathering exasperation of the Sienese,
and notably of the middle class, against their rulers was brought
to a climax by this cruel disappointment. Their discontent had
been gradually swelled by various acts of home and foreign
policy during the sixteen years' rule of the riformatori, nor had
the concessions granted to the partisans of the twelve and the
latter's recall and renewed eligibility to office availed to conciliate
them. At last the revolt broke out and gained the upper hand,
in March 1385. The riformatori were ousted from power and
expelled the city, and the trade of Siena suffered no little injury
by the exile of so many artisan families. The fifteen were
replaced by a new supreme magistracy of ten priors, chosen in
the following proportions — four of the twelve, four of the nine,
and two of the people proper, or people of the greater number,
but to the exclusion of all who had shared in the government or
sat in council under the riformatori. Thus began a new order or
monte del popolo, composed of families of the same class as the
riformatori, but having had no part in the government during
the latter's rule. But, though now admitted to power through
the burgher reaction, as a concession to democratic ideas, and to
cause a split among the greater people, they enjoyed very limited
privileges.1
In 1387 fresh quarrels with Florence on the subject of Monte-
pulciano led to an open war, that was further aggravated by
the interference in Tuscan affairs of the ambitious duke of Milan,
Gian Galeazzo Visconti. With him the Sienese concluded an
alliance in 1389 and ten years later accepted his suzerainty and
resigned the liberties of their state. But in 1402 the death of
1 The following are the ordini or monti that held power in Siena
for any considerable time — gentiluomini, from the origin of there-
public; nme, from about 1285; dodici,irom 1355; riformatori, from
1368; popolo, from 1385.
Gian Galeazzo lightened their yoke. In that year the first plot
against the Viscontian rule, hatched by the twelve and the
Salimbeni and fomented by the Florentines, was violently re-
pressed, and caused the twelve to be again driven from office;
but in the following year a special balia, created in consequence
of that riot, annulled the ducal suzerainty and restored the
liberties of Siena. During the interval the supreme magistracy
had assumed a more popular form. By the partial readmission
of the riformatori and exclusion of the twelve, the permanent
balm was now composed of nine priors (three of the nine, three
of the people, and three of the riformatori) and of a captain of the
people to be chosen from each of the three monti in turn. On
nth April peace was made with the Florentines and Siena en-
joyed several years of tranquil prosperity.
But the great Western schism then agitating the Christian
world again brought disturbance to Siena. In consequence of the
decisions of the council of Pisa, Florence and Siena had declared
against Gregory XII. (1409); Ladislaus of Naples, therefore, as
a supporter of the pope, seized the opportunity to make incursions
on Sienese territory, laying it waste and threatening the city.
The Sienese maintained a vigorous resistance till the death of
this monarch in 1414 freed them from his attacks. In 1431
a fresh war with Florence broke out, caused by the latter's
attempt upon Lucca, and continued in consequence of the
Florentines' alliance with Venice and Pope Eugenius IV., and
that of the Sienese with the duke of Milan and Sigismund, king
of the Romans. This monarch halted at Siena on his way to
Rome to be crowned, and received a most princely welcome.
In 1433 the opposing leagues signed a treaty of peace, and,
although it was disadvantageous to the Sienese and temptations to
break it were frequently urged upon them, they faithfully adhered
to its terms. During this period of comparative tranquillity
Siena was honoured by the visit of Pope Eugenius IV. (1443) and
by that of the emperor Frederick III., who came there to receive
his bride, Eleanor of Portugal, from the hands of Bishop Aeneas
Sylvius Piccolomini, his secretary and historian (1452). This
meeting is recorded by the memorial column still to be seen outside
the Camollia gate. In 1453 hostilities against Florence were
again resumed, on account of the invasions and ravages of Sienese
territory committed by Florentine troops in their conflicts with
Alphonso of Naples, who since 1447 had made Tuscany his battle-
ground. Peace was once more patched up with Florence in 1454.
Siena was next at war for several years with Aldobrandino
Orsini, count of Pitigliano, and with Jacopo Piccinini, and
suffered many disasters from the treachery of its generals. About
the same time the republic was exposed to still graver danger by
the conspiracy of some of its leading citizens to seize the reins of
power and place the city under the suzerainty of Alphonso,
as it had once been under that of the duke of Milan. But the
plot came to light; its chief ringleaders were beheaded, and
many others sent into exile (1456); and the death of Alphonso
at last ended all danger from that source. During those critical
times the government of the state was strengthened by a new
executive magistracy called the balia, which from 1455 began
to act independently of the priors or consistory. Until then
it had been merely a provisional committee annexed to the latter.
But henceforward the balia had supreme jurisdiction in all affairs
of the state, although always, down to the fall of the republic,
nominally preserving the character of a magistracy extraordinary.
The election of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini to the papal chair
in ^458 caused the utmost joy to the Sienese; and in compliment
to 'their illustrious fellow-citizen they granted the request of the
nobles and readmitted them to a share in the government.
But this concession, grudgingly made, only remained in force
for a few years, and on the death of the pope (1464) was revoked
altogether, save in the case of members of the Piccolomini house,
who were decreed to be popolani and were allowed to retain all
their privileges. Meanwhile fresh discords were brewing among
the plebeians at the head of affairs.
The conspiracy of the Pazzi in 1478 led to a war in which
Florence and Milan were opposed to the pope and the king of
Naples, and which was put an end to by the peace of i3th
SIENA
March 1480. Thereupon Alphonso, duke of Calabria, who was
fighting in Tuscany on the side of his father Ferdinand, came
to an agreement with Siena and, in the same way as his
grandfather Alphonso, tried to obtain the lordship of the city and
the recall of the exiled rebels in 1456. The noveschi (to whose order
most of the rebels belonged) favoured his pretensions, but the
riformatori were against him. Many of the people sided with the
noveschi, rose in revolt on 22nd June 1480 and, aided by the
duke's soldiery, reorganized the government to their own advant-
age. Dividing the power between their two orders of the nine and
the people, they excluded the riformatori and replaced them by
a new and heterogeneous order styled the aggregati, composed
of nobles, exiles of 1456 and citizens of other orders who had
never before been in office. But this violent and perilous upset
of the internal liberties of the republic did not last long. A decree
issued by the Neapolitan king (1482) depriving the Sienese of
certain territories in favour of Florence entirely alienated their
affections from that monarch. Meanwhile the monte of the nine,
the chief promoters of the revolution of 1480, were exposed to the
growing hatred and envy of their former allies, the monte del
popolo, who, conscious of their superior strength and numbers,
now sought to crush the noveschi and rise to rJbwer in their
stead. This change cf affairs was accomplished by a series of
riots between 7th June 1482 and 2oth February 1483. The
monte del popolo seized the lion's share of the government; the
riformatori were recalled, the aggregati abolished and the
noveschi condemned to perpetual banishment from the govern-
ment and the city. But " in perpetuo " was an empty form of
words in those turbulent Italian republics. The noveschi, being
" fat burghers " with powerful connexions, abilities and tradi-
tions, gained increased strength and influence in exile; and five
years later, on 22nd July 1487, they returned triumphantly
to Siena, dispersed the few adherents of the popolo who offered
resistance, murdered the captain of the people, reorganized the
state, and placed it under the protection of the Virgin Mary.
And, their own predominance being assured by their numerical
strength and influence, they accorded equal shares of power to the
other monti.
Among the returned exiles was Pandolfo Petrucci, chief of the
noveschi and soon to be at the head of the government. During
the domination of this man (who, like Lorenzo de' Medici, was
surnamed " the Magnificent ") Siena enjoyed many years of
splendour and prosperity. We use the term " domination "
rather than " signory " inasmuch as, strictly sp«aking, Petrucci
was never lord of the state, and left its established form of govern-
ment intact; but he exercised despotic authority in virtue of his
strength of character and the continued increase of his personal
power. He based his foreign policy on alliance with Florence and
France, and directed the internal affairs of the state by means of
the council (collegia) of the balia, which, although occasionally
reorganized for the purpose of conciliating rival factions, was
always subject to his will. He likewise added to his power by
assuming the captainship of the city guard (1495) , and later by the
purchase from the impoverished commune of several outlying
nasties (1507)- Nor did he shrink from deeds of bloodshed and
revenge; the assassination of his father-in-law, Niccolo Borghesi
(1500), is an indelible blot upon his name. He successfully
withstood all opposition within the state, until he was at last
worsted in his struggle with Cesare Borgia, who caused his ex-
pulsion from Siena in 1502. But through the friendly mediation
of the Florentines and the French king he was recalled from
banishment on 2gth March 1503. He maintained his power
until his death at the age of sixty on 2ist May 1512, and
was interred with princely ceremonials at the public expense.
The predominance of his family in Siena did not last long after
his decease. Pandolfo had not the qualities required to found
a dynasty such as that of the Medici. He lacked the lofty
intellect of a Cosimo or a Lorenzo, and the atmosphere of liberty-
loving Siena with its ever-changing factions was in no way suited
to his purpose. His eldest son, Borghese Petrucci, was incapable,
haughty and exceedingly corrupt; he only remained three years
at the head of affairs and fled ignominiously in 1515. Through
the favour of Leo X., he was succeeded by his cousin Raffaello
Petrucci, previously governor of St Angelo and afterwards a
cardinal.
This Petrucci was a bitter enemy to Pandolfo's children.
He caused Borghese and a younger son named Fabio to be
proclaimed as rebels, while a third son, Cardinal Alphonso,
was strangled by order of Leo X. in 1518. He was a tyrannical
ruler, and died suddenly in 1522. In the following year Clement
VII. insisted on the recall of Fabio Petrucci; but two years later
a fresh popular outbreak drove him from Siena for ever. The
city then placed itself under the protection of the emperor
Charles V., created a magistracy of " ten conservators of the
liberties of the state" (December 1524), united the different
monti in one named the " monte of the reigning nobles," and,
rejoicing to be rid of the last of the Petrucci, dated their public
books, ab instaurata libertate year I., II., and so on.
The so-called free government subject to the empire lasted
for twenty-seven years; and the desired protection of Spain
weighed more and more heavily until it became a tyranny.
The imperial legates and the captains of the Spanish guard in
Siena crushed both government and people by continual ex-
tortions and by undue interference with the functions of the
balm. Charles V. passed through Siena in 1535, and, as in all
the other cities of enslaved Italy, was received with the greatest
pomp; but he left neither peace nor liberty behind him. From
1 5 2 7 to 1 545 the city was torn by faction fights and violent revolts
against the noveschi, and was the scene of frequent bloodshed,
while the quarrelsomeness and bad government of the Sienese
gave great dissatisfaction in Tuscany. The balia was recon-
stituted several times by the imperial agents — in 1 530 by Don
Lopez di Soria and Alphonso Piccolomini, duke of Amalfi, in
1540 by Granvella (or Granvelle) and in 1548 by Don Diego di
Mendoza; but government was carried on as badly as before, and
there was increased hatred of the Spanish rule. When in 1549
Don Diego announced the emperor's purpose of erecting a
fortress in Siena to keep the citizens in order, the general hatred
found vent in indignant remonstrance. The historian Orlando
Malavolti and other special envoys were sent to the emperor
in 1550 with a petition signed by more than a thousand citizens
praying him to spare them so terrible a danger; but their mission
failed: they returned unheard. Meanwhile Don Diego had laid
the foundation of the citadel and was carrying on the work
with activity. Thereupon certain Sienese citizens in Rome,
headed by Aeneas Piccolomini (a kinsman of Pius II.), entered
into negotiations with the agents of the French king and, having
with their help collected men and money, marched on Siena and
forced their way in by the new gate (now Porta Romana) on
26th July 1552. The townspeople, encouraged and reinforced
by this aid from without, at once rose in revolt, and, attacking
the Spanish troops, disarmed them and drove them to take
refuge in the citadel (28th July). And finally by an agreement
with Cosimo de' Medici, duke of Florence, the Spaniards were sent
away on the 5th August 1552 and the Sienese took possession
of their fortress.
The government was now reconstituted under the protection
of the French agents; the balia was abolished, its very name
having been rendered odious by the tyranny of Spain, and was
replaced by a similar magistracy styled capitani del popolo e
reggimento. Siena exulted in her recovered freedom; but her
sunshine was soon clouded. First, the emperor's wrath was
stirred by the influence of France in the counsels of the republic;
then Cosimo, who was no less jealous of the French, conceived
the design of annexing Siena to his own dominions. The first
hostilities of the imperial forces in Val di Chiana (1552-1553) did
little damage; but when Cosimo took the field with an army
commanded by the marquis of Marignano the ruin of Siena
was at hand. On 26th January Marignano captured the
forts of Porta Camellia (which the whole population of Siena,
including the women, had helped to construct) and invested the
city. On the 2nd of August of the same year, at Marciano in
Val di Chiana, he won a complete victory over the Sienese and
French troops under Piero Strozzi, the Florentine exile and
SIENA
53
marshal of France. Meanwhile Siena was vigorously besieged,
and its inhabitants, sacrificing everything for their beloved city,
maintained a most heroic defence. A glorious record of their
sufferings is to be found in the Diary of Sozzini, the Sienese
historian, and in the Commentaries of Blaise de Monluc, the
French representative in Siena. But in April 1555 the town
was reduced to extremity and was forced to capitulate to the
emperor and the duke. On 2ist April the Spanish troops
entered the gates; thereupon many patriots abandoned the city
and, taking refuge at Montalcino, maintained there a shadowy
form of republic until 1559.
Cosimo I. de' Medici being granted the investiture of the
Sienese state by the patent of Philip II. of Spain, dated 3rd
July 1557, took formal possession of the city on the ipth of
the same month. A lieutenant-general was appointed as repre-
sentative of his authority; the council of the balia was recon-
stituted with twenty members chosen by the duke; the con-
sistory and the general council were left in existence but deprived
of their political autonomy. Thus Siena was annexed to the
Florentine state under the same ruler and became an integral
part of the grand-duchy of Tuscany. Nevertheless it retained
a separate administration for more than two centuries, until the
general reforms of the grand-duke Pietro Leopoldo, the French
domination, and finally the restoration swept away all differences
between the Sienese and Florentine systems of government.
In 1859 Siena was the first Tuscan city that voted for annexation
to Piedmont and the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel II., this
decision (voted 26th June) being the initial step towards the
unity of Italy.
Literary History. — The literary history of Siena, while recording
no gifts to the world equal to those bequeathed by Florence, and
without the power and originality by which the latter became the
centre of Italian culture, can nevertheless boast of some illustrious
names. Of these a brief summary, beginning with the department
of general literature and passing on to history and science, is sub-
joined. Many of them are also dealt with in separate articles, to
which the reader is referred.
As early as the I3th century the vulgar tongue was already well
established at Siena, being used in public documents, commercial
records and private correspondence. The poets flourishing at that
period were Folcacchiero, Cecco Angiolieri — a humorist of a very
high order — and Bindo Bonichi, who belonged also to the following
century. The chief glory of the I4th century was St Catherine
Benincasa. The year of her death (1380) was that of the birth of St
Bernardino Albizzeschi (S Bernardino of Siena), a popular preacher
whose sermons in the vulgar tongue are models of style and diction.
To the I5th century belongs Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II.),
humanist, historian and political writer. In the i6th century we
find another Piccolomini (Alexander), bishop of Patras, author of
a curious dialogue, Delia bella creanza delle donne; another bishop,
ClaudioTolomei, diplomatist, poet and philologist, who revived the
use of ancient Latin metres ; and Luca Contile, a writer of narratives,
plays and poems. Prose fiction had two representatives in this
century — -Scipione Bargagli, a writer of some merit, and Pietro
Fortini, whose productions were trivial and indecent. In the iyth
century we find Ludovico Sergardi (Quinto Settano), a Latinist and
satirical writer of much talent and culture; but the most original
and brilliant figure in Sienese literature is that of Girolamo Gigli
(1660-1722), author of the Gazzetlino, La Sorellinadi Don Pilone, II
Vocabolario cateriniano and the Diario ecclesiastico. As humorist,
scholar and philologist, Gigli would take a high place in the literature
of any land. His resolute opposition to all hypocrisy — whether
religious or literary — exposed him to merciless persecution from the
Jesuits and the Delia Cruscan Academy.
In the domain of history we have first the old Sienese chronicles,
which down to the I4th century are so confused that it is almost
impossible to disentangle truth from fiction or even to decide the
personality of the various authors. Three 14th-century chronicles,
attributed to Andrea Dei, AgnolodiTura, called II Grasso, and Neri
di Donati, are published in Muratori (vol. xy.). To the I5th century
belongs the chronicle of Allegretto Allegretti, also in Muratori (vol.
xxiii.) ; and during the same period flourished Sigismondo Tizio (a
priest of Siena, though born at Castiglione Aretino), whose volumin-
ous history written in Latin and never printed (now among the MSS.
of the Chigi Library in Rome), though devoid of literary merit, con-
tains much valuable material. The best Sienese historians belong to
the 1 6th century. They are Orlando Malavolti (151 5-1 596) , a man of
noble birth, the most trustworthy of all; Antonio Bellarmati;
Alessandro Sozzini di Girolamo, the sympathetic author of the Diario
dell' ultima guerra senese; and Giugurta Tommasi, of whose tedious
history ten books, down to 1354, have been published, the rest being
still in manuscript. Together with these historians we must mention
the learned scholars Celso Cittadini (d. 1627), Ulberto Benvoglienti
(d. 1 733), one of Muratori's correspondents, and Gio. Antonio Picci
(d. 1768), author of histories of Pandolfo Petrucci and the bishopric
of Siena. In the same category may be classed the librarian C. F.
Carpellini (d. 1872), author of several monographs on the origin of
Siena and the constitution of the republic, and Scipione Borghesi
(d. 1877), who has left a precious store of historical, biographical and
bibliographical studies and documents.
In theology and philosophy the most distinguished names are :
Bernardino Ochino and Lelio and Fausto Soccini (i6th century) ;
in jurisprudence, three Soccini: Mariano senior, Bartolommeo and
Mariano junior (isth and i6th centuries); and in political economy,
Sallustio Bandini (1677-1760), author of the Discorso sulla Ma-
remma. In physical science the names most worthy of mention are
those of the botanist Pier Antonio Mattioli (1501-1572), of Pirro
Maria Gabrielli (1643-1705), founder of the academy of the Physio-
critics, and of the anatomist Paolo Mascagni (d. 1825).
Art. — Lanzi happily designates Sienese painting as " Lieta scuola
fra lieto popolo " (" the blithe school of a blithe people "). The
special characteristics of its masters are freshness of colour, vivacity
of expression and distinct originality. The Sienese school of painting
owes its origin to the influence of Byzantine art ; but it improved
that art, impressed it with a special stamp and was for long inde-
pendent of all other influences. Consequently Sienese art seemed
almost stationary amid the general progress and development of
the other Italian schools, and preserved its medieval character
down to the end of the 15th century, when the influence of the Um-
brian and — to a_ slighter degree^of the Florentine schools began to
penetrate into Siena, followed a little later by that of the Lombard.
In the 1 3th century we find Guido (da Siena), painter of the well-
known Madonna in the church of S Domenico in Siena. The I4th
century gives us Ugolino, Ducciodi Buoninsegna, Simone di Martino
(or Memmi), Lippo Memmi, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Andrea
di Vanni (painter and statesman), Bartolo di Fredi and Taddco di
Bartolo. In the I5th century we have Domenico di Bartolo, Sano di
Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, Stefano di Giovanni (II Sassetta) and
Matteo and Benvenuto di Giovanni Bartoli, who fell, however, behind
their contemporaries elsewhere, and made indeed but little progress.
The 1 6th century boasts the names of Bernardino Fungai, Guidoccio
Cossarelli, Giacomo Pacchiarotto, Girolamo del Pacchia and especi-
ally Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1537), who while especially celebrated
for his frescoes and studies in perspective and chiaroscuro was also
an architect of considerable attainments (see ROME); Giovanni
Antonio Bazzi, otherwise known as II Sodoma (1477-1549), who,
born at Vercelli in Piedmont, and trained at Milan in the school of
Leonardo da Vinci, came to Siena in 1504 and there produced some of
his finest works, while his influence on the art of the place was con-
siderable; Domenico Beccafumi, otherwise known as Micharino
(1486-1550), noted for the Michelangelesque daring of his designs;
and Francesco Vanni.
There may also be mentioned many sculptors and architects, such
as Lorenzo Maitani, architect of Orvieto cathedral (end of I3th
century) ;CamainodiCrescentino;Tinodi Camaino, sculptor of the
monument to Henry VII. in the Campo Santo of Pisa; Agostino
and Agnolo, who in 1330 carved the fine tomb of Bishop Guido
Tarlati in the cathedral of Arezzo; Lando di Pietro (i4th century),
architect, entrusted by the Sienese commune with the proposed en-
largement of the cathedral (1339), and perhaps author of the famous
Gothic reliquary containing the head of S Galgano in the Chiesa del
Santuccio, which, however, is more usually attributed to Ugolino di
Vieri, author of the tabernacle in the cathedral at Orvieto ; Giacopo
(or Jacopo) della Quercia, whose lovely fountain, the Fonte Gaia, in
the Piazza, del Campo has been recently restored ; Lorenzo di Pietro
(II Vecchietta), a pupil of Della Quercia and an excellent artist in
marble and bronze; Francesco d'Antonio, a skilful goldsmith of the
l6th century; Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439—1502), painter,
sculptor, military engineer and writer on art; Giacomo Cozzarelli
(i5th century); and Lorenzo Mariano, surnamed II Marrina (i6th
century). Wood-carving also flourished here in the 15th and l6th
centuries, and so also did the ceramic art, though few of its products
are preserved. According to the well-known law, however, the
Renaissance, made for the people of the plains, never fully took root
in Siena, as in other parts of Tuscany, and the loss of its independ-
ence and power in 1 555 led to a suspension of building activity, which
to the taste of the present day is most fortunate, inasmuch as the
baroque of the 1 7th and the false classicism of the i8th centuries
have had hardly any effect here ; and few towns of Italy are so un-
spoilt by restoration or the addition of incongruous modern buildings,
or preserve so many characteristics and so much of the real spirit
(manifested to-day in the grave and pleasing courtesy of the inhabi-
tants) of the middle ages, which its narrow and picturesque streets
seem to retain. Siena is indeed unsurpassed for its examples of I3th
and I4th century Italian Gothic, whether in stone or in brick.
See W. Heywood, Our Lady of August and the Palio (Siena, 1899)
and other works ; R. H. Hobart Cust, The Pavement Masters of Siena
(London, 1901) ; Langton Douglas, History of Siena (London, 1902);
E. G. Gardner, The Story of Siena (London, 1902) ; St Catherine of Siena
(London, 1908) ; W. Heywood and L. Olcott, Guide to Siena (Siena,
1603) ; A. Jahn Rusconi, Siena (Bergamo, 1904). (C. PA. ; T. As.)
SIENETJO— SIERRA LEONE
SIENETJO, one of the Shangalla tribes living in south-west
Abyssinia near the Sudan frontier, who claim to be a remnant
of the primitive population. They are apparently a Hamitic
people, and their skin is of a yellowish tint. Their women
never intermarry with the Negroes or Arabs. Sienet jo villages
are usually built on hilltops. They are an industrious people,
skilful jewellers, weavers and smiths.
SIENKIEWICZ, HENRYK (1846- ), Polish novelist, was
born in 1846 at Wola Okrzeska near Lukow, in the province of
Siedlce, Russian Poland. He studied philosophy at Warsaw
University. His first work, a humorous novel entitled A Prophet
in his own Country, appeared in 1872. In 1876 Sienkiewicz
visited America, and under the pseudonym of " Litwos, " con-
tributed an account of his travels to the Gazeta Polska, a Warsaw
newspaper. Thenceforward his talent as a writer of historical
novels won rapid recognition, and his best-known romance,
Quo Vadis? a study of Roman society under Nero, has been
translated into more than thirty languages. Originally pub-
lished in 1895, Quo Vadis? was first translated into English in
1896, and dramatized versions of it have been produced in
England, the United States, France and Germany. Remarkable
powers of realistic description, and a strong religious feeling
which at times borders upon mysticism, characterize the best
work of Sienkiewicz. Hardly inferior to Quo Vadis? in popu-
larity, and superior in literary merit, is the trilogy of novels
describing 17th-century society in Poland during the wars with
the Cossacks, Turks and Swedes. This trilogy comprises Ogniem
i mieczem (" With Fire and Sword, " London, 1890, 1892 and
1895), Potop (" The Deluge, " Boston, Mass., 1891) and Pan
Woxodjowski (" Pan Michael," London, 1893). Among other
very successful novels and collections of tales which have been
translated into English are Bez Dogmatu (" Without Dogma, "
London, 1893; Toronto, 1899), Janko muzykant: nowele (" Yanko
the Musician and other Stories," Boston, Mass., 1893), Krzyzacy
(" The Knight of the Cross, " numerous British and American
versions), Hania (" Hania, " London, 1897) and Ta Trzecia
(" The Third Woman, " New York, 1898). Sienkiewicz lived
much in Cracow and Warsaw, and for a time edited the Warsaw
newspaper Slowo; he also travelled in England, France, Italy,
Spain, Greece, Africa and the East, and published a description
of his journeys in Africa. In 1905 he received the Nobel prize for
literature.
A German edition of his collected works was published at Graz
(1906, &c.), and his biography was written in Polish by P. Chmiel-
owski (Lemberg, 1901) and J. Nowinski (Warsaw, 1901).
SIERADZ, a town of Russian Poland, in the government of
Kalisz, situated on theWarta, no m. S.W. of the city of Warsaw.
Pop. (1897) 7019. It is one of the oldest towns of Poland,
founded prior to the introduction of Christianity, and was
formerly known asSyra orSyraz. The annals mention it in 1139.
Several seims, or diets, of Poland were held there during the i3th
to 1 5th centuries, and it was a wealthy town until nearly destroyed
by % fire in 1447. The old castle, which suffered much in the
Swedish war of 1702-1711, was destroyed by the Germans in
1800. There are two churches, dating from the i2th and i4th
centuries respectively.
SIERO, a town of northern Spain, in the province of Oviedo, on
the river Nora, and on the Oviedo-Trifiesto railway. Pop. (1900)
22,503. Siero is in the centre of a fertile agricultural district, in
which live-stock is extensively reared. There are coal mines in
the neighbourhood, and the local industries include tanning and
manufactures of soap, coarse linen and cloths.
SIERRA LEONE, a British colony and protectorate on the
west coast of Africa. It is bounded W. by the Atlantic, N. and
E. by French Guinea and S. by Liberia. The coast-line,
following the indentations, is about 400 m. in length, extending
from 9° 2' N. to 6° 55' N. It includes the peninsula of Sierra
Leone — 23 m. long with an average breadth of 14 m. — Sherbro
Island, Bance, Banana, Turtle, Plantain and other minor islands,
also Turner's Peninsula, a narrow strip of land southward of
Sherbro Island, extending in a S.E. direction about 60 m. Except
in the Sierra Leone peninsula, Sherbro Island and Turner's
Peninsula, the colony proper does not extend inland to a greater
depth than half a mile. The protectorate, which adjoins the
colony to the north and east, extends from 7° N. to 10° N. and
from 10° 40' W. to 13° W., and has an area of rather more
than 30,000 sq. m., being about the size of Ireland. (For
map, see FRENCH WEST AFRICA.) The population of the
colony proper at the 1901 census was 76,655. The popula-
tion of the protectorate is estimated at from 1,000,000 to
1,500,000.
Physical Features. — Sierra Leone is a well-watered, well-wooded
and generally hilly country. The coast-line is deeply indented in its
northern portion. Here the sea has greatly eroded the normal
regular, harbourless line of the west coast of Africa, forming bold
capes and numerous inlets or estuaries. The Sierra Leone peninsula
is the most striking result of this marine action. North of it are the
Sierra Leone and Scarcies estuaries; to the south is Yawry Bay.
Then in 7° 30' N. Sherbro Island is reache-1. This is succeeded by
Turner's Peninsula (in reality an island). The seaward faces of these
islands are perfectly regular and indica e the original continental
coast-line. They have been detached fr'.m the mainland partly by
a marine inlet, partly by the lagoon-like creeks formed by the rivers.
In the Sierra Leone peninsula the hills come down to the sea, else-
where a low coast plain extends inland 30 to 50 m. The plateau
which forms the greater part of the protectorate has an altitude
varying from 800 to 3000 ft. On the north-east border by the Niger
sources are mountains exceeding 5000 ft. The most fertile parts of
the protectorate are Sherbro and Mendiland in the south-west. In
the north-west the district between the Great Scarcies and the Rokell
rivers is flat and is named Bullom (low land). In the south-east
bordering Liberia is a belt of densely forested hilly country extending
50 m. S. to N. and very sparsely inhabited.
The hydrography of the country is comparatively simple. Six
large rivers — 300 to 500 m. long — rise in the Futa Jallon highlands
in or beyond the northern frontier of the protectorate and in whole or
in part traverse the country with a general S.W. course; the Great
and Little Scarcies in the north, the Rokell and Jong in the centre
and the Great Bum and Sulima in the south. These rivers are navi-
gable for short distances, but in general rapids or cataracts mark their
middle courses. The Great Scarcies, the Rio dos Carceres of the
Portuguese, rises not far from the sources of the Senegal. Between
9° 50' and 9° 15' N. it forms the boundary between the protectorate
and French Guinea; below that point it is wholly in British territory.
The Little Scarcies enters Sierra Leone near Yomaia, in the most
northerly part of the protectorate. Known in its upper course as the
Kabba, it flows through wild rocky country, its banks in places being
900 ft. high. After piercing the hills it runs parallel with the Great
Scarcies. In their lower reaches the two rivers — both large streams —
traverse a level plain, separated by no obstacles. The mouth of the
Little Scarcies is 20 m. S. of that of the Great Scarcies. South of the
estuary of the Scarcies the deep inlet known as the Sierra Leone
river forms a perfectly safe and commodious harbour accessible to the
largest vessels. At its entrance on the southern shore lies Freetown.
Into the estuary flows, besides smaller streams, the Rokell, known
in its upper course as the Seli. The broad estuary which separates
Sherbro Island from the mainland, and is popularly called the
Sherbro river, receives the Bagru from the N.W. and the Jong river,
whose headstream, known as the Taia, Pampana and Sanden, flows
for a considerable distance east of and parallel to the Rokell. The
sources of the Taia, and those of the Great Bum, are near to those of
the Niger, the watershed between the coast streams and the Niger
basin here forming the frontier. The main upper branch of the Great
Bum (or Sewa) river is called the Bague or Bagbe (white river). It
flows east of and more directly south than the Taia. In its lower
course the Bum passes through the Mendi country and enters the
network of lagoons and creeks separated from the ocean by the long
low tract of Turner's Peninsula. The main lagoon waterway goes by
the name of the Bum-Kittam river, and to the north opens into the
Sherbro estuary. Southward it widens out and forms Lake Kasse
(20 m. long), before reaching the ocean just north of the estuary of
the Sulima. The Wanje or upper Kittam joins this creek, and is
also connected with Lake Mabessi, a sheet of water adjacent to Lake
Kasse. The Sulima or Moa is a magnificent stream and flows through
a very fertile country. One of its headstreams, the Meli, rises in
French Guinea in 10 30' W. 9° 17' N. and flows for some distance
parallel to the infant Niger, but in the opposite direction. It joins
the Moa within Sierra Leone. The main upper stream of the Moa
separates French Guinea and Liberia and enters British territory in
10° 40' W. 8° 20' N. Only the lower course is known as the Sulima.
Between 7° 40' and 7° 20' are lacustrine reaches. Six miles S. of the
mouth of the Sulima the Mano or Bewa river enters the sea. It
rises in Liberia, and below 7° 30' N. forms the frontier between that
republic and the protectorate.
The Sierra Leone peninsula, the site of the oldest British settle-
ment, lies between the estuary of the same name and Yawry Bay to
the south. It is traversed on its seaward face by hills attaining a
height of 1700 ft. in the Sugar Loaf, and nearly as much in Mount
Herton farther south. The hills consist of a kind of granite and of
SIERRA LEONE
55
beds of red sandstone, the disintegration of which has given a dark-
coloured ferruginous soil of moderate fertility. Sugar Loaf is
timbered to the top, and the peninsula is verdant with abundant
vegetation.
Climate. — The coast lands are unhealthy and have earned for Sierra
Leone the unenviable reputation of being " the white man's grave."
The mean annual temperature is above 8p°, the rainfall, which varies
a great deal, is from 150 to 180 or more inches per annum. In 1896
no fewer than 203 in. were recorded. In 1894 , a " dry " year, only
144 in. of rain fell. In no other part of West Africa is the rainfall so
heavy. December, January, February and March are practically
rainless; the rains, beginning in April or May, reach their maximum
in July, August and September, and rapidly diminish in October
and November. During the dry season, when the climate is very
much like that of the West Indies, there occur terrible tornadoes
and long periods of the harmattan — a north-east wind, dry and
desiccating, and carrying with it from the Sahara clouds of fine dust,
which sailors designate " smokes." The dangers of the climate are
much less in the interior; 40 or 50 m. inland the country is tolerable
for Europeans.
Flora. — The characteristic tree of the coast districts is the oil-
palm. Other palm trees found are the date, bamboo, palmyra, coco
and dom. The coast-line, the creeks and the lower courses of the
rivers are lined with mangroves. Large areas are covered with
brushwood, among which are scattered baobab, shea-butter, bread
fruit, corkwood and silk-cotton trees. The forests contain valuable
timber trees such as African oak or teak (Oldfieldia Africana), rose-
wood, ebony, tamarind, camwood, odum — whose wood resists the
attacks of termites — and the tolmgah or brimstone tree. The
frankincense tree (Daniellia thurifera) reaches from 50 to 150 ft., the
negro pepper (Xylopia Aethiopica) grows to about 60 ft., the fruit
being used by the natives as pepper. There are also found the black
pepper plant (Piper Clusii), a climbing plant abundant in the moun-
tain districts; the grains of paradise or melegueta pepper plant
(Amomum Melegueta) and other Amomums whose fruits are prized.
Of the Apocynaceae the rubber plants are the most important.
Both Landolphia florida and Landolphia owaricnsis are found. Of
several fibre-yielding plants the so-called aloes of the orders Amaryl-
lidaceae and Liliaceae are common. The kola (Cola acuminata) and
the bitter kola (Garcinia cola), the last having a fruit about the size
of an apple, with a flavour like that of green coffee, are common.
Of dye-yielding shrubs and plants camwood and indigo may be
mentioned ; of those whence gum is obtained the copal, acacia and
African tragacanth (Sterculia tragacantha). Besides the oil-palm, oil
is obtained from many trees and shrubs, such as the benni oil plant.
Of fruit trees there are among others the blood-plum (Haematostaphis
Barteri) with deep crimson fruit in grape-like clusters, and the Sierra
Leone peach (Sarcocephalus esculentus). The coffee and cotton plants
are indigenous; of grasses there are various kinds of millet, including
Paspalum exile, the so-called hungry rice or Sierra Leone millet.
Ferns are abundant in the marshes. Bright coloured flowers are
somewhat rare.
Fauna. — The wild animals include the elephant, still found in large
numbers, the leopard, panther, chimpanzee, grey monkeys, antelope
of various kinds, the buffalo, wild hog, bush goat, bush pig, sloth,
civet and squirrel. The hippopotamus, manatee, crocodile and
beaver are found in the rivers, and both land and fresh-water tortoises
are common. Serpents, especially the boa-constrictor, are numerous.
Chameleons, lizards and iguanas abound, as do frogs and toads.
Wild birds are not very common ; among them are the hawk, parrot,
owl, woodpecker, kingfisher, green pigeon, African magpie, the
honey-sucker and canary. There are also wild duck, geese and other
water fowl, hawk's bill, laggerheads and partridges. Mosquitoes,
termites, bees, ants, centipedes, millipedes, locusts, grasshoppers,
butterflies, dragonflies, sandflies and spiders are found in immense
numbers. Turtle are common on the southern coast-line, sand and
mangrove oysters are plentiful. Fish abound; among the common
kinds are the bunga (a sort of herring), skate, grey mullet and tarpon.
Sharks infest the estuaries.
Inhabitants. — Sierra Leone is inhabited by various negro
tribes, the chief being the Timni, the Sulima, the Susu and the
Mendi. From the Mendi district many curious steatite figures
which had been buried have been recovered and are exhibited
in the British Museum. They show considerable skill in carving.
Of semi-negro races the Fula inhabit the region of the Scarcies.
Freetown is peopled by descendants of nearly every negro tribe,
and a distinct type known as the Sierra Leoni has been evolved ;
their language is pidgin English. Since 1900 a considerable
number of Syrians have settled in the country as traders. Most
of the negroes are pagans and each tribe has its secret societies
and fetishes. These are very powerful and are employed often
for beneficent purposes, such as the regulation of agriculture
and the palm-oil industry. There are many Christian converts
(chiefly Anglicans and Wesleyans) and Mahommedans. In the
protectorate are some Mahommedan tribes, as for instance the
Susu. The majority of the Sierra Leonis are nominally Christian.
The European population numbers about 500.
Towns. — Besides Freetown (q.v.) the capital (pop., 1901,
34,463), the most important towns for European trade are Bonthe,
the port of Sherbro, Port Lokko, at the head of the navigable
waters of a stream emptying itself into the Sierra Leone estuary,
and Songo Town, 30 m. S.E. of Freetown, with which it is con-
nected by railway. In the interior are many populous centres.
The most noted is Falaba, about 190 m. N.E. of Freetown on the
Fala river, a tributary of the Little Scarcies. It lies about 1600 ft.
above the sea. Falaba was founded towards the end of the i8th
century by the Sulima who revolted from the Mahommedan Fula,
and its warlike inhabitants soon attained supremacy over the
neighbouring villages and country. Like many of the native
towns it is surrounded by a loopholed wall, with flank defences for
the gates. The town is the meeting-place of many trade routes,
including some to the middle Niger. Kambia on the Great
Scarcies is a place of some importance. It can be reached by
boat from the sea. On the railway running S.E. from Freetown
are Rotifunk, Mano, and Bo, towns which have increased greatly
in importance since the building of the railway.
Agriculture and Trade. — Agriculture is in a backward condition,
but is being developed. The wealth of the country consists, however,
chiefly in its indigenous trees of economic value — the oil-palm, the
kola-nut tree and various kinds of rubber plants, chiefly the Land-
olphia owariensis. The crops cultivated are rice, of an excellent
quality, cassava, maize and ginger. The cultivation of coffee and of
native tobacco has been practically abandoned as unremunerative.
The sugar cane is grown in small quantities. The ginger is grown
mainly in the colony. proper. Minor products are benni seeds, pepper
and piassava. The oil-palm and kola-nut tree are especially abundant
in the Sherbro district and its hinterland, the Mendi country. The
palms, though never planted, are in practically unlimited numbers.
The nuts are gathered twice a year. Formerly groundnuts were
largely cultivated, but this industry has been superseded by exports
from India. Its place has been taken to some extent by the extrac-
tion of rubber.
The cotton plant grows freely throughout the protectorate and the
cloth manufactured is of a superior kind. Exotic varieties of cotton
do not thrive. Experiments were made during 1903-1906 to intro-
duce the cultivation of Egyptian and American varieties, but they did
not succeed. Cattle are numerous but of a poor breed ; horses do
not thrive. The chief export is palm kernels, the amount of palm oil
exported being comparatively slight. Next to palm products the
most valuable articles exported are kola-nuts — which go largely to
neighbouring French colonies — rubber and ginger. The imports are
chiefly textiles, food and spirits. Nearly three-fourths of the imports
come from Great Britian, which, however, takes no more than some
35% of the exports. About 10% of the exports go to other British
West African colonies. Germany, which has but a small share of the
import trade, takes about 45 % of the exports. The value of the
trade increased in the ten years 1896-1905 from £943,000 to
£1,265,000. In 1908 the imports were valued at £813,700, the ex-
ports at £736,700.
The development of commerce with the rich regions north and
east of the protectorate has been hindered by the diversion of trade
to the French port of Konakry, which in 1910 was placed in railway
communication with the upper Niger. Moreover, the main trade
road from Konakry to the middle Niger skirts the N.E. frontier of the
protectorate for some distance. Sierra Leone is thus forced to look-
to its economic development within the bounds of the protectorate.
Communications. — Internal communication is rendered difficult
by the denseness of the " bush " or forest country. The rivers,
however, afford a means of bringing country produce to the seaports.
A railway, state owned and the first built in British West Africa,
runs S.E. from Freetown through the fertile districts of Mendiland
to the Liberian frontier. Begun in 1896, the line reached Bo (136 m.)
in the oil-palm district in 1903, and was completed to Baiima, 15 m.
from the Liberian frontier — total length 221 m. — in 1905. The
gauge throughout is 2 ft. 6 in. The line cost about £4300 per mile,
a total of nearly £1,000,000. Tramways and " feeder roads " have
•been built to connect various places with the railway; one such
road goes from railhead to Kailahun in Liberia.
Telegraphic communication with Europe was established in 1886.
Steamers run at regular intervals between Freetown and Liverpool,
Hamburg, Havre and Marseilles. In the ten years 1899-1908 the
tonnage of shipping entered and cleared rose from 1,181,000 to
2,046,000.
Administration, Revenue, &fc. — The country is administered as a
crown colony, the governor being assisted by an executive and a
Iceislative council; on the last-named a minority of nominated un-
official members have scats. The law of the colony is the common
law of England modified by local ordinances. There is a denomina-
tional system of primary and higher education. The schools are
SIERRA LEONE
inspected by government and receive grants in aid. In 1907 there
were 75 assisted elementary schools with nearly 8000 scholars.
Furah Bay College is affiliated to Durham University. There is a
Wesleyan Theological College; a government school (established
1906) at Bo for the sons of chiefs, and the Thomas Agricultural
Academy at Mabang (founded in 1909 by a bequest of £60,000 from
S. B. Thomas, a Sierra Leonian). Since 1901 the government has
provided separate schools for Mahommedans. Revenue is largely
derived from customs, especially from the duties levied on spirits.
In the protectorate a house tax is imposed. In 1899-1908 revenue
increased from £168,000 to £321,000, and the expenditure from
£145,000 to £341,000. In 1906 there was a public debt of £1,279,000.
Freetown is the headquarters of the British army in West Africa,
and a force of infantry, engineers and artillery is maintained there.
The colony itself provides a battalion of the West African Frontier
Force, a body responsible to the Colonial Office.
The protectorate is divided for administrative purposes into
districts, each 'under a European commissioner. Throughout the
protectorate native law is administered by native courts, subject
to certain modifications. Native courts may not deal with murder,
witchcraft, cannibalism or slavery. These cases are tried by the
district commissioners or referred to the supreme court at Freetown.
The tribal system of government is maintained, and the authority
of the chiefs has been strengthened by the British. Domestic slavery
is not interfered with.
History. — Sierra Leone (in the original Portuguese form
Sierra Leona) was known to its native inhabitants as Romarong,
or the Mountain, and received the current designation from the
Portuguese discoverer Pedro deSintra (i462),eitheronaccount of
the " lion-like " thunder on its hill-tops, or to a fancied resem-
blance of the mountains to the form of a lion. Here, as elsewhere
along the coast, the Portuguese had-" factories "; and though
none existed when the British took possession, some of the natives
called themselves Portuguese and claimed descent from colonists
of that nation. An English fort was built on Bance Island in the
Sierra Leone estuary towards the close of the i7th century, but
was soon afterwards abandoned, though for a long period the
estuary was the haunt of slavers and pirates. English traders
were established on Bance and the Banana islands as long as
the slave trade was legal. The existing colony has not, however,
grown out of their establishments, but owes its birth to the
philanthropists who sought to alleviate the lot of those negroes
who were victims of the traffic in human beings. In 1786 Dr
Henry Smeathman, who had lived for four years on the west
coast, proposed a scheme for founding on the peninsula a colony
for negroes discharged from the army and navy at the close of the
American War of Independence, as well as for numbers of run-
away slaves who had found an asylum in London. In 1787 the
settlement was begun with 400 negroes and 60 Europeans, the
whites being mostly women of abandoned character. In the
year following, 1788, Nembana, a Timni chief, sold a strip of land
to Captain John Taylor, R.N., for the use of the " free community
of settlers, their heirs and successors, lately arrived from England,
and under the protection of the British government." Owing
mainly to the utter shiftlessness of the settlers and the great
mortality among them, but partly to an attack by a body of
natives, this first attempt proved a complete failure. In 1791
Alexander Falconbridge (formerly a surgeon on board slave
ships) collected the surviving fugitives and laid out a new settle-
ment (Granville's Town) ; and the promoters of the enterprise —
Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, Sir Richard Carr Glyn,
&c. — hitherto known as the St George's Bay Company, obtained
a charter of incorporation as the Sierra Leone Company, with
Henry Thornton as chairman. In 1792 John Clarkson, a lieu-
tenant in the British navy and brother to Thomas Clarkson the
slave trade abolitionist, brought to the colony noo negroes-
from Nova Scotia. In 1794 the settlement, which had been
again transferred to its original site and named Freetown, was
plundered by the French. The governor at the time was Zachary
Macaulay, father of Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay. In
1807, when the inhabitants of the colony numbered 1871, the
company, which had encountered many difficulties, transferred
its rights to the crown. The slave trade having in the same year
been declared illegal by the British parliament, slaves captured
by British vessels in the neighbouring seas were brought to
Freetown, and thus the population of the colony grew. Its
development was hampered by the frequent changes in the
governorship. Sydney Smith's jest that Sierra Leone had always
two governors, one just arrived in the colony, and the other iust
arrived in England, is but a slight exaggeration. In twenty-two
years (1792-1814) there were seventeen changes in the governor-
ship. After that date changes, although not quite so rapid, were
still frequent. Several of the governors, like Zachary Macaulay,
Colonel Dixon Denham, the explorer, and Sir Samuel Rowe,
were men of distinction. Colonel Denham, after administering
the colony for five weeks, died at Freetown of fever on the 9th
of June 1828. Sir Charles M'Carthy was, however, governor
for ten years (1814-1824), an unprecedented period, during
which he did much for the development of the country. Sir
Charles fell in battle with the Ashanti on the 2ist of January
1824. Whilst the governors found great difficulty in building
up an industrious and agricultural community out of the medley
of Africans brought to Sierra Leone, they had also to contend
with the illicit slave trade which flourished in places close to the
colony. To stop the traffic in Sherbro Island General Charles
Turner concluded in 1825 a treaty with its rulers putting the
island, Turner's Peninsula and other places under British pro-
tection. (This treaty was not ratified by the crown, but was
revived by another agreement made in 1882.)
At .this time — 1826 — measures were taken to ensure that
the liberated slaves should become self-supporting. Many
colonists took to trade, and notwithstanding numerous collisions
with neighbouring tribes the settlement attained a measure of
prosperity. Among the leading agents in spreading civilization
were the missionaries sent out from 1804 onwards by the Church
Missionary Society. Despite the anxiety of the British govern-
ment not to increase their responsibilities in West Africa, from
time to time various small territories were purchased, and by
1884 all the land now forming the colony had been acquired.
The Los Islands (q.v.) which were ceded by the natives to Great
Britain in 1818 were transferred to France in 1904. In 1866
Freetown was made the capital of the new general government
set up for the British settlements on the West Coast of Africa
(comprising Sierra Leone, Gambia, the Gold Coast and Lagos,
each of which was to have a legislative council). In 1874 the
Gold Coast and Lagos were detached from Sierra Leone, and the
Gambia in 1888.
British influence was gradually extended over the hinterland,
chiefly with the object of suppressing intertribal wars, which
greatly hindered trade. In this work the British
authorities enlisted the services of Dr Edward W. ™gtma
Blyden (a pure-blooded negro), who in 1872 visited incident.
Falaba and in 1873 Timbo, both semi-Mahommedan
countries, being cordially received by the ruling chiefs. Falaba —
which had been visited in 1869 by Winwood Reade on his journey
to the Niger — came definitely under British protection, but Timbo,
which is in Futa Jallon, was allowed to become French territory
through the supineness of the home government. The area for
expansion on the north was in any case limited by the French
Guinea settlements, and on the south the territory of Liberia1
hemmed in the colony. In the east and north-east British
officers also found themselves regarded as trespassers by the
French. The necessity for fixing the frontier in this direction
was emphasized by the Waima incident. Both French and
British military expeditions had been sent against the Sofas —
Moslem mercenaries who, under the chieftainship of Fulas or
Mandingos like Samory, ravaged the hinterland both of Sierra
Leone and French Guinea. On the 23rd of December 1893 a
British' force was encamped at Waima. At dawn it was attacked
by a French force which mistook the British troops for Samory's
Sofas (save the officers the soldiers of both parties were negroes).
Before the mistake was discovered the British had lost in killed
three officers — Captain E. A. W. Lendy, Lieut. R. E. Listen
and Lieut. C. Wroughton — and seven men, besides eighteen
wounded. The French also suffered heavily. Their leader Lieut.
Maritz was brought into the British camp mortally wounded,
1 The Anglo-Liberian frontier, partly defined by treaty in 1885,
was not delimitated until 1903 (see LIBERIA).
SIERRA MORENA— SIEVES
57
and was buried by the British. Steps were taken to prevent the
occurrence of any further conflicts, and an agreement denning the
frontier was signed in January 1895. This agreement finally
shut out Sierra Leone from its natural hinterland. In 1896
the frontier was delimitated, and in the same year (26th of
August 1896) a proclamation of a British protectorate was issued.
To this extension of authority no opposition was offered at the
time by any of the chiefs or tribes. Travelling commissioners
were appointed to explore the hinterland, and frontier police
were organized. The abolition of the slave trade followed; and
with the introduction of the protectorate ordinance in 1897 a
house tax of 53. each was imposed, to come into operation in three
districts on the ist of January 1898. Chief Bai Bureh, in the
Timni country, broke out into open war, necessitating a military
punitive expedition. After strenuous fighting, in which the
British casualties, including sick, reached 600, he was captured
(i4th of November 1898) and deported. Meantime (in April
1898) the Mendi tribes rose, and massacred several British and
American missionaries, including four ladies, at Rotifunk and
Taiama, some native officials (Sierra Leonis) in the Imperri
district, and a large number of police throughout the country.
Speedy retribution followed, which effectually put down the
revolt. Sir David P. Chalmers was appointed (July 1898) royal
commissioner to inquire into the disturbances. He issued a
report, July 1899, deprecating the imposition cf the house tax,
which was not, however, revoked. The disturbances would
appear to have arisen not so much from dislike of the house tax
per se as irritation at the arbitrary manner in which it was
collected, and from a desire on the part of the paramount chiefs
(who chafed at the suppression of slave trading and slave raiding,
and who disseminated a powerful fetish "swear," called "Poro,"
to compel the people to join) to cast off British rule. After
the suppression of the rising (January 1899) confidence in
the British administration largely increased among the tribes,
owing to the care taken to preserve the authority of the chiefs
whilst safeguarding the elementary rights of the people. The
building of the railway and the consequent development of trade
and the introduction of European ideas tended largely to modify
native habits. The power of fetishism seemed, however, un-
affected.
See H. C. Lukach, A Bibliography of Sierra Leone (Oxford
1911); Sir C. P. Lucas, Historical Geography of the British Colonies,
vol. iii. (2nd ed., Oxford, 1900); T. J. Alldridge, The Sherbro and its
Hinterland (London, 1901), and A Transformed Colony (London,
1910) — the last with valuable notes on secret societies and fetish;
Winwood Reade, The African Sketch Book, vol. ii. (London, 1873);
Colonel J. K. Trotter, The Niger Sources (London, 1898) ; Major J. J.
Crook, History of Sierra Leone (Dublin, 1903) — a concise account of
the colony to the end of the igth century. For fuller details of the
foundation and early history of the settlement consult Sierra Leone
after a Hundred Years (London, 1894) by E. G. Ingham, bishop of
the diocese, and The Rise of British West Africa (London, 1904)
by Claude George. Bishop Ingham's book contains long extracts
from the diary of Governor Clarkson, which vividly portray the
conditions of life in the infant colony. For the rising in 1898 see
The Advance of our West African Empire (London, 1903) by C. B.
Wallis. A Blue Book on the affairs of the colony is published yearly
at Freetown and an Annual Report by the Colonial Office in London.
Maps on the scale of I : 250,000 are published by the War Office.
SIERRA MORENA, THE, a range of mountains in southern
Spain. The Sierra Morena constitutes the largest section of the
mountain system called the Cordillera Marianica (anc. Monies
mariani) , which also includes a number of minor Spanish ranges,
together with the mountains of southern Portugal. The mean
elevation of the range is about 2500 ft., but its breadth is certainly
not less than 40 m. It extends eastward as far as the steppe
region of Albacete, and westward to the valley of the lower
Guadiana. Its continuity is frequently interrupted, especially
in the west; in the eastern and middle portions it is composed
of numerous irregularly disposed ridges. Many of these bear
distinctive names; thus the easternmost and loftiest is called
the Sierra de Alcaraz (5900 ft.), while some of the component
ridges in the extreme west are classed together as the Sierras
de Aracena. The great breadth of the Sierra Morena long
rendered it a formidable barrier between Andalusia and the
north; as such it has played an important part in the social,
economic and military history of Spain. Its configuration and
hydrography are also important from a geographical point of
view, partly because it separates the .plateau region of Castile
and Estremadura from the Andalusian plain and the highlands
of the Sierra Nevada system, partly because it forms the water-
shed between two great rivers, the upper Guadiana on the north
and the Guadalquivir on the south. Parts of the Sierra Morena
are rich in minerals; the central region yields silver, mercury and
lead, while the Sierras de Aracena contain the celebrated copper
mines of Tharsis and Rio Tinto (.».).
SIERRA NEVADA (Span, for " snowy range "), a mountain
range, about 430 m. long, in the eastern part of California,
containing Mt Whitney (14,502 ft.), the highest point in the
United States, excluding Alaska. (See CALIFORNIA.)
SIERRA NEVADA, THE, a mountain range of southern Spain,
in the provinces of Granada and Almeria. The Sierra Nevada
is a well-defined range, about 55 m. long and 25 m. broad,
situated to the south of the Guadalquivir valley, and stretching
from the upper valley of the river Genii or Jenil eastwards to the
valley of the river Almeria. It owes its name, meaning "the
snowy range, " to the fact that several of its peaks exceed 10,000
feet in height and are thus above the limit of perpetual snow.
Its culminating point, the Cerro de Mulhacen or Mulahacen
(11,421 ft.) reaches an altitude unequalled in Spain, while one of
the neighbouring peaks, called the Picacho de Veleta (11,148 ft.),
is only surpassed by Aneto (11,168 ft.), the loftiest summit of
the Pyrenees. The Sierra Nevada is composed chiefly of soft
micaceous schists, sinking precipitously down on the north, but
sloping more gradually to the south and south-east. On both
sides deep transverse valleys (barrancas) follow one another in
close succession, in many cases with round, basin-shaped heads
like the cirques of the Pyrenees (q.v.). In many of these cirques
lie alpine lakes, and in one of them, the Corral de Veleta, there
is even a small glacier, the most southerly in Europe. The
transverse valleys open on the south into the longitudinal
valleys of the Alpujarras (q.v.). On the north, east and west there
are various minor ranges, such as the Sierras of Parapanda,
Harana, Gor, Baza, Lucena, Cazorla, Estancias, Filabres, &c.,
which are connected with the main range, and are sometimes
collectively termed the Sierra Nevada system. The coast ranges,
or Sierra Penibetica, are not included in this group. The Sierras
de Segura form a connecting link between the Sierra Morena
and the Nevada system. *
SIEVE (O.E. sife, older sibi, cf. Dutch zeef, Ger. Sieb; from
the subst. comes O.E. si] tan, to sift), an instrument or apparatus
for separating finer particles from coarser. The common sieve
is a net of wires or other material stretched across a frame-
work with raised edges; the material to be sifted is then shaken
or pressed upon the net so that the finer particles pass through
the mesh and the coarser remain. The word " screen " is usually
applied to such instruments with large mesh for coarse work,
and " strainer " for those used in the separation of liquids or
semi-liquids from solid 'matter. In the separation of meal
from bran " bolting-clothes " are used. There was an early
form of divination known as coscinomancy (Gr. Kbamvov,
sieve, fiavrela, divination), where a sieve was hung or attached
to a pair of shears, whence the name sometimes given to it of
" sieve and shears "; the turning or movement of the sieve
at the naming of a person suspected of a crime or other act,
coupled with the repetition of an incantation or other magic
formula, decided the guilt or innocence of the person.
SIEVES, EMMANUEL-JOSEPH (1748-1836), French abbe
and statesman, one of the chief theorists of the revolutionary and
Napoleonic era, was born at Frejus in the south of France on the
3rd of May 1748. He was educated for the church at the
Sorbonne; but while there he eagerly imbibed the teachings
of Locke, Condillac, and other political thinkers, in preference
to theology. Nevertheless he entered the church, and owing
to his learning and subtlety advanced until he became vicar-
general and chancellor of the diocese of Chartres. In 1788 the
excitement caused by the proposed convocation of the States
SIFAKA— SIGALON
General of France after the interval of more than a century and
a half, and the invitation of Necker to writers to state their
views as to the constitution of the Estates, enabled Sieves to
publish his celebrated pamphlet, "What is the Third Estate?"
He thus begins his answer, — " Everything. What has it been
hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire?
To be something." For this mot he is said to have been indebted
to Chamfort. In any case, the pamphlet had a great vogue, and
its author, despite doubts felt as to his clerical vocation, was
elected as the last (the twentieth) of the deputies of Paris to the
States General. Despite his failure as a speaker, his influence
became great; he strongly advised the constitution of the
Estates in one chamber as the National Assembly, but he opposed
the abolition of tithes and the confiscation of church lands.
Elected to the special committee on the constitution, he opposed
the right of " absolute veto " for the king, which Mirabeau
unsuccessfully supported. For the most part, however, he
veiled his opinions in the National Assembly, speaking very
rarely and then generally with oracular brevity and ambiguity.
He had a considerable influence on the framing of the depart-
mental system, but after the spring of 1790 his influence was
eclipsed by men of more determined character. Only once was
he elected to the post of fortnightly president of the Constituent
Assembly. Excluded from the Legislative Assembly by Robes-
pierre's self-denying ordinance, he reappeared in the third
National Assembly, known as the Convention (September 1792-
September 1795); but there his self-effacement was even more
remarkable; it resulted partly from disgust, partly from timidity.
He even abjured his faith at the time of the installation of the
goddess of reason; and afterwards he characterized his conduct
during the reign of terror in the ironical phrase, J'ai tiecu. He
voted for the death of Louis XVI., but not in the contemptuous
terms La mart sans phrases sometimes ascribed to him. He is
known to have disapproved of many of the provisions of the
constitutions of the years 1791 and 1793, but did little or nothing
to improve them.
In 1795 he went on a diplomatic mission to the Hague, and
was instrumental in drawing up a treaty between the French and
Batavian republics. He dissented from the constitution of 1795
(that of the Directory) in some important particulars, but without
effect, and thereupon refused to serve as a Director of the
Republic. In May 1798 he went as the plenipotentiary of France
to the court of Berlin in order to try to induce Prussia .to make
common cause with France against the Second Coalition. His
conduct was skilful, but he failed in his main object. The
prestige which encircled his name led to his being elected a
Director of France in place of Rewbell in May 1799. Already
he had begun to intrigue for the overthrow of the Directory, and
is said to have thought of favouring the advent to power at Paris
of persons so unlikely as the Archduke Charles and the duke of
Brunswick. He now set himself to sap the base of the con-
stitution of 1795. With that aim he caused the revived Jacobin
Club to be closed, and made overtures to General Joubert for
a coup d'etat in the future. The death of Joubert at the battle
of Novi, and the return of Bonaparte from Egypt marred his
schemes; but ultimately he came to an understanding with the
young general (see NAPOLEON I.). After the coup d'etat of
Brumaire, SieyeSs produced the perfect constitution which he
had long been planning, only to have it completely remodelled
by Bonaparte. Sieyes soon retired from the post of provisional
consul, which he accepted after Brumaire; he now became one
of the first senators, and rumour, probably rightly, connected
this retirement with the acquisition of a fine estate at Crosne.
After the bomb outrage at the close of 1800 (the affair of Niv6se)
Sieyes in the senate defended the arbitrary and illegal proceedings
whereby Bonaparte rid himself of the leading Jacobins. During
the empire he rarely emerged from his retirement, but at the
time of the Bourbon restorations (1814 and 1813) he left
France. After the July revolution (1830) he returned; he
died at Paris on the 2oth of June 1836. The thin, wire-drawn
features of Sieyes were the index of his mind, which was keen-
sighted but narrow, dry and essentially limited. His lack
of character and wide sympathies was a misfortune for the
National Assemblies which he might otherwise have guided
with effect.
See A. Neton, Sieyes (1748-1836) d'apres documents inedits (Paris,
1900); also the chief histories on the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic empire. (J. HL. R.)
SIFAKA, apparently the name of certain large Malagasy lemurs
nearly allied to the INDRI (q.v.) but distinguished by their long-
tails, and hence referred to a genus apart — Propithecus, of which
three species, with several local races, are recognized. Sifakas
are very variable in colouring, but always show a large amount
of white. They associate in parties and are mainly arboreal,
leaping from bough to bough with an agility that suggests flying
through the air. When on the ground, to pass from one clump
of trees to another, they do not run on all fours, but stand erect,
The Crowned Sifaka (Propithecus diadema coronatus). From
Milne-Edwards and Grandidier.
and throwing their arms above their heads, progress by a series
of short jumps, producing an effect which is described by
travellers as exceedingly ludicrous. They are not nocturnal, but
most active in the morning and evening, remaining seated or
curled up among the branches during the heat of the day. In
disposition they are quiet and gentle, and do not show
much intelligence; they are also less noisy than the true
lemurs, only when alarmed or angered making a noise which
has been compared to the clucking of a fowl. Like all
their kindred they produce only one offspring at a birth (see
PRIMATES). (R. L.*)
SIGALON, XAVIER (1788-1837), French painter, born at
Uzes (Card) towards the close of 1788, was one of the few leaders
of the romantic movement who cared for treatment of form
rather than of colour. The son of a poor rural schoolmaster,
he had a terrible struggle before he was able even to reach Paris
and obtain admission to Guerin's studio. But the learning
offered there did not respond to his special needs, and he tried
to train himself by solitary study of the Italian masters in the
gallery of the Louvre. The "Young Courtesan" (Louvre),
SI-GAN FU— SIGEBERT
59
which he exhibited in 1822, at once attracted attention and was
bought for the Luxembourg. The painter, however, regarded
it as but an essay in practice and sought to measure himself with
a mightier motive; this he did in his " Locusta " (Nimes), 1824,
and again in " Athaliah's Massacre " (Nantes), 1827. Both
these works showed incontestable power; but the "Vision of
St Jerome " (Louvre), which appeared at the salon of 1831,
together with the " Crucifixion " (Issengeaux), was by far the
most individual of all his achievements, and that year he received
the cross of the Legion of Honour. The terrors and force of his
pencil were not, however, rendered attractive by any charm of
colour; his paintings remained unpurchased, and Sigalon found
himself forced to get a humble living at times by painting
portraits, when Thiers, then minister of the interior, recalled him
to Paris and entrusted him with the task of copying the Sistine
fresco of the " Last Judgment " for a hall in the Palace of the
Fine Arts. On the exhibition, in the Baths of Diocletian at
Rome, of Sigalon's gigantic task, in which he had been aided by
his pupil Numa Boucoiran, the artist was visited in state by
Gregory XVI. But Sigalon was not destined long to enjoy his
tardy honours and the comparative ease procured by a small
government pension; returning to Rome to copy some pendants
in the Sistine, he died there of cholera on the gth of August 1837.
SI-GAN FU (officially Sian Fu), the capital of the province of
Shen-si, N.W. China, in 34° 17' N., 108° 58' E. Shi Hwang-ti
(246-210 B.C.), the first universal emperor, established his capital
at Kwan-chung, the site of the modern Si-gan Fu. Under the
succeeding Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 25) this city was called
Wei-nan and Nui-shi; under the eastern Han (A.D. 25-221) it
was known as Yung Chow; under the T'ang (618-907) as Kwan-
nui; under the Sung (960-1127) as Yung-hing; under the Yuan
and Ming (1260-1644) as Gan-si. During the Ts'in, Han and
T'ang dynasties the city was usually the capital of the empire,
and in size, population and wealth it is still one of the most
important cities of China. It was to Si-gan Fu that the
emperor and dowager empress retreated on the capture of
Peking by the allied armies in August 1900; and it was once
again constituted the capital of the empire until the following
spring when the court returned to Peking, after the conclusion of
peace. The city, which is a square, is prettily situated on ground
rising from the river Wei, and includes within its limits the two
district cities of Ch'ang-gan and Hien-ning. Its walls are little
inferior in height and massiveness to those of Peking, while its
gates are handsomer and better defended than any at the capital.
The population is said to be 1,000,000, of whom 50,000 are
Mahommedans. Situated in the basin of the Wei river, along
which runs the great road which connects northern China with
Central Asia, at a point where the valley opens out on the plains
of China, Si-gan Fu occupies a strategical position of great
importance, and repeatedly in the annals of the empire has
history been made around and within its walls. During the
Mahommedan rebellion it was besieged by the rebels for two
years (1868-70), but owing to the strength of the fortifications
it defied the efforts of its assailants. It is admirably situated
as a trade centre and serves as a depot for the silk from Cheh-
kiang and Szech'uen, the tea from Hu-peh and Ho-nan, and the
sugar from Szech'uen destined for the markets of Kan-suh,
Turkestan, Kulja and Russia. Marco Polo, speaking of Kenjanf u ,
as the city was then also called, says that it was a place " of great
trade and industry. They have great abundance of silk, from
which they weave cloths of silk, and gold of divers kinds, and
they also manufacture all sorts of equipments for an army.
They have every necessary of man's life very cheap."
Several of the temples and public buildings are very fine, and
many historical monuments are found within and about the
walls. Of these the most notable is the Nestorian tablet, which
was accidentally discovered in 1625 in the Ch'ang-gan suburb
The stone slab which bears the inscription is 7^ ft. high by ;
wide.
The contents of this Nestorian inscription, which consists of 1780
characters, may be described as follows. ( I ) An abstract of Christian
doctrine of a vague and figurative kind. (2) An account of the arnva
the missionary Olopan (probably a Chinese form of Rabban =
vlonk) from Tats'in in the year 635, bringing sacred books and
mages; of the translation of the said books; of the imperial
ipproval of the doctrine and permission to teach it publicly. Then
ollows a decree of the emperor (T'ait-sung, a very famous prince),
ssued in 638, in favour of the new doctrine, and ordering a church
o be built in the square of justice and peace (Ining fang) in the
capital. The emperor's portrait was to be placed in this church.
After this comes a description of Tats'in, and then some account of
the fortunes of the church in China. Kaotsung (650-683, the devout
matron also of the Buddhist traveller and doctor, Hsiian Ts'ang),
t is added, continued to favour the new faith. In the end of the
:entury Buddhism got the upper hand, but under Yuen-tsung
^713—755) the church recovered its prestige, and Kiho, a new
missionary, arrived. Under Tih-tsung (780-783) the monument
was erected, and this part of the inscription ends with a eulogy
of I-sze, a statesman and benefactor of the church. (3) Then follows
a recapitulation of the above in octosyllabic verse. The Chinese
nscription, which concludes with the date of erection, viz. 781, is
ollowed by a series of short inscriptions in Syriac and the Estrangelo
character, containing the date of the erection, the name of the reigning
Nestorian patriarch, Mar Hanan Ishua, that of Adam, bishop and
jope of China, and those of the clerical staff of the capital. Then
ollow sixty-seven names of persons in Syriac characters, most of
whom are characterized as priests, and sixty-one names of persons
n Chinese, all priests but one.
The stone — one of a row of five memorial tablets — stood
within the enclosure of a dilapidated temple. It appears at one
:ime to have been embedded in a brick niche, and about 1891
a shed was placed over it, but in 1907 it stood in the open entirely
unprotected. In that year Dr Frits v. Holm, a Danish traveller,
bad made an exact replica of the tablet, which in 1908 was
deposited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The
tablet itself was in October 1907 removed by Chinese officials
into the city proper, and placed in the Pei Lin or " forest of
tablets," a museum in which are collected tablets of the Han,
T'ang, Sung, Yuen and Ming dynasties, some of which bear
historical legends, notably a set of stone tablets having the
thirteen classics inscribed upon them, while others are symbolical
or pictorial; among these last is a full-sized likeness of Confucius.
Antiquities are constantly being discovered in the neighbourhood
of the city, e.g. rich stores of coins and bronzes, bearing dates
ranging from 200 B.C. onwards.
See Yule, Marco Polo (1903 ed.) ; A. Williamson, Journeys in North
China (London, 1870), S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom
(London, 1883); Pere Havret, La Stele de Si-ngan Fou (Shanghai,
1895-1902); F. v. Holm, The Nestorian Monument (Chicago,
1909).
SIGEBERT (d. 575), king of the Franks, was one of the four
sons of Clotaire I. At the death of Clotaire in 561 the Frankish
kingdom was divided among his sons, Sigebert's share comprising
the Rhine and Meuse lands and the suzerainty over the Germanic
tribes beyond the Rhine as far as the Elbe, together with
Auvergne and part of Provence. At the death of his brother
Charibert in 567 Sigebert obtained the cities of Tours and
Poitiers, and it was he who elevated to the see of Tours the
celebrated Gregory, the historian of the Franks. Being a
smoother man than his brothers (who had all taken mates of
inferior rank), Sigebert married a royal princess, Brunhilda,
daughter of Athanagild, the king of the Visigoths;. the nuptials
were celebrated with great pomp at Metz, the Italian poet
Fortunatus composing the epithalamium. Shortly afterwards
Sigebert's brother Chilperic I. married Brunhilda's sister, Gals-
wintha; but the subsequent murder of this princess embroiled
Austrasia and Neustria, and civil war broke out in 573. Sigebert
appealed to the Germans of the right bank of the Rhine, who
attacked the environs of Paris and Chartres and committed
frightful ravages. He was entirely victorious, and pursued
Chilperic as far as Tournai. But just when the great nobles of
Neustria were raising Sigebert on the shield in the villa at Vitry,
near Arras, he was assassinated by two bravoes in the pay of
Fredegond, Chilperic's new wife. At the beginning of his reign
Sigebert had made war on the Avars, who had attacked his
Germanic possessions, and he was for some time a prisoner in
their hands.
See Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, book iv.; Aug.
Thierry, Recits des temps merovingiens (Brussels, 1840), and Aug.
Digot, Histoire du royaume d'Austrasie (Nancy, 1863). (C. PF.)
6o
SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX— SIGHTS
SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX (c. 1030-1112), medieval chron-
icler, became in early life a monk in the Benedictine abbey of
Gembloux. Later he was a teacher at Metz, and about 1070 he
returned to Gembloux, where, occupied in teaching and writing,
he lived until his death on the 5th of October 1112. As an enemy
of the papal pretensions he took part in the momentous contest
between Pope Gregory VII. and the emperor Henry IV., his
writings on this question being very serviceable to the imperial
cause; and he also wrote against Pope Paschal II. Sigebert's
most important work is a Chronographia, or universal chronicle,
according to Molinier the best work of its kind, although it
contains many errors and but little original information. It
covers the period between 381 and mi, and its author was
evidently a man of much learning. The first of many editions
was published in 1513 and the best is in Band vi. of the Monu-
menta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, with valuable introduction
by L. C. Bethmann. The chronicle was very popular during
the later middle ages; it was used by many writers and found
numerous continuators. Other works by Sigebert are a history
of the early abbots of Gembloux to 1048 (Gesta abbalum Gem-
blacensium) and a life of the Prankish king Sigebert III. ( Vita
Sigeberti III. regis Austrasiae). Sigebert was also a hagiographer.
Among his writings in this connexion may be mentioned the
Vila Deoderici, Mettensis episcopi, which is published in Band
iv. of the Monumenta, and the Vita Wicberti, in Band viii.
of the same collection. Dietrich, bishop of Metz (d. 984) was
the founder of the abbey of St Vincent in that city, and
Wicbert or Guibert (d. 962) was the founder of the abbey
of Gembloux.
See S. Hirsch, De vita et scriptis Sigiberti Gemblacensis (Berlin,
1841); A. Molinier, Les Sources de I'histoire de France, tomes ii. and
v. (1902-1904); and W. Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichts-
quellen. Band ii. (Berlin, 1894).
SIGEL, FRANZ (1824-1902), German and American soldier,
was born at Sinsheim, in Baden, on the i8th of November 1824.
He graduated at the military school at Carlsruhe, and became an
officer in the grand ducal service. He soon became known for
revolutionary opinions, and in 1847, after killing an opponent in
a duel, he resigned his commission. When the Baden insurrection
broke out, Sigel was a leader on the revolutionary side in the
brief campaign of 1848, and then took refuge in Switzerland.
In the following year he returned to Baden and took a con-
spicuous part in the more serious operations of the second
outbreak under General Louis Mieroslawski (1814-1878.) Sigel
subsequently lived in Switzerland, England and the United
States, whither he emigrated in 1852, the usual life of a political
exile, working in turn as journalist and schoolmaster, and both
at New York and St Louis, whither he removed in 1858, he
conducted military journals. When the' American Civil War
broke out in 1861, Sigel was active in raising and training
Federal volunteer corps, and took a prominent part in the
struggle for the possession of Missouri. He became in May a
brigadier-general U.S.V., and served with Nathaniel Lyon at
Wilson's Creek and with J. C. Fremont in the advance on Spring-
field in the autumn. In 1862 he took a conspicuous part in the
desperately fought battle of Pea Ridge, which definitely secured
Missouri for the Federals. He was promoted to be major-general
of volunteers, was ordered to Virginia, and was soon placed in
command of the I. corps of Pope's " Army of Virginia." In
this capacity he took part in the second Bull Run campaign,
and his corps displayed the utmost gallantry in the unsuccessful
attacks on Bald Hill. Up to the beginning of 1863, when bad
health obliged him to take leave of absence, Sigel remained in
command of his own (now called the XI.) corps and the XII.,
the two forming a " Grand Division." In June 1863 he was in
command of large forces in Pennsylvania, to make head against
Lee's second invasion of Northern territory. In 1864 he was
placed in command of the corps in the Shenandoah Valley, but
was defeated by General John C. Breckinridge at Newmarket
(i5th of May), and was superseded. Subsequently he was in
command of the Harper's Ferry garrison at the time of Early's
raid upon Washington and made a brilliant defence of his post
(July 4-5, 1864). He resigned his commission in May 1865, and
became editor of a German journal in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1867 he removed to New York City, and in 1869 was the
unsuccessful Republican candidate for secretary of state of New
York. He was appointed collector of internal revenue in May
1871, and in the following October he was elected register of
New York City by Republicans and " reform Democrats."
From 1885 to 1889, having previously become a Democrat,
he was pension agent for New_ York City, on the appointment
of President Cleveland. General Sigel's last years were de-
voted to the editorship of the New York Monthly, a German-
American periodical. He died in New York City on the
2ist of August 1902. A monument (by Karl Bitter) in his
honour was unveiled in Riverside Drive, New York City, in
October 1907.
SIGER DE BRABANT [SIGHIER, SIGIERI, SYGERITJS], French
philosopher of the i3th century. About the facts of his life
there has been much difference of opinion. In 1266 he was
attached to the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris at the
time when there was a great conflict between the four " nations."
The papal legate decided in 1266 that Siger was the ringleader,
and threatened him with death. During the succeeding ten
years he wrote the six works which are ascribed to him and were
published under his name by P. Mandonnet in 1899. The titles
of these treatises are: De anima intellectiva (1270); Quaestiones
logicales; Quaestiones naturales; De aeternitate mundi;
Quaestio utrum haec sit iiera; Homo est animal nullo homine
existente; Impossibilia. In 1271 he was once more involved in
a party struggle. The minority among the " nations " chose
him as rector in opposition to the elected candidate, Aubri de
Rheims. For three years the strife continued, and was probably
based on the opposition between the Averroists, Siger and Pierre
Dubois, and the more orthodox schoolmen. The matter was
settled by the Papal Legate, Simon de Brion, afterwards Pope
Martin IV. Siger retired from Paris to Liege. In 1277 a general
condemnation of Aristotelianism included a special clause directed
against Boetius of Denmark and Siger of Brabant. Again
Siger and Bernier de Nivelles were summoned to appear on a
charge of heresy, especially in connexion with the Impossibilia,
where the existence of God is discussed. It appears, however,
that Siger and Boetius fled to Italy and, according to John
Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, perished miserably. The
manner of Siger's death, which occurred at Orvieto, is not known.
A Brabantine chronicle says that he was killed by an insane
secretary (a clerico suo quasi dementi). Dante, in the Paradiso
(x. 134-6), says that he found " death slow in coming," and some
have concluded that this indicates death by suicide. A 13th-
century sonnet by one Durante (xcii. 9-14) says that he was
executed at Orvieto: a ghiado il fe' morire a gran dolore, Nella
corte di Roma ad Orbivieto. The date of this may have beeri
1283-1284 when Martin IV. was in residence at Orvieto. In
politics he held that good laws were better than good rulers, and
criticised papal infallibility in temporal affairs. The importance
of Siger in philosophy lies in his acceptance of Averroism in its
entirety, which drew upon him the opposition of Albertus Magnus
and Aquinas. In December 1270 Averroism was condemned
by ecclesiastical authority, and during his whole life Siger was
exposed to persecution both from the Church and from purely
philosophic opponents. In view of this, it is curious that Dante
should place him in Paradise at the side of Aquinas and Isidore
of Seville. Probably Dante knew of him only from the chronicler
as a persecuted philosopher.
See P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et I'Averroisme latin du
XIII' siecle (Fribourg, 1899); G. Paris, " Siger de Brabant " in La
Poesie du moyen Age (1895); and an article in the Revue de Paris
(Sept. 1st, 1900).
SIGHTS, the name for mechanical appliances for directing the
axis of the bore of a gun or other firearm on a point whose position
relative to the target fired at is such that the projectile will
strike the target.
Gun Sights. — Until the igth century the only means for
sighting cannon was by the " line of metal " — a line scored
SIGHTS
61
along the top of the gun, which, owing to the greater thickness
of metal at the breech than at the muzzle, was not parallel to
the axis. " Some allowance had to be made for the inclination
of the line of metal to the axis" (Lloyd and Hadcock, p. 32).
The line of metal does not come under the definition of sights
given above. In the year 1801 a proposal to use sights was
sent to Lord Nelson for opinion, and elicited the following
reply: " As to the plan for pointing a gun, truer than we do at
present, if the person comes, I shall, of course, look at it, or be
happy, if necessary, to use it; but I hope we shall be able, as
usual, to get so close to our enemies that our shot cannot miss
the object " (letter to Sir E. Berry, March 9, 1801). Three
weeks later the fleet under Sir Hyde Parker and Nelson sailed
through the Sound on its way to Copenhagen. In replying to
the guns of Fort Elsinore no execution was done, as the long
range made it impossible to lay the guns (Lloyd and Hadcock,
P- 33)-
The necessity for sights follows directly on investigation of the
forces acting on a projectile during flight. In a vacuum, the pro-
jectile acted on by the force of projection begins to fall under the
action of gravity immediately it leaves the bore, and under the
combined action of these two forces the path of the projectile is a
parabola. It passes over equal spaces in equal times, but falls with
an accelerating velocity according to the formula h — ^gP, where h
is the height fallen through, g the force of gravity, and / the time of
flight. From fig. I it will be seen that in three seconds the projectile
would have fallen 144 ft. to G; therefore to strike T the axis must be
raised to a point 144 ft. vertically above G. This law holds good
FIG. I — Elevation.
also in air for very low velocities, but, where the velocities are high,
the retardation is great, the projectile takes longer to traverse each
succeeding space, and consequently the time of flight for any range is
longer; the axis must therefore be directed still higher above the
point to be struck. The amount, however, still depends on the time
of flight, as the retardation of the air to the falling velocity may be
neglected in the case of flat trajectory guns. Owing to the conical
shape of the early muzzle-loading guns, if one trunnion were higher
than the other, the " line of metal ' would no longer be in the same
vertical plane as the axis; in consequence of this, if a gun with, say,
one wheel higher than the other were layed by this line, the axis would
point off the target to the side of the lower wheel. Further, the in-
clination of the line of metal to the axis gave the gun a fixed angle of
elevation varying from i° in light guns to 2j° in the heavier natures.
To overcome this a " dispart sight " (D) was introduced (fig. 2) to
bring the line of sight (A'DG') parallel to the axis (AG).
FIG. 2. — Dispart and Tangent Sights.
AG is the axis of the bore, ab the dispart, A'DG' is parallel to AG.
D is the dispart sight, S the tangent sight, A'DS the clearance angle.
At greater elevations than this the muzzle notch is used ; to align on
the target at lesser angles the dispart sight is so used. Guns without
dispart sights cannot be layed at elevations below the clearance
angle.
The earliest form of a hind or breech sight was fixed, but in the early
part of the igth century Colonel Thomas Blomefield proposed a mov-
able or tangent sight. It was not, however, till 1829 that a tangent
sight (designed by Major-General William Millar) was introduced
Gradua-
tion of
tangent
sights.
FIG. 3.
Early Tangent
Sight.
I into the navy; this was adopted by the army in 1846. In the case
| of most guns it was used in conjunction with the dispart sight above
I referred to. The tangent sight (see fig. 3) was graduated in degrees
only. There were three patterns, one of brass and two of wood.
As the tangent sight was placed in the line of metal, hence directly
over the cascable, very little movement could be given to it, so-
that a second sight was required for long ranges. This was of wood ;
the third sight, also of wood, was for guns without a dispart patch,
which consequently could not be layed at elevations below the dispart
angle.
Referring to fig. I it will be seen that in order to strike T the axis
must be directed to G' at a height above T equal to TG, while the
line of sight or line joining the notch of the tangent
sight and apex of the dispart or foresight must be
directed on T. In fig. 4 the tangent sight
has been raised from O to S, the line of
sight is SMT, and the axis produced is
AG'. D is the dispart, M the muzzle sight,
OM is parallel to AG'. Now the height to
which the tangent sight has been raised in order to
direct the axis on G' is evidently proportional to the
tangent of the angle QMS = AXS. This angle is called
the angle of elevation; OM is constant and is
called the sighting radius. If the dispart sight were
being used, the sighting radius would be OD, but, as
at the range in fig. 4, the line of sight through D fouls
the metal of the gun, the muzzle sight M is used. The formula for
length of scale is, length = sighting radius X tangent of the angle
of elevation. In practice, tangent sights were graduated graphic-
ally from large scale drawings. It will be seen from fig. 4 that
if the gun and target are on the same horizontal plane the axis
can be equally well directed by inclining it to the horizontal
through the requisite number of degrees. This is called " quadrant
elevation," and the proper inclination was given by means of
the " gunner's quadrant," a quadrant and plumb bob, one leg
being made long to rest in the bore, or by bringing lines scribed
on the breech of the gun in line with a pointer on the carriage ; these
were called " quarter sights."
Such were the sights in use with smooth-bore guns in the first half
of the last century. Tangent sights were not much trusted at
first. Captain Haultain, R.A., says in his description of test-
ing sights (Occa-
sio nal Papers,
R.A. Institute, vol.
i.): " Raise the
sight, and if it
keeps in line with
a plumb bob, it
can be as confi-
dently relied upon
as the line of metal,
if the trunnions
are horizontal. If
FIG. 4. — Theory of Tangent Sight.
the scale is only slightly out of the perpendicular, a few taps of the
hammer will modify any trifling error."
The introduction of rifling necessitated an improvement in sights
and an important modification in them. It was found that projectiles
fired from a rifled gun deviated laterally from the line of
fire owing to the axial spin of the projectile, and that if the s'X"ts for
spin were right-handed, as in the British service, the ed
deviation was to the right. This deviation or derivation *""**•
is usually called drift (for further details see BALLISTICS). The
amount of drift for each nature of gun at different ranges was
determined by actual firing. To overcome drift the axis must be
pointed to the left of the target, and the amount will increase with
the range.
In fig. 5(plan) at a range HT, if the axis were directed on T, drift
would carry the shot to D, therefore the axis must be directed on a
point D' such that D'T = DT. HFT is the line of sight without any
allowance for drift, causing the projectile to fall at D. Now if the
notch of the tan-
gent sight be
carried to H' in
order to lay on T,
the fore-sight, and
with it the axis,
will be moved to
F', the line of fire
will be HF'D', and
the shot will strike
T since D'T = DT.
Left deflection has
been put on ; this
FIG. 5.— Drift.
could be done by noting the amount of deflection for each range and
applying it by means of a sliding leaf carrying the notch, and it is
so done in howitzers; in most guns, however, it is found more
convenient and sufficiently accurate to apply it automatically
by inclining the socket through which the tangent scale rises
to the left, so that as the scale rises, i.e., as the range increases,
the notch is carried more and more to the left, and an increasing
SIGHTS
amount of left deflection given — the amount can easily be
determined thus : —
The height of tangent scale for any degree of elevation is given
with sufficient accuracy by the rough rule for circular measure
A = ° where a is the angle of elevation in minutes, h the height
of the tangent scale, and R the sighting radius; thus for
i°i fc = 62*J^ = Jl. Now supposing the sight isinclinedl0 to the left,
which will move the notch from H to H' (see fig. 6); as before
HH' = J£, but in thiscaseR=A=^.'.HH'=g^5, the resultant
angle of deflection is HFH', and this can be determined by the
same formula fl = *x"°°X3, but in this caseft = H'
R ' L "" 60X60
•'• a ~ R X°6 = i '. so that if the sight is inclined to the left I ° it will
give i' deflection for every degree of elevation. By the same
Noleli
*
Chmp
FIG. 7.
FIG. 6. — Correction for Drift.
formula it can be shown that i' deflection will alter the point of
impact by I in. for every loo yds. of range; thus the proper in-
clination to give a mean correction for drift can be determined. In
the early R.B.L. guns this angle was 2° 16'. With rifled guns
deflection was also found necessary to allow for effect of wind,
difference of level of trunnions, movement of target, and for the
purpose of altering the point of impact later-
ally. This was arranged for by a movable
leaf carrying the sighting V, worked by
means of a mill-headed screw provided with
a scale in degrees and fractions to the same
radius as the elevation scale, and an arrow-
head for reading. Other improvements were :
the gun was sighted on each side, tangent
scales dropping into sockets in a sighting ring
on the breech, thus enabling a long scale for
all ranges to be used, and the foresights
screwing into holes or dropping into sockets
in the trunnions, thus obviating the fouling
of the line of sight, and the damage to
which a fixed muzzle sight was liable.
The tangent sight was graduated in yards
as well as degrees and had also a fuze scale. The degree scale
was subdivided to 10' and a slow-motion screw at the head
enabled differences of one minute to be given; a clamping screw
and lever were provided (see fig. 7).
Fore-sights varied in pattern. Some screwed in, others dropped
into a socket and were secured by a bayonet joint. Two main shapes
were adopted for the apex — the acorn and the hogsback. Instruction
in the use of sights was based on the principle of securing uniformity
in laying; for this reason fine sighting was ^discountenanced and
laying by full sight enjoined. " The
centre of the line joining the two
highest points of the notch of the
„ ,. tangent sight, the point of the fore-
FIG. 8.— Laying by Full sighst and t"he targef must be ;n Hne "
(Field Artillery Training, 1902) (see
fig. 8). Since the early days of rifled guns tangent sights have
been improved in details, but the principles remain the same.
Except for some minor differences the tangent sights were the
same for all natures of guns, and for all services, but the develop-
ment of the modern sight has 'followed different lines according
to the nature and use of the gun, and must be treated under
separate heads.
Sights for Mobile A rtillery.
With the exception of the addition of a pin-hole to the tangent sight
and cross wires to the fore-sight, and of minor improvements, and
of the introduction of French's crossbar sight and the
reciprocating sight, of which later, no great advance was
made until the introduction of Scott's telescopic sight.
This sight (see Plate, fig. 9) consists of a telescope mounted
in a steel frame, provided with longitudinal trunnions fitting into
V's in the gun. These V's are so arranged that the axis of the sight
frame is always parallel to that of the gun. By means of a cross-level
the frame can be so adjusted that the cross axis on which the tele-
scope is mounted is always truly horizontal. Major L. K. Scott, R.E.,
thus described how he was led to think of the sight : " I had read in
the Daily News an account of some experimental firing carried out by
H.M.S. ' Hotspur ' against the turret of H.M.S. ' Glatton,' At a
Field
artillery
sights.
range of 200 yds. on a perfectly calm day the ' Hotspur ' fired several
rounds at the ' Glatton's ' turret and missed it." Major Scott attri-
buted this to tilt in the sights due to want of level of mounting
(R.A.I. Proceedings, vol. xiii.). Tilt of sights in field guns owing to
the sinking of one wheel had long been recognized as a source of error,
and allowed for by a rule-of-thumb correction, depending on the fact
that the track of the wheels of British field artillery gun-carriages
is 60", so that, for every inch one wheel is lower than the other, the
whole system is turned through one degree —
Referring to the calculations given above, this is equivalent to i'
deflection for every degree of elevation, which amount had to be
given towards the higher wheel. This complication is eliminated in
Scott's sight by simply levelling the cross axis of the telescope.
Other advantages are those common to all telescopic sights. Personal
error is to a great extent eliminated, power of vision extended, the
sight is self-contained, there is no fore-sight, a fine pointer in the
telescope being aligned on the target. It can be equally well used
for direct or indirect, forward or back laying. A micrometer drum
reads to 2', while the vernier reads to single minutes so that very
fine adjustments can be made.
Disadvantages of earlier patterns were, the telescope was inverting,
the drum was not graduated in yards, and drift not allowed for.
These defects were all overcome in later patterns and an Scott's
important addition made, viz. means of measuring the sight
angle of sight. In speaking of quadrant elevation a brief
reference was made to the necessity for making an allowance for
difference of level of gun and target. Figs. 10 to 13 explain this more
fully, and show that for indirect laying the angle of sight must be
Target
' " ItCngle'of eleuation\ Horizontal line <£
~~ T'™ °f s'9*t
Horizontal tine
FIGS. 10, ii, 12, 13.
added to the angle of elevation if the target is above the gun, and
subtracted if vice versa. In Scott's sight, mark iv., there is a longi-
tudinal level pivoted at one end and provided with a degree scale up
to 4°; the level is moved by a spindle and micrometer screw reading
to 2'. If now the telescope be directed on the target and this level
be brought to the centre of its run, the angle of sight can be read —
if afterwards any range ordered is put on the sight and the gun
truly layed, this bubble will be found in the centre of its run — so
that if thereafter the target becomes obscured the gun can be relayed
by elevating till the bubble is in the centre of its run, or at a com-
pletely concealed target the angle of sight can, if the range and
difference of level are known or can be measured from somewhere
near the gun, be put on by means of the micrometer screw, and the
gun subsequently layed by putting the range in yards or degrees on
the sight drum and elevating or depressing till the bubble is central.
The disadvantages that still remain are that the sight has to be re-
moved every time the gun is fired, and the amount of deflection is
limited and has to be put on the reverse way to that on a tangent
scale. Scott's sight, though no longer used with quick-firing guns,
is the precursor of all modern sights.
SIGHTS
PLAIE.
y
o
u
H
1/1
ON
d
XXV. 62.
SIGHTS
The introduction of trunnionless guns recoiling axially through
a fixed cradle enabled sights to be attached to the non-recoil pa
of the mounting, so that the necessity of removing
Modern delicate telescopic sight every round disappeared, anc
h> telescope sights on the rocking-bar principle (see below)
were introduced for 4'7-in. Q.F. guns on field mountings
these sights admit of continuous laying, i.e. the eye need no1
be removed when the gun is fired. The increased importance ol
concealment for one's own guns and the certainty of being called
upon to engage concealed targets, brought indirect laying into great
prominence (see also ARTILLERY). This form of laying is of two
kinds: (i) that in which the gun can be layed for direction over the
sight on the target itself, or on some aiming point close by, but from
indistinctness or other causes quadrant elevation is pre-
ferred; and (2) that used when the target is completely
hidden and an artificial line of fire laid out and the guns
layed for direction on pointers, or the line transferred to a distant
aiming point. The old method of giving quadrant elevation by
clinometer was obviously too slow. Scott's sight (see above) was
the first attempt to obtain indirect laying for elevation by means
of the sight itself, and in that sight the angle of sight was taken into
account ; in modern guns this is effected by what is technically
called the "independent line of sight" (see ORDNANCE: Field
Equipments). It is obtained by different means in different countries,
but the principle is the same. There must be two sets of elevating
gears, one which brings the axis of the gun and the sights together
on to the target, thus finding the angle of sight and also pointing
the axis of the gun at the target, and a second by which, independent
of the sight which remains fixed, the elevation due to the range can
be given to the gun and read by means of a pointer and dial marked
in yards for range. This latter is shown in the Krupp equipment
(Plate, fig. 14), in which the sight is attached to the cradle, but
does not move with it. The hand-wheel that screws the gun and
cradle down at the same time screws the sight up, and vice versa.
When the target is completely concealed it is necessary to lay the
gun on an aiming point more or less out of the line of fire, or to lay
on a " director ' with a large amount of deflection, and to align
aiming posts with the sights at zero to give the direction of the
target, and afterwards perhaps to transfer the line of sight to some
other distant object, all of which require a far greater scope of
deflection than is afforded by the deflection leaf. In the South
African war improvised detachable deflection scales of wood or iron
placed over the fore-sight, called gun arcs, were used, but this device
was clumsy, inaccurate and insufficient, as it only gave about 30°
right or left deflection, and only a sight that admitted of all-round
laying could really satisfy the requirements. " The goniometric
sight in' its simplest form is a circular graduated base plate on which
a short telescope or sighted ruler is pivoted. Besides the main
graduations there is usually a separate deflection scale " (Bethell).
In this form, which is found in British field artillery, the goniometric
or dial sight is used for picking up the line of fire. In the pillar sight
used in the French 80- and go-mm. Q.F. guns it is used for laying for
direction.
The collimateur, or sight proper, has a lateral movement of 9°,
and is actuated by the drum on the right turned by the mill-
headed screw. The drum is divided into 100 graduations, each
equal to 5-4'. The gonio plate below is divided into 4 quadrants,
and each quadrant into 10 spaces of 9° each
numbered in hundreds from o to 900. The
stem is turned by pressing down on the mill-
headed screw. The collimateur which is used
in many sights is a rectangular box closed
at one end by a darkened glass with a
bright cross. Its use is graphically described
in a French text-book thus: " The layer,
keeping his eye about a foot from the
collimateur and working the elevating wheel,
makes the horizontal fine dance about the
landscape until it dances on to the target;
then working the traversing gear he does
the same with the vertical line; then
bringing his eye close, he brings the inter-
section on to the target." In the Krupp arc
sight (see Plate, fig. 14), the goniometric
sight is placed on the top of the arc. In
the French field Q.F. artillery the inter-
mediate carriage (see description and dia-
gram in article ORDNANCE: Field Equipments) carries the sight.
tig. 15 shows the reciprocating sight for the 2-5-in. gun. The
sight drops through a socket in a pivoted bracket which is provided
Mountain w'lt^ a 'eve' anc' a clamP ; the level is fixed at the correct
artillery angle for drift ; if the sight (as is especially liable to be
sights. ^e case on steeP hillsides) is tilted away from the angle
it can be restored by moving the bracket till the bubble
of the spirit-level is central, and then clamping it.
With howitzers indirect laying is the rule, elevation being usually
given by clinometer, direction by laying on banderols marking out
the line of fire; then, when the direction has been established,
an auxiliary mark, usually in rear, is selected and the line transferred
to it. At night this mark is replaced by a lamp installed in rear
From Treatise on Service
Ordnance.
FIG. 15.
and in line with the sights. The normal method of laying these is
from the fore-sight over the tangent sight to a point in rear
bpecial sights were designed for this purpose by Colonel
Sir E. H. French, called cross-bar sights, and were in the slege
year 1908 still in use with British 6-in. B.L. howitzers artillery
The principle of these sights (see fig. 16) is that the slghts-
tangent sight has a steel horizontal bar which can slide through the
head of the tangent scale for deflection, and is graduated for 3° left
and I right deflection. One end of the bar is slotted to take the
sliding leaf; this end of the bar is graduated from o° to 6°, and in
conjunction with the fore-sight affords a lateral scope of 6° on either
side of the normal for picking up an auxiliary mark. The fore-
FIG. 16.
sight has a fixed horizontal bar slotted and graduated similarly to
the slotted portion of the tangent sight. The leaves are reversible,
and provided with a notch at one end and a point at the other, so
that they can be used for either forward or reverse laying. The
leaf of the fore-sight has a pinhole, and that of the tangent sight
cross-wires for fine reverse laying. Fore-sights are made right and
left; tangent sights are interchangeable, the graduations are cut
on the horizontal edges above and below, so that the sight can be
changed from right to left or vice versa by removing and reversing
the bar. Howitzer sights are vertical and do not allow for drift;
they are graduated in degrees only. Goniometric sights have
recently been introduced into British siege artillery. The pattern
is that of a true sight, that is to say, the base plate is capable of
movement about two axes, one parallel to and the other at right
angles to the axis of the gun, and has cross spirit-levels and a graduated
elevating drum and independent deflection scale, so that compensa-
tion for level of wheels can be given and quadrant elevation.
In smooth-bore days the term mortar meant a piece of ordnance
of a peculiar shape resting on a bed at a fixed angle of quadrant
elevation of 45°. It was ranged by varying the charge,
and layed for line by means of a line and plumb bob Laying
aligned on a picket. The term mortar, though not used Mortars.
in the British service, is still retained elsewhere to signify very short,
large-calibre howitzers, mounted on a bed with a minimum angle of
elevation of 45°, which with the full charge would give the maximum
range. Range is reduced by increasing the angle of elevation (by
:linometer) or by using reduced charges. In the g-45-in. Skoda
howitzer, which is really a mortar as defined above, direction is
given by means of a pointer on the mounting and a graduated
arc on the bed. For a description of Goerz panoramic. " ghost "
and other forms of sights, see Colonel H. A. Bethell, Modern
Suns and Gunnery (Woolwich, 1907), and for sights used in the
United States, Colonel O. M. Lissak, Ordnance and Gunnery (New
York and London, 1907).
Sights for Coast Defence Artillery (Fixed Armaments').
In coast defence artillery, owing to the fact that the guns are on
ixed mountings at a constant height (except for rise and fall ol
:ide) above the horizontal plane on which their
targets move, and that consequently the angle
of sight and quadrant elevation for every range
can be calculated, developments in sights, in a
measure, gave way to improved means of giving
quadrant elevation. Minor improvements in
tangent sights certainly were made, notably an
automatic clamp, but quadrant elevation was
mainly used, and in the case of guns equipped
with position-finders (see RANGE-FINDER) the
guns could be layed for direction by means of
a graduated arc on the emplacement- and a
winter on the mounting. A straight-edge or
vertical blade (see fig. 17) was placed above the
eaf of the tangent sight, and in some cases on
he fore-sight as well, to facilitate laying for
ine. This enabled the gun to be layed from
iome little distance behind, so that the layer
puld be clear of recoil, and continuous laying was thus pos-
ible. The arrangements for giving quadrant elevation con-
isted of an arc, called index plate (see fig. 18), on the gun,
graduated in degrees read by a " reader " on the carriage. A
I'ard scale of varnished paper, made out locally for quadrant eleva-
ion with regard to height of site, was usually pasted over this. A
orrection for level of tide was in many cases necessary, and was
From Treatise on.
Service Ordnance.
FIG. 17.
SIGHTS
Rocklng-
bar sight.
telescope.
entered in a table or mounted on a drum which gave several correc-
tions that had to be applied to the range for various causes. One
great drawback to this system was that elevation was given with
reference to the plane of the racers upon which the mounting moved,
and as this was not always truly horizontal grave errors were intro-
duced. To overcome this Colonel H. S. Watkin, C.B., introduced a
hydroclinometer fixed on the trunnion. It was provided with a yard
scale calculated with reference to height
i of site, and elevation was read by the
' intersection of the edge of the liquid
with the graduation for the particular
1 range. Special sights were introduced
j to overcome the difficulties of dis-
| appearing guns, large guns firing
through small ports, &c. Such were
the Moncrieff reflecting sights, and the
FlG. 18. — Sketch of Index " chase sights " for the lo-in. gun in
Plate and Reader. which the rear sight, equipped with a
mirror, was placed on the chase, and the
fore-sight on the muzzle, &c. In the early days of B.L. guns very
little change was made in the pattern of sights. Shield sights were in-
troduced for disappearing mountings to admit of continuous laying
for line, and a disk engraved for yards of range duly corrected for
height, and called an " elevation indicator," replaced the index plate
and reader. As in mobile artillery, the introduction of trunnionless
guns brought about a revolution in laying and sights. Smokeless
powder also made rapid firing a possibility and a necessity. Con-
tinuous laying and telescopic sights became possible. The reduction of
friction by improved mechanical arrangements, and the introduction
of electric firing, enabled the layer not only to train and elevate the
gun himself, but also to fire it the moment it was truly " on " the
target. The rocking-bar sight, which had been for some time in use
in the navy, was introduced. In this sight both hind and fore
sights are fixed on a rigid bar pivoted about the centre; the rear
end is raised or depressed by a rack worked by a hand- wheel ; ranges
are read from the periphery of a drum ; the fore-sight and leaf of the
hind-sight are provided with small electric glow lamps for night
firing. In addition to these open sights the bar also carries a
sighting telescope. The advantages compared with a tangent sight
are that only half the movement is ' required to raise the
sight for any particular range; the ranges on the drum
are easier to read, and if necessary can be set by another
man, so that the layer need not take his eye from the
The pattern of telescope used in coast defence is that
designed by Dr Common. It is an erecting telescope with a field of
view of 10° and a magnification of 3 diameters, and admits plenty
of light. The diamond-shaped pointer is always in focus; focusing
for individual eyesight is effected by turning the eye-piece, which
is furnished with a scale for readjustment. A higher power glass
has since been introduced for long ranges.
The improvements in gun mountings mentioned above led the
way to the introduction of the automatic sight. The principle of
combined sight and range-finder had long been known,
Automatic amj was emrx)died in the so-called " Italian" sight, but,
sights. on a(;COunt Of tjje siow rate Of fire imposed by black
powder, the rapidity of laying conferred by its use was of no great
advantage, and it was unsuited to the imperfect mechanical arrange-
ments of the gun mountings of the time. When cordite replaced
black powder, and the gun sights and all in front of the gun were
no longer obscured by hanging clouds of smoke, it became a de-
sideratum, and, as the automatic sight, it was reintroduced by Sir
G. S. Clarke, when he, as superintendent of the Royal Carriage
Factory, had brought gun mountings to such a pitch of perfection
that it could be usefully employed.
An automatic sight is a sight connected in such a manner with the
elevating gear of the gun, that when the sight is directed on the
water-line of a target at
A
any range the gun will
have the proper quadrant
elevation for that range.
Colonel H. S. Watkin,
C.B., describes the theory
of the sight thus (Pro-
ceedings R.A.I. 1898).
Conditions. — The gun
FlG. 19. — Theory of the Automatic Sight, must be at a certain
known height above
sea-level — the greater the height the greater the accuracy. The
racer path must be level. Let FB (fig. 19) represent a gun at height
BD above water-level DC, elevated to such an angle that a shot
would strike the water at C. Draw EB parallel to DC. It is clear
that under these conditions, if a tangent sight AF be raised to a
height F representing the elevation due to the range BC, the object C
will be on the line of sight. Then ABF=angle of elevation; EFB
= quadrant angle; BCD =angle of sight; EBF = ABF-ABE; and
sinceABE = BCD.it also equals ABF- BCD. BCD can always be cal-
culated from the formula, angle of sight in minutes = k ^ feet^ X J \46
R (in yards)
): Adam Darowski, Bona Sforza (Pol.) (Rome,
1904). (R. N. B.)
SIGISMUND III. (1566-1632), king of Poland and Sweden,
son of John III., king of Sweden, and Catherine Jagiellonika,
sister of Sigismund II., king of Poland, thus uniting in his person
the royal lines of Vasa and Jagiello. Educated as a Catholic
by his mother, he was on the death of Stephen Bathory elected
king of Poland (August 19, 1587) chiefly through the efforts of
the Polish chancellor, Jan Zamoyski, and of his own aunt, Anne,
queen-dowager of Poland, who lent the chancellor 100,000 gulden
SIGMARINGEN
69
to raise troops in defence of her nephew's cause. On his election,
Sigismund promised to maintain a fleet in the Baltic, to fortify
the eastern frontier against the Tatars, and not to visit Sweden
without the consent of the Polish diet. Sixteen days later were
signed the articles of Kalmar regulating the future relations
between Poland and Sweden, when in process of time Sigismund
should succeed his father as king of Sweden. The two kingdoms
were to be perpetually allied, but each of them was to retain its
own laws and customs. Sweden was also to enjoy her religion
subject to such changes as a general council might make. During
Sigismund's absence from Sweden that realm was to be ruled by
seven Swedes, six to be elected by the king and one by Duke
Charles, his Protestant uncle. Sweden, moreover, was not to
be administered from Poland. A week after subscribing these
articles the young prince departed to take possession of the Polish
throne. He was expressly commanded by his father to return
to Sweden, if the Polish deputation awaiting him at Danzig
should insist on the cession of Esthonia to Poland as a condition
precedent to the act of homage. The Poles proved even more
difficult to satisfy than was anticipated; but finally a com-
promise was come to whereby the territorial settlement was
postponed till after the death of John III. ; and Sigismund was
duly crowned at Cracow on the 27th of December 1587.
Sigismund's position as king of Poland was extraordinarily
difficult. As a foreigner he was from the first out of sympathy
with the majority of his subjects. As a man of education and
refinement, fond of music, the fine arts, and polite literature,
he was unintelligible to the szlachta, who regarded all artists and
poets as either mechanics or adventurers. His very virtues were
strange and therefore offensive to them. His prudent reserve
and imperturbable calmness were branded as stiffness and
haughtiness. Even Zamoyski who had placed him on the throne
complained that the king was possessed by a dumb devil. He
lacked, moreover, the tact and bonhomie of the Jagiellos;
but in fairness it should be added that the Jagiellos were natives
of the soil, that they had practically made the monarchy, and
that they could always play Lithuania off against Poland.
Sigismund's difficulties were also increased by his political
views which he brought with him from Sweden cut and dried,
and which were diametrically opposed to those of the omnipotent
chancellor. Yet, impracticable as it may have been, Sigismund's
system of foreign policy as compared with Zamoyski's was, at
any rate, clear and definite. It aimed at a close alliance with the
house of Austria, with the double object of drawing Sweden within
its orbit and overawing the Porte by the conjunction of the two
great Catholic powers of central Europe. A corollary to this
system was the much needed reform of the Polish constitution,
without which nothing beneficial was to be expected from any
political combination. Thus Sigismund's views were those of a
statesman who clearly recognizes present evils and would remedy
them. But all his efforts foundered on the jealousy and suspicion
of the magnates headed by the chancellor. The first three-and-
twenty years of Sigismund's reign is the record of an almost
constant struggle between Zamoyski and the king, in which the
two opponents were so evenly matched that they did little more
than counterpoise each other. At the diet of 1590 Zamoyski
successfully thwarted all the efforts of the Austrian party;
whereupon the king, taking advantage of sudden vacancies
among the chief offices of state, brought into power the Radzi-
wills and other great Lithuanian dignitaries, thereby for a time
considerably curtailing the authority of the chancellor. In 1592
Sigismund married the Austrian archduchess Anne, and the same
year a reconciliation was patched up between the king and the
chancellor to enable the former to secure possession of his
Swedish throne vacant by the death of his father John III. He
arrived at Stockholm on the 3oth of September 1593 and was
crowned at Upsala on the igth of February 1594, but only after
he had consented to the maintenance of the " pure evangelical
religion " in Sweden. On the i4th of July 1594 }ie departed for
Poland leaving Duke Charles and the senate to rule Sweden
during his absence. Four years later (July 1598) Sigismund
was forced to fight for his native crown by the usurpation of his
uncle, aided by the Protestant party in Sweden. He landed at
Kalmar with 5000 men, mostly Hungarian mercenaries; the
fortress opened its gates to him at once and the capital and the
country people welcomed him. The Catholic world watched his
progress with the most sanguine expectations. Sigismund's
success in Sweden was regarded as only the beginning of greater
triumphs. But it was not to be. After fruitless negotiations
with his uncle, Sigismund advanced with his army from Kalmar,
but was defeated by the duke at Stangebro on the 25th of
September. Three days later, by the compact of Linkoping,
Sigismund agreed to submit all the points in dispute between
himself and his uncle to a riksdag at Stockholm; but immediately
afterwards took ship for Danzig, after secretly protesting to the
two papal prothonotaries who accompanied him that the Linko-
ping agreement had been extorted from him, and was therefore
invalid. Sigismund never saw Sweden again, but he persistently
refused to abandon his claims or recognise the new Swedish
government; and this unfortunate obstinacy was to involve
Poland in a whole series of unprofitable wars with Sweden.
In 1602 Sigismund wedded Constantia, the sister of his deceased
first wife, an event which strengthened the hands of the Austrian
party at court and still further depressed the chancellor. At the
diet of 1605 Sigismund and his partisans endeavoured so far to
reform the Polish constitution as to substitute a decision by a
plurality of votes for unanimity in the diet. This most simple
and salutary reform was, however, rendered nugatory by the
opposition of Zamoyski, and his death the same year made
matters still worse, as it left the opposition in the hands of men
violent and incapable, like Nicholas Zebrzydowski, or sheer
scoundrels, like Stanislaw Stadnicki. From 1606 indeed to 1610
Poland was in an anarchical condition. Insurrection and
rebellion triumphed everywhere, and all that Sigismund could
do was to minimize the mischief as much as possible by his
moderation and courage. On foreign affairs these disorders had
the most disastrous effect. The simultaneous collapse of Muscovy
had given Poland an unexampled opportunity of rendering the
tsardom for ever harmless. But the necessary supplies were
never forthcoming and the diet remained absolutely indifferent
to the triumphs of Zolkiewski and the other great generals who
performed Brobdingnagian feats with Lilliputian armies. At the
outbreak of the Thirty Years' War Sigismund prudently leagued
with the emperor to counterpoise the united efforts of the Turks
and the Protestants. This policy was very beneficial to the
Catholic cause, as it diverted the Turk from central to north-
eastern Europe; yet, but for the self-sacrificing heroism of
Zolkiewski at Cecora and of Chodkiewicz at Khotin, it might
have been most ruinous to Poland. Sigismund died very
suddenly in his 66th year, leaving two sons, Wladislaus and John
Casimir, who succeeded him in rotation.
See Alcksander Rembowski, The Insurrection of Zebrzydowski
(Pol.) (Cracow, 1893) ; Stanislaw Niemojewski, Memoires (Pol.)
(Lemberg, 1899); Sveriges Historia, vol. iii. (Stockholm, 1881);
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, History of the Reign of Sigismund III.
(Pol.) (Breslau, 1836). (R. N. B.)
SIGMARINGEN, a town of Germany, chief towji of the Prussian
principality of Hohenzollern, on the right bank of the Danube,
55 m. S. of Tubingen, on the railway to Ulm. Pop. (1905)
4621. The castle of the Hohenzollerns crowns a high rock above
the river, and contains a collection of pictures, an exceptionally
interesting museum (textiles, enamels, metal-work, &c.), an
armoury and a library. On the opposite bank of the Danube
there is a war monument to the Hohenzollern men who fell in 1866
and 1870-1871.
The division of Sigmaringen is composed of the two formerly
sovereign principalities of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Hohen-
zollern-Hechingen (see HOHENZOLLERN), and has an area of
440 sq. m. and a population (1905) of 68,282. The Sigmaringen
part of the Hohenzollern lands was the larger of the two (297
sq. m.) and lay mainly to the south of Hechingen, though the
district of Haigerloch on the Neckar also belonged to it. The
name of Hohenzollern is used much more frequently than the
official Sigmaringen to designate the combined principalities.
See Woerl, Fiihrer durch Sigmaringen (Wiirzburg,i886).
7°
SIGNAL
SIGNAL (a word common in slightly different forms to nearly
all European languages, derived from Lat. signum, a mark, sign),
a means of transmitting information, according to some pre-
arranged system or code, in cases where a direct verbal or
written statement is unnecessary, undesirable, or impracticable.
The methods employed vary with the circumstances and the
purposes in view, and the medium into which the transmitted
idea is translated may consist of visible objects, sounds, motions,
or indeed anything that is capable of affecting the senses, so
long as an understanding has been previously effected with the
recipient as to the meaning involved. Any two persons may thus
arrange a system for the transmission of intelligence between
them, and secret codes of this kind, depending on the inflections
of the voice, the accent on syllables or words, the arrangement
of sentences, &c., have been so elaborated as to serve for the
production of phenomena such as are sometimes attributed
to telepathy or thought transference. With the many private
developments of such codes we are not here concerned, nor is it
necessary to attempt an explanation of the systems of drum-taps,
smoke-fires, &c., by which certain primitive peoples are supposed
to be able to convey news over long distances with astonishing
rapidity; the present article is confined to giving an account of
the organized methods of signalling employed at sea, in military
operations and on railways, these being matters of practical
public importance.
Marine Signalling. — A system of marine signals comprises
different methods of conveying orders or information to or from
a ship in sight and within hearing, but at a distance too great
to permit of hailing— in other words, beyond the reach of the
voice, even when aided by the speaking-trumpet. The necessity
of some plan of rapidly conveying orders or intelligence to a
distance was early recognized. Polybius describes two methods,
one proposed by Aeneas Tacticus more than three centuries before
Christ, and one perfected by himself, which, as any word could
be spelled by it, anticipated the underlying principle of later
systems. The signal codes of the ancients are believed to have
been elaborate. Generally some kind of flag was used. Shields
were also displayed in a preconcerted manner, as at the battle
of Marathon, and some have imagined that the reflected rays of
the sun were flashed from them as with the modern heliograph.
In the middle ages flags, banners and lanterns were used to
distinguish particular squadrons, and as marks of rank, as they are
at present, also to call officers to the admiral, and to report
sighting the enemy and getting into danger. The invention of
cannon made an important addition to the means of signalling.
In the instructions issued by Don Martin de Padilla in 1597 the
use of guns, lights and fires is mentioned. The introduction of
the square rig permitted a further addition, that of letting fall
a sail a certain number of times. Before the middle of the i7th
century only a few stated orders and reports could be made known
by signalling. Flags were used by day, and lights, occasionally
with guns, at night. The signification then, and for a long time
after, depended upon the position in which the light or flag
was displayed. Orders, indeed, were as often as possible com-
municated by hailing or even by means of boats. As the size
of ships increased the inconvenience of both plans became
intolerable. Some attribute the first attempt at a regular code
to Admiral Sir William Penn (1621-1670), but the credit of it is
usually given to James II. when duke of York. Notwithstanding
the attention paid to the subject by Paul Hoste and others,
signals continued strangely imperfect till late in the i8th century.
Towards 1780 Admiral Kempenfelt devised a plan of flag-signal-
ling which was the parent of that now in use. Instead of in-
dicating differences of meaning by varying the position of a
solitary flag, he combined distinct flags in pairs. About the
beginning of the igth century Sir Home Popham improved a
method of conveying messages by flags proposed by R. Hall
Gower (1767-1833), and greatly increased a ship's power of
communicating with others. The number of night and fog
signals that could be shown was still very restricted. In 1867
an innovation of prodigious importance was made by the adop-
tion in the British navy of Vice-Admiral (then Captain) Philip
Colomb's flashing system, on which he had been at work since
1858.
In the British navy, which serves as a model to most
others, visual signals . are made with flags or pendants, the
semaphore, flashing, and occasionally fireworks. Sound signals
are made with fog-horns, steam-whistles, sirens and guns. The
number of flags in use in the naval code, comprising what is
termed a " set," are 58, and consist of 26 alphabetical flags,
10 numeral flags, 16 pendants and 6 special flags. Flag signals
are divided into three classes, to each of which is allotted a
separate book. One class consists of two alphabetical flags, and
refers to orders usual in the administration of a squadron,
such as, for example, the flags LE, which might signify " Captain
repair on board flagship." Another class consists of three
alphabetical flags, which refer to a coded dictionary, wherein are
words and short sentences likely to be required« The remaining
refers to evolutionary orders for manoeuvring, which have alpha-
betical and numeral flags combined. The flags which constitute
a signal are termed a " hoist." One or more hoists may be ma'de.
at the same time. Although flag signalling is a slow method
compared with others, a fair rate can be attained with practice.
For example, a signal involving 162 separate hoists has been re-
peated at sight by 13 ships in company in 76 minutes. Semaphore
signals are made by the extension of a man's arms through a
vertical plane, the different symbols being distinguished by the
relative positions of the arms, which are never less than 45° apart.
To render the signals more conspicuous the signaller usually
holds a small flag on a stick in each hand, but all ships are fitted
with mechanical semaphores, which can be worked by one man,
and are visible several miles. Flag signalling being comparatively
slow and laborious, the ordinary message work in a squadron
is generally signalled by semaphore. The convenience of this
method is enormous, and by way of example it may be of interest
to mention a record message of 350 words which was signalled
to 21 ships simultaneously at the rate of 17 words per minute.
Flags being limited in size, and only distinguishable by their
colour, signals by this means are not altogether satisfactory
at long distances, even when the wind is suitable. For signalling
at long range the British navy employs a semaphore with arms
from 9 to 12 ft. long mounted at the top of the mast and capable
.of being trained in any required direction, and worked from
the deck. Its range depends upon the clearness of the atmo-
sphere, but instances are on record where a message by this
means has been read at 16 to 18 m.
Night signalling is carried out by means of " flashing," by
which is meant the exposure and eclipse of a single light for
short and long periods of time, representing the dots and dashes
composing the required symbol. The dots and dashes can be
made mechanically by an obscuring arrangement, or by electro-
mechanical means where magnets do the work, or by simply
switching on and off specially manufactured electric lamps.
The ordinary rate of signalling by flashing is from 7 to 10 words
per minute. In the British navy, as in the army, dots and dashes
are short and long exposures of light ; but with some nations the
dots and dashes are short and long periods of darkness, the light
punctuating the spaces between them. The British navy uses
the European modification of the so-called Morse code used in
telegraphy, but with- special signs added suitable to their code.
The introduction of the " dot and dash " system into the British
navy was entirely due to the perseverance of Vice-Admiral
Colomb, who, in spite of great opposition, and even after it had
once been condemned on its first trial at sea, carried it through
with the greatest success. The value of this innovation made in
1867 may be gauged by the fact that now it is possible to handle a
fleet with ease and safety in darkness and fog — a state of affairs
which did not formerly exist. The simplicity of the dot and
dash principle is its best feature. As the system only requires the
exhibition of two elements it may be used in a variety of different
manners with a,minimum of material, namely, by waving the most
conspicuous object at hand through short and long arcs, by
exhibiting two different shapes, each representing one of the
elements, or dipping a lantern in a bucket, and so on. Its
SIGNAL
adoption has not only contributed very materially to the in-
creased efficiency of the British navy, but it has been made
optional for use with the mercantile marine. Curiously enough,
flashing is not to any great extent used in the navies of other
countries which rely more on some system of coloured lights at
night. This system generally takes the form of four or five
double-coloured lanterns, which are suspended from some part of
the mast in a vertical line. Each lantern generally contains a
red and a white lamp, either of which can be switched on.
By a suitable keyboard on deck any combination of these coloured
lanterns can be shown. The advantage of this system lies in the
fact that each symbol is self-evident in its entirety, and does not
require an expert signalman to read it, as is the case with flashing,
which is a progressive performance.
For long distances at night the search-light, or some other
high power electric arc light, is utilized on the flashing system.
Dots and dashes are then made either by flashing the light
directly on the object, or by waving the beam up and down for
short and long periods of time. Sometimes when a convenient
cloud is available the reflection of the beam has been read for
nearly 40 m., with land intervening between the two ships. In a
fog signals are made by the steam-whistlef fog-horn, siren or by
guns. Except for the latter method the dot and dash system is
employed in a similar manner to flashing a light. Guns are some-
times used in a fog for signalling, the signification being deter-
mined by certain timed intervals between the discharges. The
larger British ships are supplied with telegraph instruments for
connexion with the shore, and heliographs are provided for land
operations. Marine galvanometers are also provided, and can
be used to communicate through submarine cables. To the
various methods of naval signalling must be added wireless
telegraphy, which in its application to ships at sea bids fair to
solve some problems hitherto impracticable. (See TELEGRAPHY:
HTtnfen.)
The international code of signals, for use between ships
of all nations, is perhaps the best universal dictionary in exist-
ence. By its means mariners can talk with great ease without
knowing a word of one another's language. By means of a few
flags any question can be asked and answered. The number
of international flags and pendants used with the international
code is 2-, consisting of a complete alphabet and a special
pendant characteristic of the code. At night flashing may be
used. (C.A.G.B.; A.F.E.)
A rmy Signalling. — Communication by visual signals between
portions of an army is a comparatively recent development of
military service. Actual signals were of course made in all ages
of warfare, either specially agreed upon beforehand, such as a
rocket or beacon, or of more general application, such as the
old-fashioned wooden telegraph and the combinations of lights,
&c.. used by savages on the X.W. frontier of India. But it was not
until the middle years of the igth century that military signalling
proper, as a special duty of soldiers, became at all general.
It was about the year 1865 that, owing to the initiative of Captain
Philip Colomb, R.X., whose signal system had been adopted for
his own sen-ice, the question of army signalling was seriously
taken up by the British military authorities. A school of signal-
ling was created at Chatham, and some time later all units of the
line were directed to furnish men to be trained as signallers.
At first a code book was used and the signals represented code
words, but it was found better to revert to the telegraphic
system of signalling by the Morse alphabet, amongst the unde-
niable advantages of which was the fact that it was used both
by the postal service and the telegraph units of Royal Engineers.
Thenceforward, in ever-increasing perfection, the work of
signallers has been a feature of almost every campaign of the
British army. To the original flags have been added the helio-
graph (for long-distance work), the semaphore system of the
Royal Xavy (for very rapid signalling at short distances), and
the lamps of various kinds for working by night. Full and
detailed instructions for the proper performance of the work,
which provide for almost every possible contingency, have been
published and are enforced.
The apparatus employed for signalling in the British service
consists of flags, large and small, heliograph and lamp for night
work. The distances at which their signals can be read
vary very considerably, the flags having but a limited ""
scope of usefulness, whilst the range of a heliograph is very
great indeed. Whether it be 10 m. or 100 away, it has been found
in practice that, given good sunlight, nothing but the presence
of an intervening physical obstacle, such as a ridge or wood,
prevents communication. For shorter distances moonlight, and
even artificial light, have on occasion been employed as the source
of light. In northern Europe the use of the instrument is much
restricted by climate, and, further, stretches of plain country,
permitting of a line of vision between distant hills, are not often
found. It is in the wilder parts of the earth, that is to say in
colonial theatres of war, that the astonishing value of the helio-
graph is displayed. In European warfare flag signalling is more
usually employed. The flags in use are blue and white, the
former for use with light, the latter for dark backgrounds.
FIG. i.
There is further a distinction between the " small " flag, which
is employed for semaphore messages and for rapid Morse over
somewhat shorter distances, and the " large " flag, which is
readable at a distance of 5 to 7 m., as against the maximum of
4 m. allowed to the small flag. With a clear atmosphere these
distances may be exceeded. The respective sizes of these flags
are as follows: — large flag 3'X$', pole 5' 6" long; small flag
a'X 2', pole 3' 6" long. The lamps used for night signalling are
of many kinds. Officially only the " lime light " and the " Beg-
bie " lamps are recognized, but a considerable number of the
old-fashioned oil lamps is still in use, especially in the auxiliary
forces, and many experiments have been made with acetylene.
The lime light is obtained by raising a lime pencil to a white heat
by forcing a jet of oxygen through the flame of a spirit lamp.
The strong light thus produced can be read under favourable
conditions at a distance of 1 5 m. ; but the equipment of gas-bag,
pressure-bag, and other accessories make the whole instrument
rather cumbrous. The bull's-eye lamp differs but slightly from
the ordinary lantern of civil life; it burns vegetable oil. The
Begbie lamp, which burns kerosene, is rather more elaborate and
gives a whiter light. It was in use for many years in India
before the objections made by the authorities in Er.glar.d to
certain features of the lamp were withdrawn. All these lamps
when in use are set up on a tripod stand and signals in
the Morse alphabet are made by opening and closing a
shutter in front of the light, and thereby showing long and
short flashes.
SIGNAL
The same principle is followed in the heliograph. This instru-
ment, invented by Sir Henry C. Mance, receives on a mirror,
and thence casts upon the distant station, the rays of the sun;
the working of a small key controls the flashes by throwing the
mirror slightly off its alignment and thus obscuring the light from
the party reading signals. The fact that the heliograph requires
sunlight, as mentioned above, militates against its employment
in Great Britain, but where it is possible to use it it is by far
the best means of signalling. Secrecy and rapidity are its chief
advantages. An observer 6 m. distant would see none of its
light if he were more than 50 yds. on one side of the exact align-
ment, whereas a flag signal could be read from almost every
FlG. 2. — Heliograph (by permission of the Controller of H.M.
.Stationery Office).
hill within range. None of the physical exertion required for
fast signalling with the flag is required to manipulate the instru-
ment at a high rate of speed. The whole apparatus is packed
in a light and portable form. An alternative method of using
the heliograph is to keep the rays permanently on the distant
point, a shutter of some kind being used in front of it to produce
obscurations.
When in use the heliograph is fixed upon a tripod. A tangent
screw (E) which moves the whole instrument (except the jointed
arm L) turns the mirror in any direction. Metal U-shaped arms
(C) carry the mirror (B), which is controlled by the vertical rod
(J) and its clamping screw (K). The signalling mirror itself
(usually having a surface of 5 in. diameter) is of glass, an un-
silvered spot (R) being left in the centre. This spot retains its
position through all movements in any plane. The instrument
is aligned by means of the sighting vane (P) fixed in the jointed
arm L, and the rays of the sun are then brought on to the distant
station by turning the horizontal and vertical adjustments until
the " shadow spot " cast by the unsilvered centre of the mirror
appears on the vane. The heliograph is thus ready, and signals
are made by the depression and release of the " collar " (I)
which, with the pivoted arm (U, V), acts as a telegraph key.
When the sun makes an angle of more than 1 20 degrees with the
mirror and the distant station, a " duplex mirror " is used in
place of the sighting vane. The process of alignment is in this
case a little more complicated. Various other means of making
dots and dashes are referred to in the official work, ranging from
the " collapsible drum " hung on a mast to the rough but effec-
tive improvisation of a heliograph out of a shaving-glass. The
employment of the beams of the search-light to make flashes on
clouds is also a method of signalling which has been in practice
very effective.
The Morse code employed in army signalling is as follows : —
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
L
M
N — •
O
P
S •
T -
U
V •
W
X
Y -
Z -
i •
2
3
4
5
i
8
9'
o
The semaphore code used in the army is shown below : — '
n
8 C 0 £
1 3 « 5
I ( r
N
VlY
\ h k
"tfum&vls "J or
Corrv'ny" Letters Comiaf
"Ready1
Fig. 3. — Semaphore (the
thin upright strokes represent
the seaman's body, the thick
strokes his arms).
Umsr'W"
In using this code the signaller invariably faces his reader, as unless
this were enforced each letter might be read as its opposite. In the
above diagram the appearance of the signals to the reader is shown,
thus the sender's right side only is used for the letter A.
In sending a message accuracy is ensured by various checks.
The number of words in a message is the most valuable of these,
as the receiving station's number must agree before the message
is taken as correct. Each word or " group " sent by the Morse
code must be " answered " before the sender passes on to another.
All figures are checked by the " clock check " in which i is repre-
sented by A, 2 by B and so on. All cipher " groups " are repeated
back en Hoc. There is an elaborate system of signals relating
to the working of the line. The " message form " in use differs
but slightly from the ordinary form of the Post Office telegraphs.
Signal stations in the field are classed as (o) " fixed " and " mov-
ing," the former connecting points of importance, or on a line of
communications, the latter moving with the troops; (6) " ter-
minal," " transmitting " and " central "; the first two require
no definition, the last is intended to send and receive messages
in many directions. The " transmitting station " receives
and sends on messages, and consists in theory of two full " ter-
minals," one to receive and one to send on. It is rarely possible
in the field to work rapidly with less than five men at a trans-
mitting and three at a terminal station. " Central " stations
SIGNAL
73
are manned according to the number of stations with which they
communicate.
Signalling is used on most campaigns to a large extent. In the
Tirah expedition, 1897 and 1898, one signal station received and
sent, between the ist and i8th November, as many as 980
messages by heliograph, some of which were 200 to 300 words in
length. It is often used as an auxiliary to the field telegraph,
especially in mountainous countries, and when the wire is liable
to be cut and stolen by hostile natives. In the Waziri expedition,
1881, communication was maintained direct for a distance of
70 m. with a s-in. heliograph. In the Boer War, 1899-1902,
the system of heliographic signalling was employed very exten-
sively by both sides.
In Germany the first army signalling regulations only appeared in
1902. The practice was, however, rapidly developed and towards the
end of the 1905 campaign in South-West Africa, 9 signalling officers
and 200 signallers were employed in that country. These usually
worked in parties of 2 or 3, each party being protected by a few
infantrymen or troopers. The apparatus used was heliograph by
day and a very elaborate form of lamp by night, and work was carried
on between posts separated by 60 and even 90 m. The signallers
were employed both with the mobile forces and in a permanent net-
work of communication in the occupied territory. In 1907-1908
fresh signalling regulations were issued to the home army, and each
company, battery or squadron is now expected to find one station of
three men, apart from the regimental and special instructors and
staff. Some experiments were carried out at Metz to ascertain the
mean distance at which signals made by a man lying down could be
seen, this being found to be about 1000 yds. The new regulations
allow of the use of flag and lamp signalling at 4 m. instead of as
formerly at if. Three flags are used, blue, white and yellow, and it
is stated that the last is the most frequently useful of the three.
The enormous development of the field telegraph and telephone
systems in the elaborate war of positions of 1904-1905 more or less
crowded out, so to speak, visual signalling on both sides, and in any
case the average illiterate Russian infantryman or the Cossack was
not adaptable to signalling needs. Only about one-quarter of the
signalling force (which consisted exclusively of engineer troops) in
Kuropatkin's army was employed in optical work, the other three-
quarters being assigned to telegraph, wireless and telephone station
work. The Italians, who are no strangers to colonial warfare, have
a well-developed visual signalling system.
See British Official Training Manuals: Signalling (1907).
Railway Signalling. — In railway phraseology the term " signal "
is applied to a variety of hand motions and indications by lamps
and other symbols, as well as to fixed signals; but only the
last-named class — disks and semaphores, with lights, perman-
ently fixed (on posts) at the side of the track — will be considered
here. These may be divided into (i) interlocking signals, used
at junctions and yards, and (2) block signals, for maintaining an
interval of space between trains following one another. In
both classes the function of a signal is to inform the engine-driver
whether or not he may proceed beyond the signal, or on what
conditions he may proceed, and it is essential to give him the
information some seconds before it need be acted upon.
The semaphore signal, which is now widely used, consists of
an arm or blade about 5 ft. long extending horizontally, at
right angles to the line of the track, from the top of a post
(wood or iron) 15 to 30 ft. high, and sometimes higher (fig. 4).
This arm, turning on a spindle, is pulled down (" off ") to indicate
that a train may pass it, the horizontal (or " on") position
indicating " stop "; sometimes, as on the continent of Europe,
use is made of the position of the arm in which it points diagonally
upwards, and on one or two English lines the arm in the safety
position hangs down perpendicularly, parallel to, but a few inches
away from, the post. A lamp is fixed to the side of the post about
on a level with the blade, and by the movement of the blade is
made to show at night red for " stop " and green for go-ahead or
" all clear." The earlier practice, white for " all clear," still
prevails largely in America.
In the early days of railway signalling three positions of the
semaphore arm were recognized: — (l) Horizontal, or at right angles
to the post, denoting danger; (2) at a downward angle of 45 degrees,
denoting caution; (3) hanging vertically downwards or parallel to
the post, denoting all right. Corresponding to the position of the
arm, three different lights were employed at night — red for danger,
green for caution and white for all right. But now British railways
make use of only two positions of the arm and two lights — the arm at
right angles to the post and a red light, both signifying danger or
xxv. 3 a
stop; and the arm at about 60 degress (or vertical, as mentioned
above) and a green light, both meaning all right or proceed. It is
better to abolish the use of white lights for signalling purposes.
The reason is obvious. There are many lights and lamps on the plat-
forms, in signal-boxes and in the streets and houses adjacent to a rail-
way; and i? white lights were recognized as signals, a driver might
mistake a light of this nature as a signal to proceed ; in fact, accidents
have been caused in this manner. A white light is not to be regarded
as a danger signal, as is sometimes erroneously stated, but rather
as no signal at all ; and as there is a well-known rule to the effect
that " the absence of a signal at a place where a signal is ordinarily
shown must be treated as a danger signal," it follows that a white
light, when seen at a place where a red or green light ought to be
visible, is to be treated as a danger signal, not because a white
light per se means danger, but because in such a case it denotes the
absence of the proper signal. Some companies have adopted a
purple or small white light as a "danger" signal for shunting
purposes in sidings and yards; but this practice is not to be com-
mended, since red should be the universal danger signal.
Distant signals are used to make it unnecessary for an engine-
driver to slacken his speed in case the stop (home) signal is
obscured by fog or smoke, or is beyond a curve, or for any reason
is not visible sufficiently far away. Encountering the distant
signal at a point 400 to 800 yds. before reaching the home signal,
he is informed by its position that he may expect to find the latter
in the same position; if it is " off " he passes it, knowing that
the home signal must be in the same position, but if it is at
danger he proceeds cautiously, prepared to stop at the home
signal, if necessary. The arm of a distant signal usually has a
fish-tail end. In Great Britain its colour indications are generally
the same as for the home signal, but occasionally it shows yellow,
and on some lines it is distinguished at night by an angular band
of light, shaped like a fish-tail, which appears by the side of the
red or green light. In America its night colour-indication is
made different from that of the home signal. Thus, where white
is used to indicate all clear (in both home and distant) the distant
arm, when horizontal, shows a green light; where green is the all-
clear colour a horizontal distant shows either a yellow light or
(on one road) a red and a green light side by side. Two lights
for a single arm, giving their indication by position as well as
colour, have been used to a limited extent for both home and
distant signals. Dwarf signals (a in fig. 5) are used for very slow
movements, such as those to or from a siding. Their blades are
about i ft. long, and the posts about 4 ft. high; the lower arm
on post c being for slow movements, is also frequently made
shorter than the upper one. Where more than two full-sized
arms are used on a post, the custom in America is to have the
upper arm indicate for the track of the extreme right, and the
others in the order in which the tracks lie; in Great Britain the
opposite rule prevails, the upper arm
indicating for the extreme left. But the
signals controlling a large number of
parallel or diverging tracks are preferably
arranged side by side, often on a narrow
overhead bridge or gantry spanning the
tracks.
All the switches and locks are con-
nected with the signal cabin by iron rods
(channel-iron or gas-pipe) supported
(usually near the ground and often
covered by boxing) on small grooved
wheels set at suitable distances apart.
The foundations of these supports are of
wood, cast iron or concrete. Concrete
foundations are comparatively recent, but
are cheap and durable. For signals (but
not for points) wire connexions are uni-
versal in England, and are usual in
America, being cheaper than rods. In
changing the direction of a line of redding
a bell-crank is used, but with a wire a
piece of chain is inserted and run round
a grooved pulley. Wire connexions are shown at a and b, fig. 4,
the main or " front " wire being attached at a. By this
the signalman moves the arm down to the inclined or go-
ahead position, to do which he has to lift the counter-
y-c
-a
FIG. 4. — Semaphore
signal. R, Red glass;
G, green glass.
74
SIGNAL
weight c. If the wire should break, the counter-weight would
restore the arm to the horizontal (stop) position, and thus
prevent the unauthorized passage of a train; and in case of
failure of the rod I, the iron spectacle s would act as a safety
counter-weight. The back-wire b is added to ensure quick
movement of the arm, but is not common in England. Long
lines of rigid connexions are "compensated" for expansion and
contraction due to changes in temperature by the introduction
of bell-cranks or rocker-arms. With wire connexions compen-
sation is difficult, and many plans have been tried. The most
satisfactory devices are those in which the connexion, in the
cabin, between the wire and the lever is broken when the signal
is in the horizontal position. The wire is kept taut by a weight
or spring, and at each new movement the lever (if the wire has
lengthened or shortened) grips it at a new place.
So early as 1846 it became a common practice in England to
concentrate the levers for working the points and signals of a
station in one or more cabins, and the necessity of
locking interlocking soon became evident to prevent simul-
taneous signals being given over conflicting routes, or
for a route not yet prepared to receive the train. In large
terminals concentration and interlocking are essential to rapid
movements of trains and economical use of ground.
Fig. 5 shows a typical arrangement of interlocked signals, the
principle being the same whether a yard has one set of points or
E3C
FIG. 5. — Interlocked signals (American practice, signals at right track,
and arras at right of post).
arranged that either one of them will be move<5 by the same
lever, the position of the point connexions being made to govern
the selection of the arm to be moved. A switch rod would be
connected to this lever at
H; the lever K is for use
where a signal is con-
nected by two wires, as
before described. The
lever is held in each of
its two positions by the
catch rod V, which en-
gages with notches in the
segment B. When the
signalman, preparatory to
lowering a signal, grasps
the lever at its upper end,
he moves thisrodupwards,
and in so doing actuates
the interlocking, through
the tappet N, attached at
T. Lifting the tappet locks
all levers which need to be
locked to make it safe to
move this one. In pulling
over the lever the rocker
R is also pulled;
but the slot in it
is radial to the
o centre on , which
^— B the lever turns,
so that during the
stroke N remains
motionless. On FIG- 6. — Signal Lever, with Mechanical
a hundred. The signals (at a, b, and c) are of the semaphore
pattern. For the four signals and one pair of points there are,
in the second storey of the cabin C, five levers. Each signal arm
stands normally in the horizontal position, indicating stop. To
permit a train to pass from A to B the signalman moves the arm
of signal b to an inclined position (60 degrees to 75 degrees down-
wards); and the interlocking of the levers prevents this move-
ment unless it can safely be made. If a has been changed to
permit a movement from S to B, or if the points x have beeen set
for such a movement, or if either signal on post c has been lowered,
the lever for b is immovable. In like manner, to incline the arm
of signal a for a movement from S to B it is first necessary to have
the points set for track S, and to have the levers of all the other
signals in the normal (stop) position. A sixth lever, suitably
interlocked, works a lock bar, which engages with the head rod of
the points; it is connected to the lock through the " detector
bar," d. This bar, lying alongside of and close to the rail, must
move upwards when the points lock is being moved either to
lock or to unlock; and being made of such a length that it is
never entirely free of the wheels of any car or engine standing or
moving over it, it is held down by the flanges,-and the signalman
is prevented from inadvertently changing the points when a
train is passing. At r is a throw-off or derailing switch (" catch-
points "). When x is set for the passage of trains on the main
line, r, connected to the same lever, is open; so that if a car,
left on the side track unattended, should be accidentally moved
from its position, it could not run foul of the main track.
The function of the interlocking machine is to prevent the
simultaneous display of conflicting signals, or the display of a
signal over points that are not set accordingly. The most
common forms of interlocking have the locking bars arranged in
a horizontal plane; but for ease of description we may take one
having them arranged vertically, the principle being the same.
The diagram (fig. 6) shows a section with a side view of one lever.
A machine consists of as many levers, placed side by side, as
there are points and signals to be moved, though in some cases
two pairs of points are moved simultaneously by a single lever,
and two or more separate arms on the same post may be so
the completion of Interlocking,
the stroke and the dropping of V, N is raised still farther,
and this unlocks such levers as should be unlocked after
this lever is pulled ("cleared" or "reversed"). It will be
seen that whenever the tappet N of any lever is locked in the
if e e
FIG. 7. — Interlocking Frame.
position shown in the figure, it is impossible to raise V, and
therefore impossible to move the lever.
The action of tappet N may be understood by reference to
fig. 7. A tappet, say 3, slides vertically in a planed recess in the
locking plate, being held in place by strips G and K. Transverse
SIGNAL
75
grooves N, 0, P, carry dogs, such as J. Two dogs may be con-
nected together by bars, R. The dogs are held in place by
straps Y (fig. 6). Locking is effected by sliding the dogs horizon-
tally; for example, dog J has been pushed into the notch in
tappet i, holding it in the normal position. If tappet 2 were
raised, its notch would come opposite dog J; and then the-
lifting of i would lock 2 by pushing J to the left. By means of
horizontal rod R, the lifting of i also locks 4. If 4 were already
up, it would be impossible to lift i.
Switch and signal machines are sometimes worked by com-
pressed air, or electric or hydraulic power. The use of power
makes it possible to move points at a greater distance
from the cabin than is permissible with manual
locking. power. The most widely used apparatus is the electro-
pneumatic, by which the points and signals are moved
by compressed air at 70 ft per sq. in., a cylinder with piston being
fixed at each signal or switch. From a compressor near the
cabin, air is conveyed in iron pipes buried in the ground.
The valves admitting air to a cylinder are controlled by electro-
magnets, the wires of which are laid from the cabin underground.
Each switch or signal, on completing a movement, sends an
electric impulse to the cabin, and the interlocking is
controlled by this " return." In the machine the
" levers " are very small and light, their essential
function being to open and close electric circuits. This
is performed through the medium of a long shaft placed
horizontally with its end towards the operator, which
is revolved on its axis through 60 degrees of a circle.
This shaft actuates the interlocking, which is in
principle the same as that already described; and it
opens and closes the electric circuits, governing the
aneous with the advent of the railway, the possibility of a block
system was early recognized; but its introduction was retarded
'by the great cost of employing attendants at every block station.
But as traffic increased, the time-interval system proved in-
adequate; and in the United Kingdom the block system is now
practically universal, while in America it is in use on many
thousand miles of line. In " permissive blocking " a second train
is allowed to enter a block section before the first has cleared it,
the engine-man being required so to control his speed that if
the first train be unexpectedly stopped he can himself stop
before coming into collision with it. It thus violates the essential
condition of true block signalling.
The manual " block " system in use at the present day in no
way differs from that devised by W. F. Cooke in 1842, except so far
as the details and designs of the telegraphic instruments are con-
cerned. Cooke used a single-needle instrument giving two indi-
cations— the needle to the left signifying " line clear," to the right,
"line blocked"; the instrument was also available for speaking
purposes. The instruments employed in Great Britain consist of
two dials — one for the up line and one for the down — and a bell.
They may be divided into two main classes, those requiring one wire,
and those requiring three wires for each double line of rails. The dials
of the one-wire instruments give only two indications, namely, " line
TO/I
bED
FIG. 8. — Block signals. (English practice, trains run on left-hand track,
signals at left of track, arms on left of post.)
admission of air to cylinders, by means of simple metal contact
strips rubbing on sections of its surface. The high-pressure
machine has been used with hydraulic power instead of
pneumatic, and with electrical interlocking instead of
mechanical.
Interlocking apparatus worked by compressed air at low
pressure (15 Ib per sq. in.), and with no electrical features, is
in use on some lines in America and has been introduced into
England. In place of an electromagnet for admitting compressed
air to the cylinders, a rubber diaphragm 8 in. in diameter is used.
This is lifted by air at 7 ft pressure, this pressure being con-
veyed from a cabin, distant 500 ft. or more, in one or two seconds.
As in the electro-pneumatic machine, the lever of a switch cannot
complete its stroke until the switch has actually moved home
and conveyed a " return indication " to the cabin. Pneumatic
apparatus of other designs is in use to a limited extent.
Pneumatic interlockings are costly to instal, and, depending
on an unfailing source of power, have not been much used at iso-
lated places, except on railways where an air-pipe is installed for
block signals; but at large yards the pneumatic machines have
been made a means of economy, because one attendant can
manage as many levers as can two or three in a manual power
machine. Moreover, a single lever will work two or more
switches, locks, &c., simultaneously, where desirable. The
absence of outdoor connexions above ground is also an advantage.
Since about 1900 electric power has come into use for working
both points and signals. A motor, with gearing and cranks, is
fixed to the sleepers at each pair of points, the power is conveyed
from the cabin by underground wires, the locking is of common
mechanical types, and, in general, the system is similar to
pneumatic systems except in the source of power. By using
accumulators, charged by dynamos run by gasoline engines, or
by a traveling power-car, the cost of power is reduced to a
very low figure, so that power-interlocking becomes economical
at small as well as large stations.
The essence of block signalling is a simple regulation forbidding
a train to start from station A until the last preceding train has
Block Passed station B; thus a space interval is maintained
system. between each train, instead of the time-interval that
was relied upon in the early days of railways. As the
introduction of the telegraph was almost or quite contempor-
clear " and " train on line " or "line blocked," the latter being the
normal indication, even when there is no train in the section. The
three-wire instrument has the advantage of giving three indications
on the dial, namely, " line clear," " line closed " and " train on line,"
the normal indication being " line closed." The one-wire instru-
ment differs from the three-wire in that the indicator is moved over
to the different positions by a momentary current, and is then held
there by induced magnetism, the wire being then free for any suc-
ceeding signals. In the three- wire apparatus there is a separate
wire, with an instrument at each end for the up line; the same for
the down line; and a wire for the bell, which is common to both
lines. When no current is flowing, the indicator is vertical, meaning
" line blocked or closed." When a current is sent along one of the
wires, the deflections to the right or left, according to the polarity
of the current, mean " line clear " or " train on line " respectively.
Some dial instruments are made with needles, some with small disks,
some with miniature semaphores to give the necessary indications,
but the effect is the same. The block instruments and bells should
not, as a rule, be used for speaking purposes ; but on a few subsidiary
railways, block working is effected by means of ordinary single-
needle telegraphic instruments, or by telephone, the drawback to such
an arrangement being that the signalman has no indication before
him to remind him of the condition of the line.
Fig. 8 shows the signals at a typical English station, which
may be called B. Notice having been received over the block
telegraph that a train is coming from A (on the up track), the
signalman in the cabin, b, lowers the home signal h; and (if the
block section from B to C is clear of trains) he lowers the starting
signal, s, also. The function of a distant signal d has already
been described; it is mechanically impossible for it to be lowered
unless h has previously been lowered. The relation of the signals
to the " crossover road " xx is the same in principle as is shown
in fig. 5. Dwarf or disk signals such as would be used for the
siding T or the crossover xx are omitted from the sketch. Where
the sections are very short, the starting signal of one section is
often placed on the same post as the distant signal of the next.
Thus, supposing B and C to be very close to each other, B's
starting signal would be on the same post as C's distant signal,
the latter being below the former, and the two would be so
interconnected by " slotting " apparatus that C could not lower
his distant signal unless B's starting signal was " off," while
B by the act of raising his starting arm would necessarily
throw C's distant arm to " danger." In America many block
stations have only the home signal, even at stations where
there are points and sidings, and on double-track lines the block
SIGNAL
"a "
telegraphing for both is done on a single Morse circuit. In the
United Kingdom the practice is to have separate apparatus and
separate wires for each track.
In the simple block system it is clearly possible for a signal-
man, through carelessness, forgetfulness, or other cause, and in
disregard of the indications of his telegraph instruments,
so to lower his signals as to admit a second train into the
block section before the first has left it, and that without
the driver of either train being aware of the fact. To eliminate
as far as possible the chance of such an occurrence, which is
directly opposed to the essence of the block system and may
obviously lead to a collision, the locking of the mechanical
signals with the electrical block instruments was introduced
in England by W. R. Sykes about 1876, the apparatus being
so arranged that a signalman at one end of a section is physically
unable to lower his signals to let a train enter that section until
they have been released electrically from the cabin at the other
end. The starting signal at a block section A cannot be lowered
until the signalman at the next station B , by means of an electric
circuit, unlocks the lever in connexion with it. In so doing he
breaks the unlocking circuit at his own station, and this break is
restored only on the arrival of the train for which the unlocking
was performed, the wheels of the train acting through a lever
or by a short rail circuit. Valuable improvements have been
made in this machine by Patenall, Coleman and others, and these
are in use in America, where the system is known as the " con-
trolled manual." The passage of a train is also made to set a
signal at "stop" automatically, by disconnecting the rod
between the signal and its lever. The connexion cannot be
restored by the signalman ; it must be done by an electro-magnet
brought into action by the train as it passes the next block
station.
The block system is used on single as well as on double lines.
In the United Kingdom and in Australia the means for pre-
venting collisions between trains running towards
system. eacn other on single-track railways is the " staff
system." The staff, suitably inscribed, is delivered
to the engine-driver at station A, and constitutes his authority
to occupy the main track between that station and station B.
On reaching B he surrenders the staff, and receives another one
which gives him the right to the road between B and C. If
there are two or more trains to be moved, all except the last
one receive tickets, which belong to that particular staff. The
staff system requires no telegraph; but to obviate the incon-
venience of sometimes finding the staff at the wrong end of the
road, electric staff apparatus has been devised. Staffs (or tablets)
in any desired number are kept at each of the two stations, and
are locked in a' cabinet automatically controlled, through
electro-magnets, by apparatus in the cabinet at the other station ;
and a staff (or tablet) being taken out at one station, a second one
cannot be taken out at either station until ,this first one is re-
turned to the magazine at one station or the other. Thus there
is a complete block system. By simple " catching apparatus "
on the engine, staffs or tablets may be delivered to trains moving
at a good speed.
The signals so far described depend for their operation, either
wholly or partially, on human agency, but there are others,
commonly known as " automatic," which are worked
signals kv the trains themselves, without human intervention.
Such signals, as a rule, are so arranged that normally
they are constrained to stand at " safety," instead of in the
"danger" position, which, like ordinary signals, they assume
if left to themselves; but as a train enters a block section the
constraint on the signals that guard it is removed and they
return to the danger position, which they retain till the train has
passed through. To effect this result an electrical track circuit
or rail circuit is employed, in conjunction with some form of
power to put the signalling devices to safety. Live-wire circuits
were formerly employed, but are now generally abandoned.
The current from a battery b (fig. 9) passes along the rails of one
side of the track to the signal 5 and returns along the other rails
through a relay. If the current through this relay is stopped in
any way, whether by failure of the battery or by a short circuit
caused by the presence of a train or vehicle with metal wheels
connected by metal axles on any part of the block section, its
electro-magnet is de-energized, and its armature drops, removing
the constraint which kept the signals at safety and allowing them
to move to danger. When the train has passed through the block
'I
-tJ
FIG. 9. — Automatic electric block signal, with rail circuit.
section the current is restored and the signals are forced back to
show safety. The current used for the track circuit must be of
low tension, because of the imperfect insulation, and as a rule
the ballast must not be allowed to touch the rails and must be
free from iron or other conducting substance. At each rail joint
a wire is used to secure electrical continuity, and at the ends of
each block section there are insulating joints in the track. Block
sections more than about i m. long are commonly divided into
two or more circuits, connected together by relays; but usually
they are made under i m. in length and often on intra-urban
railways very much less, so that many more trains can be passed
over the line in a given time than is possible with ordinary
block signalling. At points the track circuit is run through a
circuit breaker, so that the " opening " of the points sets the
signal for the section. The circuit is also led through the rails
of the siding so far as they foul the main track. An indicator at
each switch gives visual or audible warning of an approaching
train.
The signals themselves have been devised to work by clock-
work, by electricity — obtained, not from the track circuit, but
from a power station, or from non-freezing batteries at each post,
or from accumulators charged by dynamos situated, say, every
10 m. along the line — and by pneumatic power, either com-
pressed atmospheric air laid on from a main or carbonic acid gas
stored in a tank at the foot of
the posts, each tank furnishing
power for several thousand move-
ments of the signal arm. A clock-
work signal is shown in fig. 10.
When an electro-magnet in the rail
circuit drops its armature, the
mechanism is released and causes
the disk to turn and indicate stop.
On the restoration of the current
the disk makes another quarter
'
w
n
^ ^
\
//
ft
^
^
FIG. 10. — Signal moved by
clockwork (Union).
FIG. II. — Enclosed disk
signal (Hall).
turn and then shows only its edge to the approaching train,
indicating " all clear."
The enclosed disk signal, commonly called a "banjo" (fig. n),
is a circular box about 4 ft. in diameter, with a glass-covered
opening, behind which a red disk is shown to indicate stop.
The disk, very light, made of cloth stretched over a wire, or of
aluminium, is supported on a spindle, which is delicately balanced
on a pivot so that the closing of an electro-magnet lifts the disk
SIGNATURE
77
away from the window and thus indicates " all clear." On the
withdrawal or failure of the current the disk falls by gravity to
the " stop " position. A local battery is used, with a relay, the
rail circuit not being strong enough to lift the disk. In the
electro-pneumatic system a full-size semaphore is used. Com-
pressed air, from pumps situated at intervals of 10 to 20 m.,
is conveyed along the line in an iron pipe, and is supplied to a
cylinder at each signal, exactly as in pneumatic interlocking,
before described. The rail circuit, when complete, maintains
pressure in a cylinder, holding the signal " off." On the entrance
of a train or the failure of the current, the air is liberated and the
signal arm is carried by gravity to the " stop " position.
Automatic signals are sometimes made to stand normally
(when no train is in the section) in 'the " stop " position. The
local circuit is connected with the rail circuit so that it is closed
only when a train is approaching within, say, i m. With the rail
circuit, distant signals are controlled, without a line wire, by
means of a polarized relay. Each signal, when cleared, changes
the polarity of the rail circuit for the next section in its rear, and
this, by the polarized relay, closes the local circuit of the distant
signal, without affecting the -home signal for that section.
Automatic signals are used in America on a few single lines.
The signal at A for the line AB is arranged as before described ;
and the signal at B, for movements in the opposite direction, is
worked by means of a line wire from A, strung on poles. When
a section is occupied, signals are set two sections away, so as to
provide against the simultaneous entry of two trains.
One of the chief causes of anxiety and difficulty in the working
of railway traffic is fog, which practically blots out the whole system
p of visible signals, so that while the block telegraph re-
sixnalliaz mains, the means of communicating the necessary in-
structions to the driver are no longer effective. Delay and
confusion immediately arise; and in order to secure safety, speed
has to be lessened, trains have to be reduced in number, and a
system of " fog-signalling " introduced. In England, especially
around London, elaborate arrangements have to be made. " Fog-
signalling " consists in the employment of audible signals, or de-
tonators, to convey to drivers.the information ordinarily imparted
by the visible or semaphore signals. As soon as possible after a fog
comes on, a man is stationed at the foot of each distant signal, and
generally of each home signal also, who by means of detonators, red
and green flags and a hand-lamp, conveys information to the driver
of every train as to the position of the semaphore arm. A detonator
is a small flat metal case about 2 in. in diameter and J in. deep,
furnished with two leaden ears or clips which can be easily bent down
to grip the head of the rail. The case contains some detonating
composition, which readily explodes with a loud report when a wheel
passes over it. As soon as a signal arm is raised to " danger," the
fogman places upon one of the rails of the track to which the signal
applies two detonators, or in the case of a new and improved class of
detonator which contains two separate charges in one case, one
detonator, and at the same time exhibits a red flag or light to the
driver of an approaching train. The engine of a train passing over
the detonators explodes them, the noise so made being sufficient to
apprise the driver that the signal, though invisible to him, is at
danger, and he then should act in the same way as if he had seen
the signal. If, however, the signal arm should be lowered to the
" all-right " position before a train reaches it, the fogman should
immediately remove the detonators and exhibit a green flag or
lamp, replacing the detonators as soon as the signal is again raised
to danger. As a rule the fogmen are drawn from the ranks of the
permanent-way men, who otherwise would be idle. But if, as
sometimes happens, a fog continues for several days, great difficulty
is experienced in obtaining sufficient men to carry on this important
duty without undue prolongation of their hours of work. When
this happens, signalmen, shunters, porters, yardsmen and even clerks
may have to be called on to take a turn at " fogging." Some
companies have adopted mechanical appliances, whereby a man can
place a detonator upon a line of rails or remove it while standing at a
distance away from the track, thus enabling him to attend to more
than one line without danger to himself. The cost of detonators often
amounts to a considerable sum; and an apparatus called an econo-
mizer has been introduced, whereby the explosion of one detonator
removes the second from the rails before the wheels reach it. As it is
only necessary for one detonator to explode, the object of placing
two on the rails being merely to guard against a miss-fire, consider-
able saving can thus be effected. Many attempts have been made to
design a mechanical apparatus for conveying to a driver the re-
quisite information as to the state of the signals during a fog, and for
enabling the fogmen to be dispensed with. Such inventions usually
consist of two parts, namely (l) an inclined plane or block or trigger,
placed on the permanent way alongside the track or between the
rails, and working in connexion with the arm of the signal; and (2) a
lever or rod connected with the steam-whistle, or an electric bell or
indicator on the foot-plate, and depending from the under-side of the
engine in such a position as to come in contact with the apparatus on
the ground, when the latter is raised above the level of the rails.
Most of the proposed systems only give an indication when the signal
is at danger, and are silent when the signal is off. This is contrary
to good practice, which requires that a driver should receive a positive
indication both when the signal is " off " as well as when it is " on."
If this is not done, a driver may, if the signal is " off " and if the fog
is thick, be unaware that he has passed the signal, and not know
what part of the line he has reached. The absence of a signal at a
place where a signal is usually exhibited should invariably be taken
to mean danger. Fog signalling machines that depend on the ex-
plosion of detonators or cartridges have the drawback that they
require recharging after a certain number of explosions, varying with
the nature and size of the machine. Even when a satisfactory form
of appliance has been discovered, the manner of using it is by no
means simple. It is clearly no use placing such an apparatus im-
mediately alongside a stop signal, as the driver would receive the
intimation too late for him to be able to stop at the required spot.
To place devices of this description at or near every stop signal in a
large station or busy junction would involve a multiplication of wires
or rods which is undesirable. Every such apparatus should certainly
be capable of giving an " all-right " signal as well as a " danger
signal. It requires very careful maintenance, and should be in regular
daily use to ensure its efficiency.
The fundamental principles of railway signalling are simple,
but the development of the science has called for much study
and a large money outlay. On every railway of any
consequence the problems of safety, economy and
convenience are involved, one with another, and signalling.
cannot be perfectly solved. Even so fundamental a
duty as that of guarding the safety of life and limb is a relative
one when we have to consider whether a certain expenditure is
justifiable for a given safety device. Having good discipline
and foregoing the advantages of high speed, many a manager
has successfully deferred the introduction of signals; others,
having to meet severe competition, or, in Great Britain, under
the pressure of the government, have been forced to adopt the
most complete apparatus at great cost. In large city terminal
stations, where additions to the space are out of the question,
interlocking is necessary for economy of time and labour, as,
indeed, it is in a less degree at smaller stations also; as a measure
of safety, however, it is desirable at even the smallest, and the
wise manager extends its use as fast as he is financially able.
At crossings at grade level of one railway with another, and at
drawbridges, interlocked signals with derailing switches obviate
the necessity of stopping all the trains, as formerly was required
by law everywhere in America, and saving a stop saves money.
The block system was introduced primarily for safety, but
where trains are frequent it becomes also an element of economy.
Without it trains must usually be run at least five minutes apart
(many managers deem seven or ten minutes the shortest safe
interval for general use), but with it the interval may be reduced
to three minutes, or less, according to the shortness of the block
sections. With automatic signals trains are safely run at high
speed only i^ m. apart, and on urban lines the distance between
them may be only a few hundred yards. (B. B. A.; H. M. R.)
SIGNATURE (through Fr. from Lat. signatura, signare, to
sign, signum, mark, token, sign), a distinguishing sign or mark,
especially the name, or something representing the name, of a
person used by him as affixed to a document or other writing to
show that it has been written by him or made in accordance
with his wishes or directions (see AUTOGRAPH, MONOGRAM, &c.).
In the early sense of something which "signifies," i.e. marks a
condition, quality or meaning, the word was formerly also used
widely, but now chiefly in technical applications. In old medical
theory, plants and minerals were supposed to be marked by some
natural sign or symbol which indicated the particular medicinal
use to which they could be put; thus yellow flowers were to
be used for jaundice, the " scorpion-grass," the old name of
the forget-me-not, was efficacious for the bite of the scorpion;
many superstitions were based on the human shape of the roots
of the mandrake or mandragora; the bloodstone was taken
to be a cure for hemorrhage; this theory was known as the
" doctrine of signatures." (See T. J. Pettigrew, Superstitions
connected with Medicine or Surgery, 1844.) In printing or book-
78
SIGN-BOARD— SIGNIFICS
binding the " signature " is a letter or figure placed at the bottom
of the first page of a section of a book, as an assistance to the
binder in folding and arranging the sections consecutively;
hence it is used of a sheet ready folded. In music it is the term
applied to the signs affixed at the beginning of the stave showing
the key or tonality and the time or rhythm (see MUSICAL
NOTATION).
SIGN-BOARD, strictly a board placed or hung before any
building to^designate its character. The French enseigne in-
dicates its essential connexion with what is known in English as
a flag (q.v.), and in France banners not infrequently took the
place of sign-boards in the middle ages. Sign-boards, however,
are best known in the shape of painted or carved advertisements
for shops, inns, &c., they are in fact one of various emblematic
methods used from time immemorial for publicly calling atten-
tion to the place to which they refer. The ancient Egyptians and
Greeks are known to have used signs, and many Roman examples
are preserved, among them the widely-recognized bush to in-
dicate a tavern, from which is derived the proverb " Good wine
needs no bft&r." In some cases, such as the bush, or the three
balls of pawnbrokers, certain signs became identified with
certain trades, but apart from these the emblems employed by
traders — evolving often into trade-marks — may in great part
be grouped according to their various origins. Thus, at an early
period the cross or other sign of a religious character was used
to attract Christians, whereas the sign of the sun or the moon
would serve the same purpose for pagans. Later, the adaptation
of the coats of arms or badges of noble families became common ;
these would be described by the people without consideration
of the language of heraldry, and thus such signs as the Red Lion,
the Green Dragon, &c., have become familiar. Another class
of sign was that which exhibited merely persons employed in
the various trades, or objects typical of them, but in large towns
where many practised the same trade, and especially, as was
often the case, where these congregated mainly in the samj
street, such signs did not provide sufficient distinction. Thus
a variety of devices came into existence — sometimes the trader
used a rebus on his own name (e.g. two cocks for the name of
Cox); sometimes he adopted any figure of an animal or other
object, or portrait of a well-known person, which he considered
likely to attract attention. Finally we have the common associa-
tion of two heterogeneous objects, which (apart from those
representing a rebus) were in some cases merely a whimsical
combination, but in others arose from a popular misconception
of the sign itself (e.g. the combination of the " leg and star "
may have originated in a representation of the insignia of the
garter), or from corruption in popular speech (e.g. the com-
bination " goat and compasses " is said by some to be a corrup-
tion of " God encompasses ")• Whereas the use of signs was
generally optional, publicans were on a different footing from
other traders in this respect. As early as the i4th century there
was a law in England compelling them to exhibit signs, for in
1393 the prosecution of a publican for not doing so is recorded.
In France edicts were directed to the same end in 1567 and 1577.
Since the objoct of sign-boards was to attract the public, they
were often of an elaborate character. Not only were the signs
themselves large and sometimes of great artistic merit (especially
in the i6th and i7th centuries, when they reached their greatest
vogue) but the posts or metal supports protruding from the
houses over the street, from which the signs were swung, were
often elaborately worked, and many beautiful examples of
wrought-iron supports survive both in England and on the
Continent. The signs were a prominent feature of the streets of
London at this period. But here and in other large towns they
became a danger and a nuisance in the narrow ways. Already in
1669 a royal order had been directed in France against the
excessive size of sign-boards and their projection too far over
the streets. In Paris in 1761 and in London about 1762-1773
laws were introduced which gradually compelled sign-boards
to be removed or fixed flat against the wall. For the most part
they only survived in connexion with inns, for which some
of the greatest artists of the time painted sign-boards, usually
representing the name of the inn. With the gradual abolition
of sign-boards the numbering of houses began to be introduced
in the i8th century in London. It had been attempted in Paris
as early as 1512, and had become almost universal by the close of
the i8th century, though not enforced until 1805. It appears
to have been first introduced into London early in the i8th
century. Pending this development, houses which carried on
trade at night (e.g. coffee houses, &c.) had various specific arrange-
ments of lights, and these still survive to some extent, as in the
case of doctors' dispensaries and chemists' shops.
See Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, History of Sign-
boards (London, 1866).
SIGNIA (mod. Segni), an ancient town of Latium (adiectum),
Italy, on a projecting lower summit of the Volscian mountains,
above the Via Latina, some 35 m. S.E. of Rome. The modern
railway station, 33 m. S.E. of Rome, lies 5 m. S.E. of Signia,
669 ft. above sea level. The modern town (2192 ft.) occupies
the lower part of the ancient site. Pop. (1901) 6942. Its founda-
tion as a Roman colony is ascribed to Tarquinius Superbus,
and new colonists were sent there in 495 B.C. Its position was
certainly of great importance: it commands a splendid view,
and with Anagnia, which lies opposite to it, guarded the approach
to the valley of the Trerus or Tolerus (Sacco) and so the road to
the south. It remained faithful to Rome both in the Latin and
in the Hannibalic wars, and served as a place of detention for the
Carthaginian hostages during the latter. It seems to have re-
mained a place of some importance. Like Cora it retained the
right of coining in silver. The wonderfully hard, strong cement,
made partly of broken pieces of pottery, which served as the
lining for Roman water cisterns (opus signinum) owes its name
to its invention here (Vitruvius, viii. 7, 14). Its wine, pears and
charcoal were famous in Roman times. In 90 B.C. it became a
municipium with a senalus and praetores. In the civil war it
joined the democratic party, and it was from here that in 82 B.C.
Marius marched to Sacriportus (probably marked by the medieval
castle of Piombinara, near Segni station, commanding the
junction of the Via Labicana and the Via Latina; see T. Ashby,
Papers of the British School at Rome, London, 1902, i. 125 sqq.),
where he was defeated with loss. After this we hear no
more of Signia until, in the middle ages, it became a papal
fortress.
The city wall, constructed of polygonal blocks of the mountain
limestone and ij m. in circumference, is still well preserved and
has several gates; the largest, Porta Saracinesca, is roofed by
the gradual inclination of the sides until they are close enough
to allow of the placing of a lintel. The other gates are mostly
narrow posterns covered with flat monolithic lintels, and the
careful jointing of the blocks of which some of them are composed
may be noted. Their date need not be so early as is generally
believed (cf. NORBA) and they are certainly not pre-Roman.
A portion of the wall in the modern town has been restored in
opus quadratum of tufa in Roman times. Above the modern
town, on the highest point, is the church of S. Pietro, occupying
the central cella of the ancient Capitolium of Signia (which had
three cellae). The walls consist of rectangular blocks of tufa, and
the whole rests upon a platform of polygonal masses of limestone
(see R. Delbriick, Das Capitolium von Signia, Rome, 1903).
An open circular cistern in front of the church lined with rect-
angular blocks of tufa may also be noted. (T. As.)
SIGNIFICS. The term " Signifies " may be defined as the
science of meaning or the study of significance, provided sufficient
recognition is given to its practical aspect as a method of mind,
one which is involved in all forms of mental activity, including
that of logic.
In Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901-
1905) the following definition is given: —
" I. Signifies implies a careful distinction between (a) sense or
signification, (6) meaning or intention and (c) significance or ideal
worth. It will be seen that the reference of the first is mainly verbal
(or rather sensal), of the second volitional, and of the third moral
(e.g. we speak of some event ' the significance of which cannot be
overrated,' and it would be impossible in such a case to substitute
the ' sense ' or the ' meaning ' of such event, without serious loss).
SIGNIFICS
79
Signifies treats of the relation of the sign in the widest sense to
each of these.
2. A proposed method of mental training aiming at the concentra-
tion of intellectual activities on that which is implicitly assumed to
constitute the primary and ultimate value of every form of study,
i.e. what is at present indifferently called its meaning or sense, its
import or significance. . . . Signifies as a science would centralise
and co-ordinate, interpret, inter-relate and concentrate the efforts
to bring out meanings in every form, and in so doing to classify the
various applications of the signifying property clearly and distinctly."
Since this dictionary was published, however, the subject has
undergone further consideration and some development, which
necessitate modifications in the definition given. It is clear
that stress needs to be laid upon the application of the principles
and method involved, not merely, though notably, to language,
but to all other types of human function. There is need to insist
on the rectification of mental attitude and increase of inter-
pretative power which must follow on the adoption of the
significal view-point and method, throughout all stages and forms
of mental training, and in the demands and contingencies of life.
In so far as it deals with linguistic forms, Signifies includes
" Semantics," a branch of study which was formally introduced
and expounded in 1807 by Michel Breal, the distinguished French
philologist, in his Essai de semantique. In 1900 this book was
translated into English by Mrs Henry Cust, with a preface by
Professor Postgate. M. Breal gives no more precise definition
than the following: —
" Extraire de la linguistique ce qui en ressort comme aliment pour
la reflexion et — je ne crains pas de 1'ajouter — comme regie pour notre
propre langage, puisque chacun de nous collabore pour sa part a
revolution de la parole humaine, voila ce qui merite d'etre mis en
lumiere, voila ce qui j'ai essaye de faire en ce volume."
In the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology Semantics is
defined as " the doctrine of historical word-meanings; the
systematic discussion of the history and development of changes
in the meanings of words." It may thus be regarded as a reform
and extension of the etymological method, which applies to
contemporary as well as to traditional or historical derivation.
As human interests grow in constantly specialized directions, the
vocabulary thus enriched is unthinkingly borrowed and re-
borrowed on many sides, at first in definite quotation, but soon
in unconscious or deliberate adoption. Semantics may thus, for
present purposes, be described as the application of Signifies
within strictly philological limits; but it does not include the
study and classification of the " Meaning " terms themselves,
nor the attainment of a clear recognition of their radical import-
ance as rendering, well or ill, the expressive value not only of
sound and script but also of all fact or occurrence which demands
and may arouse profitable attention.
The first duty of the Significian is, Uierefore, to deprecate the
demand for mere linguistic reform, which is indispensable on its
own proper ground, but cannot be considered as the satisfaction
of a radical need such as that now suggested. To t>e content with
mere reform of articulate expression would be fatal to the
prospect of a significantly adequate language; one characterized
by a development only to be compared to that of the life and
mind of which it is or should be naturally the delicate, flexible,
fitting, creative, as also controlling and ordering, Expression.
The classified use of the terms of expression-value suggests
three main levels or classes of that value — those of Sense,
Meaning and Significance.
(a) The first of these at the outset would naturally be associated
with Sense in its most primitive reference; that is, with the
organic response to environment, and with the essentially
expressive element in all experience. We ostracize the senseless
in speech, and also ask " in what sense " a word is used or a
statement may be justified.
(6) But " Sense" is not in itself purposive; whereas that is
the main character of the word " Meaning," which is properly
reserved for the specific sense which it is intended to convey.
(c) As including sense and meaning but transcending them in
range, and covering the far-reaching consequence, implication,
ultimate result or outcome of some event or experience, the term
•" Significance " is usefully applied.
These are not, of course, the only significal terms in common
use, though perhaps sense and significance are on the whole the
most consistently employed. We have also signification, pur-
port, import, bearing, reference, indication, application, implica-
tion, denotation and connotation, the weight, the drift, the
tenour, the lie, the trend, the range, the tendency, of given
statements. We say that this fact suggests, that one portends,
another carries, involves or entails certain consequences, or
justifies given inferences. And finally we have the value of all
forms of expression; that which makes worth while any assertion
or proposition, concept, doctrine or theory; the definition of
scientific fact, the use of symbolic method, the construction of
mathematical formulae, the playing of an actor's part, or even
art itself, like literature in all its forms.
The distinctive instead of haphazard use, then, of these and
like terms would soon, both as clearing and enriching it, tell for
good on our thinking. If we considered that any one of them
were senseless, unmeaning, insignificant, we should at once in
ordinary usage and in education disavow and disallow it. As it
is, accepted idiom may unconsciously either illuminate or con-
tradict experience. We speak, for instance, of going through
trouble or trial; we never speak of going through well-being.
That illuminates. But also we speak of the Inner or Internal as
alternative to the spatial — reducing the spatial to the External.
The very note of the value to the philosopher of the " Inner "
as opposed to the " Outer " experience is that a certain example
or analogue of enclosed space — a specified inside — is thus not
measurable. That obscures. Such a usage, in fact, implies that,
within enclosing limits, space sometimes ceases to exist. Com-
ment is surely needless.
The most urgent reference and the most promising field for
Signifies lie in the direction of education. The normal child,
with his inborn exploring, significating and comparing tendencies
is so far the natural Significian. At once to enrich and simplify
language would for him be a fascinating endeavour. Even his
crudeness would often be suggestive. It is for his elders to supply
the lacking criticism out of the storehouse of racial experience,
acquired knowledge and ordered economy of means; and to
educate him also by showing the dangers and drawbacks of
uncontrolled linguistic, as other, adventure. Now the evidence
that this last has virtually been hitherto left undone and even
reversed, is found on careful examination to be overwhelming.1
Unhappily what we have so far called education Ijas, anyhow
for centuries past, ignored — indeed in most cases even balked —
the instinct to scrutinise and appraise the value of all that exists .
or happens within our ken, actual or possible, and fittingly to
express this.
Concerning the linguistic bearing of Signifies, abundant
evidence has been collected, often in quarters where it would
least be expected —
1. Of general unconsciousness of confusion, defeat, anti-
quation and inadequacy in language.
2. A. Of admission of the fact in given cases, but plea of
helplessness to set things right. B. Of protest in sucfe-fases and
suggestions for improvement.
3. Of direct or implied denial that the evil exists or is serious,
and of prejudice against any attempt at concerted control and
direction of the most developed group of languages.
4. Of the loss and danger of now unworthy of .misfitting
imagery and of symbolic assertion, observance or rite, once both
worthy and fitting.
5. Of the entire lack, in education, of emphasis on the indis-
pensable means of healthy mental development, i.e. the removal
of linguistic hindrances and the full exploitation and expansion
of available resources in language.
6. Of the central importance of acquiring a clear and orderly
use of the terms of what we vaguely call " Meaning "; and also
of the active modes, by gesture, signal or otherwise, of conveying
intention, desire, impression and rational or emotional thought.
1 It would be impossible of course in a short space to prove this
contention. But the proof exists, and it is at the service of those who
quite reasonably may deny its possible existence.
8o
SIGNIFICS
7. Finally and notably, of the wide-spread and all-pervading
havoc at present wrought by the persistent neglect, in modern
civilization, of the factor on which depends so much of our practi-
cal and intellectual welfare and advance.
As the value of this evidence is emphatically cumulative, the
few and brief examples necessarily torn from their context for
which alone room could here be found would only be misleading.
A selection, however, from the endless confusions and logical
absurdities which are not only tolerated but taught without
correction or warning to children may be given.
We speak of beginning and end as complementary, and
then of " both ends "; but never of both beginnings. We talk of
truth when we mean accuracy: of the literal (" it is written ")
when we mean the actual (" it is done "). Some of us talk of the
mystic and his mysticism, meaning by this, enlightenment,
dawn heralding a day; others (more justly) mean by it the
mystifying twilight, darkening into night. We talk of the un-
knowable when what that is or whether it exists is precisely
what we cannot know — the idea presupposes what it denies; we
affirm or deny immortality, ignoring its correlative innatality;
we talk of solid foundations for life, for mind, for thought, when
we mean the starting-points, foci. We speak of an eternal sleep
when the very raison d'etre of sleep is to end in awaking — it is
not sleep unless it does; we appeal to a root as to an origin,
and also figuratively give roots to the locomotive animal. We
speak of natural " law " taking no count of the sub-attentive
working in the civilized mind of the associations of the legal
system (and the law court) with its decreed and enforced, but
also revocable or modifiable enactments. Nature, again, is in-
differently spoken of as the norm of all order and fitness, the
desecration of which is reprobated as the worst form of vice and
is even motherly in bountiful provision; but also as a monster of
reckless cruelty and tyrannous mockery. Again, we use the word
" passion " for the highest activity of desire or craving, while we
keep " passive " for its very negation.
These instances might be indefinitely multiplied. But it must
of course be borne in mind that we are throughout dealing only
with the idioms and habits of the English language. Each
civilized language must obviously be dealt with on its own
merits.
The very fact that the significating and interpretative function
is the actual, though as yet little recognized and quite unstudied
condition of mental advance and human achievement, accounts
for such a function being taken for granted and left to
take care of itself. This indeed, in pre-civilized ages (since it
was then the very condition of safety and practically of survival),
it was well able to do. But the innumerable forms of pro-
tection, precaution, artificial aid and special facilities which
modern civilization implies and provides and to which it is always
adding, have entirely and dangerously changed the situation.
It has become imperative to realize the fact that through disuse
we have partly lost the greatest as the most universal of human
prerogatives. Hence arises the special difficulty of clearly
showing at this stage that man has now of set purpose to recover
and develop on a higher than the primitive plane the sovereign
power of unerring and productive interpretation of a world which
even to a living, much more to an intelligent, being, is essentially
significant. These conditions apply not only to the linguistic
but to all forms of human energy and expression, which before
all else must be significant in the most active, as the highest,
sense and degree. Man has from the outset been organizing his
experience; and he is bound correspondingly to organize the
expression of that experience in all phases of his purposive
activity, but more especially in that of articulate speech and
linguistic symbol. This at once introduces the volitional element ;
one which has been strangely eliminated from the very function
which most of all needs and would repay it.
One point must here, however, be emphasised. In attempting
to inaugurate any new departure from habitual thinking, history
witnesses that the demand at its initial stage for unmistakably
clear exposition must be not only unreasonable but futile. This
of course must be typically so in the case of an appeal for the vital
regeneration of all modes of Expression and especially of Language,
by the practical recognition of an ignored but governing factor
working at its very inception and source. In fact, for many
centuries at least, the leading civilizations of the world have been
content to perpetuate modes of speech once entirely fitting but
now often grotesquely inappropriate, while also remaining
content with casual changes often for the worse and always liable
to inconsistency with context. This inevitably makes for the
creation of a false standard both of lucidity and style in linguistic
expression.
Still, though we must be prepared to make an effort in assuming
what is virtually a new mental attitude, the effort will assuredly
be found fully worth making. For there is here from the very
first a special compensation. If, to those whose education has
followed the customary lines, nowhere is the initial difficulty of
moving in a new direction greater than in the one termed
Signifies, nowhere, correspondingly, is the harvest of advantage
more immediate, greater, or of wider range and effort.
It ought surely to be evident that the hope of such a language;
of a speech which shall worthily express human need and gain
in its every possible development in the most efficient possible
way, depends on the awakening and stimulation of a sense which
it is our common and foremost interest to cultivate to the utmost
on true and healthy lines. This may be described as the im-
mediate and insistent sense of the pregnancy of things, of the
actual bearings of experience, of the pressing and cardinal im-
portance, as warning or guide, of that experience considered as
indicative; a Sense realized as belonging to a world of what
for us must always be the Sign of somewhat to be inferred,
acted upon, used as a mine of pertinent and productive symbol,
and as the normal incitant to profitable action. When this
germinal or primal sense — as also the practical starting-point,
of language — has become a reality for us, reforms and acquisitions
really needed will naturally follow as the expression of such
a recovered command of fitness, of boundless capacity and of
perfect coherence in all modes of expression.
One objection, however, which before this will have suggested
itself to the critical reader, is that if we are here really dealing
with a function which must claim an importance of the very first
rank and affect our whole view of life, practical and theoretical,
the need could not have failed long ago to be recognised and
acted upon. And indeed it is not easy in a few words to dispose
of such an objection and to justify so venturesome an apparent
paradox as that with which we are now concerned. But it may
be pointed out that the special development of one faculty
always entails at least the partial atrophy of another. In a case
like this the principle typically applies. For the main human
acquirement has been almost entirely one of logical power, subtle
analysis, and co-ordination of artificial means. In modern
civilization the application of these functions to an enormous
growth of invention of every kind has contributed not a little
to the loss of the swift and direct sense of point : the sensitiveness
as it were of the compass-needle to the direction in which experi-
ence was moving. Attention has been forcibly drawn elsewhere;
and moreover, as already pointed out, the natural insight of
children, which might have saved the situation, has been
methodically silenced by a discipline called educative, but mainly
suppressive and distortive.
The biological history of Man has been, indeed, a long series
of transmutations of form to subserve higher functions. In
language he has so far failed to accomplish this. There has even
in some directions been loss of advantage already gained. While
his nature has been plastic and adaptive, language, the most
centrally important of his acquirements, has remained relatively
rigid, or what is just as calamitous, fortuitously elastic. There
have been notable examples — the classical languages— of the
converse process. In Greek and Latin, Man admirably con-
trolled, enriched, varied, significated his expressions to serve his
mental needs. But we forbear ourselves to follow and better
this example. All human energies have come under orderly
direction and control except the one in which in a true sense they
all depend. This fatal omission, for which defective methods
SIGN-MANUAL, ROYAL— SIGNORELL1
81
of education are mainly responsible, has disastrously told upon
the mental advance of the race. But after all, we have here a
comparatively modern neglect and helplessness. Kant, for
instance, complained bitterly of the defeating tendency of
language in his day, as compared with the intelligent freedom
of the vocabulary and idiom of the " classical " Greek, who was
always creating expression, moulding it to his needs and finding
an equally intelligent response to his efforts, in his listeners and
readers — in short, in his public.
Students, who are prepared seriously to take up this urgent
question of the application of Signifies in education and through-
out all human spheres of interest, will soon better any instruction
that could be given by the few who so far have tentatively striven
to call attention to and bring to bear a practically ignored and
unused method. But by the nature of the case they must be
prepared to find that accepted language, at least in modern
European forms, is far more needlessly defeating than they have
supposed possible: that they themselves in fact are continually
drawn back, or compelled so to write as to draw back their
readers, into what is practically a hotbed of confusion, a prison
of senseless formalism and therefore of barren controversy.
It can hardly be denied that this state of things is intolerable
and demands effectual remedy. The study and systematic and
practical adoption of the natural method of Signifies can alone
lead to and supply this. Signifies is in fact the natural response
to a general sense of need which daily becomes more undeniably
evident. It founds no school of thought and advocates no techni-
cal specialism. Its immediate and most pressing application is,
as already urged, to elementary, secondary and specialised
education. In recent generations the healthy sense of discontent
and the natural ideals of interpretation and expression have been
discouraged instead of fostered by a training which has not only
tolerated but perpetuated the existing chaos. Signs, however,
are daily increasing that Signifies, as implying the practical
recognition of, and emphasising the true line of advance in, a
recovered and enhanced power to interpret experience and
adequately to express and apply that power, is destined, in the
right hands, to become a socially operative factor of the first
importance.
LITERATURE. — Lady Welby, "Sense, Meaning and Interpretation,"
in Mind (January and April 1896), Grains of Sense (1897), What is
Meaning? (1903); Professor F. Tonnies, " Philosophical Termino-
logy " (Welby Prize Essay), Mind (July and October 1899 and
January 1900), also article in Jahrbuch, &c., and supplements
to Philosophische Terminologie (December 1906) ; Professor G. F.
Stout, Manual of Psychology (1898) ; Sir T. Clifford Allbutt's Address
on " Words and Things " to the Students' Physical Society of Guy's
Hospital (October 1906); Mr W. J. Greenstreet's " Recent Science "
articles in the Westminster Gazette (November 15, 1906, and January
10, 1907). (V. W.)
SIGN-MANUAL, ROYAL, the autograph signature of the
sovereign, by which he expresses his pleasure either by order,
commission or warrant. A sign-manual warrant may be either
an executive act, e.g. an appointment to an office, or an authority
for affixing the Great Seal. It must be countersigned by a
principal secretary of state or other responsible minister. A
royal order under the sign-manual, as distinct from a sign-manual
warrant, authorizes the expenditure of money, e.g. appropriations.
There are certain offices to which appointment is made by com-
mission under the great seal, e.g. the appointment of an officer
in the army or that of a colonial governor. The sign-manual is
also used to give power to make and ratify treaties. In certain
cases the use of the sign-manual has been dispensed with, and a
stamp affixed in lieu thereof, as in the case of George IV., whose
bodily infirmity made the act of signing difficult and painful
during the last weeks of his life. A special act was passed pro-
viding that a stamp might be affixed in lieu of the sign-manual
(n Geo. IV. c. 23), but the sovereign had to express his consent
to each separate use of the stamp, the stamped document being
attested by a confidential servant and several officers of state
(Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, 1907, vol. ii. pt. i.
P- 59)-
SIGNORELLI, LUCA (c. 1442-0. 1524), Italian painter, was
born in Cortona — his full name being Luca d'Egidio di Ventura;
he has also been called Luta da Cortona. The precise date of his
birth is uncertain; but, as he is said to have died at the age of
eighty-two, and as he was certainly alive during some part of
1524, the birth-date of 1442 must be nearly correct. He belongs
to the Tuscan school, associated with that of Umbria. His first
impressions of art seem to be due to Perugia — the style of
Bonfigli, Fiorenzo and Pinturicchio. Lazzaro Vasari, the great-
grandfather of Giorgio Vasari, the historian of art, was brother
to Luca's mother; he got Luca apprenticed to Piero de' Fran-
ceschi. In 1472 the young man was painting at Arezzo, and in
1474 at Citta di Castello. He presented to Lorenzo de' Medici
a picture which is probably the one named the " School of Pan,"
discovered some years ago in Florence, and now belonging to the
Berlin gallery; it is almost the same subject which he painted
also on the wall of the Petrucci palace in Siena — the principal
figures being Pan himself, Olympus, Echo, a man reclining on the
ground and two listening shepherds. He executed, moreover,
various sacred pictures, showing a study of Botticelli and Lippo
Lippi. Pope Sixtus IV. commissioned Signorelli to paint some
frescoes, now mostly very dim, in the shrine of Loreto— Angels,
Doctors of the Church, Evangelists, Apostles, the Incredulity
of Thomas and the Conversion of St Paul. He also executed
a single fresco in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the " Acts of Moses " ;
another, " Moses and Zipporah," which has been usually ascribed
to Signorelli, is now recognized as the work of Perugino. Luca
may have stayed in Rome from 1478 to 1484. In the latter year
he returned to his native Cortona, which remained from this time
his ordinary home. From 1497 he began some professional
excursions. In Siena, in the convent of Chiusuri, he painted
eight frescoes, forming part of a vast series of the life of St
Benedict; they are at present much injured. In the palace of
Pandolfo Petrucci he worked upon various classic or mythological
subjects, including the " School of Pan " already mentioned.
From Siena he went to Orvieto, and here he produced the works
which, beyond all others, stamp his greatness in art. These are
the frescoes in the chapel of S. Brizio, in the cathedral, which
already contained some pictures on the vaulting by Fra Angelico.
The works of Signorelli represent the " Last Days of the Mundane
Dispensation," with the " Pomp and the Fall of Antichrist,"
and the " Eternal Destiny of Man," and occupy three vast
lunettes, each of them a single picture. In one of them, Anti-
christ, after his portents and impious glories, falls headlong from
the sky, crashing down into an innumerable crowd of men and
women. " Paradise," the " Elect and the Condemned," " Hell,"
the " Resurrection of the Dead," and the " Destruction of the
Reprobate " follow in other compartments. To Angehco's
ceiling Signorelli added a section showing figures blowing
trumpets, &c.; and in another ceiling he depicted the Madonna,
Doctors of the Church, Patriarchs and Martyrs. There is also
a great deal of subsidiary work connected with Dante, and with
the poets and legends of antiquity. The daring and terrible
invention of the great compositions, with their powerful treat-
ment of the nude and of the most arduous foreshortenings, and
the general mastery over 'complex grouping and distribution,
marked a development of art which had never previously been
attained. It has been said that Michelangelo felt so strongly the
might of Signorelli's delineations that he borrowed, in his own
" Last Judgment," some of the figures or combinations which
he found at Orvieto; this statement, however, has not been
verified by precise instances. The contract for Luca's work is
still on record. He undertook on sth April 1499 to complete the
ceiling for 200 ducats, and to paint the walls for 600, along with
lodging, and in every month two measures of wine and two
quarters of corn. Signorelli's first stay in Orvieto lasted not more
than two years. In 1 502 he returned to Cortona, and painted a
dead Christ, with the Marys and other figures. Two years later
he was once more back in Orvieto, and completed the whole of
his work in or about that time, i.e. some two years before 1506 —
a date famous in the history of the advance of art, when Michel-
angelo displayed his cartoon of Pisa.
After finishing off at Orvieto, Signorelli was much in Siena.
In 1 507 he executed a great altarpiece for S. Medardo at Arcevia
SIGONIUS— SIGURD
in Umbria — the " Madonna and Child," with the " Massacre of
the Innocents " and other episodes. In 1508 Pope Julius II.
determined to readorn the camere of the Vatican, and he sum-
moned to Rome Signorelli, in company with Perugino, Pinturic-
chio and Bazzi (Sodoma). They began operations, but were
shortly all superseded to make way for Raphael, and their work
was taken down. Luca now returned to Siena, living afterwards
for the most part in Cortona. He continued constantly at work,
but the performances of his closing years were not of special
mark. In 1520 he went with one of his pictures to Arezzo.
Here he saw Giorgio Vasari, aged eight, and encouraged his
father to second the boy's bent for art. Vasari tells a pretty
story how the wellnigh octogenarian master said to him " Impara,
parentino " (" You must study, my little kinsman "), and clasped
a jasper round his neck as a preservative against nose-bleeding,
to which the child was subject. He was partially paralytic
when he began a fresco of the " Baptism of Christ " in the chapel
of Cardinal Passerini's palace near Cortona, which (or else a
" Coronation of the Virgin " at Foiano) is the last picture of his
specified. Signorelli stood in great repute not only as a painter
but also as a citizen. He entered the magistracy of Cortona as
early as 1488, and in 1524 held a leading position among the
magistrates of his native place. In or about the year 1524 he
died there.
Signorelli from an early age paid great attention to anatomy,
carrying on his studies in burial grounds. He surpassed all his con-
temporaries in showing the structure and mechanism of the nude
in immediate action; and he even went beyond nature in experi-
ments of this kind, trying hypothetical attitudes and combinations.
His drawings in the Louvre demonstrate this and bear a close
analogy to the method of Michelangelo. He aimed at powerful
truth rather than nobility of form; colour was comparatively
neglected, and his chiaroscuro exhibits sharp oppositions of lights
and shadows. He had a vast influence over the painters of his own
and of succeeding times, but had no pupils or assistants of high
mark; one of them was a nephew named Francesco. He was a
married man with a family; one of his sons died, seemingly through
some sudden casualty, and Luca depicted the corpse with sorrow-
ful but steady self-possession. He is described as full of kindliness
and amiability, sincere, courteous, easy with his art assistants, of
fine manners, living and dressing well; indeed, according to Vasari,
he always lived more like a nobleman than a painter. The Torri-
giani Gallery in Florence contains a grand life-sized portrait by Signo-
relli of a man in a red cap and vest ; this is said to be the likerftocs
of the painter himself, and corresponds with Vasari's observation.
In the National Gallery, London, are the " Circumcision of Jesus "
and three other works.
See R. Vischer, Signorelli und die italienische Renaissance (1879);
Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition of Work of Signorelli, &c.
(1893); M. Crutwell, Luca Signorelli (1899). (W. M. R.)
SIGONIUS, CAROLUS [CARLO SIGONIO or SIGONE] (c. 1524-
1584), Italian humanist, was born at Modena. Having studied
Greek under the learned Franciscus Portus of Candia, he attended
the philosophical schools of Bologna and Pa via, and in 1545
was elected professor of Greek in his native place in succession to
Portus. In 1552 he was appointed to a professorship at Venice,
which he exchanged for the chair of eloquence at Padua in 1560.
To this period of his life belongs the famous quarrel with Rober-
telli, due to the publication by Sigonius of a treatise De nominibus
Romanorum, in which he corrected several errors in a work of
Robertelli on the same subject. The quarrel was patched up by
the intervention of Cardinal Seripando (who purposely stopped
on his way to the Council of Trent), but broke out again in 1562,
when the two rivals found themselves colleagues at Padua.
Sigonius, who was of a peaceful disposition, thereupon accepted
(in 1 563) a call to Bologna. He died in a country house purchased
by him in the neighbourhood of Modena, in August 1 584. The
last year of his life was embittered by another literary dispute.
In 1583 there was published at Venice what purported to be
Cicero's Consolatio, written as a distraction from his grief at the
death of his daughter Tullia. Sigonius declared that, if not
genuine, it was at least worthy of Cicero; those who held the
opposite view (Antonio Riccoboni, Justus Lipsius, and others)
asserted that Sigonius himself had written it with the object of
deceiving the learned world, a charge which he explicitly denied.
The work is now universally regarded as a forgery, whoever may
have been the author of it. Sigonius's reputation chiefly rests
upon his publications on Greek and Roman antiquities, which
may even now be consulted with advantage: Fasti consular es
(1550; new ed., Oxford, 1802), with commentary, from the regal
period to Tiberius, the first work in which the history of Rome
was set forth in chronological order, based upon some fragments
of old bronze tablets dug up in 1 547 on the site of the old Forum ;
an edition of Livy with the Scholia; De antique jure Roma-
norum, Italiae, provinciarum (1560) and De Romanae juris-
prudentiae judiciis (1574); De republica Atheniensium (1564)
and De Atheniensium et Lacedaemoniorum temporibus (1565),
the first well-arranged account of the constitution, history, and
chronology of Athens and Sparta, with which may be mentioned
a similar work on the religious, political, and military system
of the Jews (De republica Ebraeorum) . His history of the
kingdom of Italy (De regno Italiae, 1580) from the invasion of
the Lombards (568) to the end of the i3th century forms a
companion volume to the history of the western empire (De
occidentali imperio, 1579) from Diocletian to its destruction.
In order to obtain material for these works, Sigonius consulted
"all the archives and family chronicles of Italy, and the public
and private libraries, and the autograph MS. of his De regno
Italiae, containing all the preliminary studies and many docu-
ments not used in print, was discovered in the Ambrosian library
of Milan. At the request of Gregory XIII. he undertook to
write the history of the Christian Church, but did not live to
complete the work.
The most complete edition of his works is that by P. Argelati
(Milan, 1732-1737), which contains his life by L. A. Muraton, the
only trustworthy authority for the biographer; see also G. Tira-
boschi, Storia delta letteratura italiana, vii. ; Ginguene, Histoire
litteraire d'ltalie; J. P. Krebs, Carl Sigonius (1840), including some
Latin letters of Sigonius and a complete list of his works in chrono-
logical order; Franciosi, Delia vita e delle opere di Carlo Sigonio
(Modena, 1872) ; Hessel, De regno Italiae libri XX. von Carlo
Sigonio, eine quellenkritische Untersuchung (1900); and J. E. Sandys,
History of Classical Scholarship, ii. (1908), p. 143.
SIGOURNEY, LYDIA HUNTLEY (1791-1865), American
author, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on the ist of
September 1791. She was educated in Norwich and Hartford.
After conducting a private school for young ladies in Norwich,
she conducted a similar school in Hartford from 1814 until 1819,
when she was married to Charles Sigourney, a Hartford merchant.
She contributed more than two thousand articles to many (nearly
300) periodicals, and wrote more than fifty books. She died in
Hartford, on the loth of June 1865. Her books include Moral
Pieces in Prose and Verse (1815); Traits of the Aborigines of
America (1822), a poem; A Sketch of Connecticut Forty Years
Since (1824); Poems (1827); Letters to Young Ladies (1833),
one of her best-known books; Sketches (1834); Poetry for
Children (1834); Zinzendorf, and Other Poems (1835); Olive
Buds (1836); Letters to Mothers (1838), republished in London;
Pocahontas, and Other Poems (1841); Pleasant Memories of
Pleasant Lands (1842), descriptive of her trip to Europe in 1840;
Scenes in My Native Land (1844); Letters to My Pupils (1851);
Olive Leaves (1851); The Faded Hope (1852), in memory of her
only son, who died when he was nineteen years old; Past Meridian
(1854); The Daily Counsellor (1858), poems; Cleanings (1860),
selections from her verse; The Man of Uz, and Other Poems
(1862); and Letters of Life (1866), giving an account of her
career. She was one of the most popular writers of her day,
both in America and in England, and was called " the American
Hemans." Her writings were characterized by fluency, grace
and quiet reflection on nature, domestic and religious life, and
philanthropic questions; but they were too often sentimental,
didactic and commonplace to have much literary value. Some
of her blank verse and pictures of nature suggest Bryant. Among
her most successful poems are " Niagara " and " Indian Names."
Throughout her life she took an active interest in philanthropic
and educational work.
SIGURD (Sigurdr) or SIEGFRIED (M. H. G. Stfrif), the hero of
the Nibelungenlied, and of a number of Scandinavian poems
included in the older Edda, as well as of the prose Volsunga
Saga, which is based upon the latter. According to both the
SIGUR3SSON— SIGWART
German and Scandinavian authorities he was the son of a certain
Sigmundr (Siegmund), a king in the Netherlands, or the " land
of the Franks." The exploits of this Sigmundr and his elder
sons Sinfiotli and Helgi form the subject of the earlier parts of
Viilsunga Saga, and Siegmund and Fitela (i.e. Sinfiotli) are also
mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. According to
the Scandinavian story Sigmundr was slain in battle before the
birth of Sigurd, but the German story makes him survive his
son. Sigurd acquired great fame and riches by slaying the
dragon Fafnir, but the chief interest of the story centres round
his connexion with the court of the Burgundian king Gunnar
(Gunther). He married GuSrun (Kriemhild), the sister of that
king, and won for him by a stratagem the hand of the Valkyrie
Brynhildr, with whom he had himself previously exchanged
vows of love. A quarrel arose between Brynhildr and GuOrun,
in the course of which the former learnt of the deception which
had been practised upon her and this led eventually to the
murder of Sigurd. According to the Scandinavian version
he was slain by his brother-in-law Guttorm, according to the
German version by the knight Hagen. Gunther's brothers
were subsequently slain while visiting Atli (Etzel), who married
Gu^run after Sigurd's death. According to the German story
they were killed at the instigation of Kriemhild in revenge for
Siegfried. The Scandinavian version of the story attributes
the deed to Atli's lust for gold.
The story of Sigurd has given rise to more discussion than any
other subject connected with the Teutonic heroic age. Like
Achilles he is represented as the perfect embodiment of the
ideals of the race, and, as in the case of the Greek hero, it is
customary to regard his personality and exploits as mythical.
There is no question, however, that the Burgundian king who
is said to have been his brother-in-law was an historical person
who was slain by the Huns, at the time when the Burgundian
kingdom was overthrown by the latter. Sigurd himself is not
mentioned by any contemporary writer; but, apart from the
dragon incident, there is nothing in the story which affords
sufficient justification for regarding his personality as mythical.
Opinions, however, vary widely as to the precise proportions
of history and fiction which the story contains. The story of
Siegfried in Richard Wagner's famous opera-cycle Dcr Ring
der Nibelungen is mainly taken from the northern version; but
many features, especially the characterization of Hagen, are
borrowed from the German story, as is also the episode of
Siegfried's murder in the forest.
See NIBELUNGENLIED and also R. Heinzel, " Uber die Nibe-
lungensage," in Silzungsberichte der K. Akademie der Wissenschaften
(Vienna, 1885); H. Lichtenberger, Le Poeme et la legende des Nibe-
lungen (Paris, 1891); B. Symons, " Heldensage " in H. Paul's Grundriss
der germ. Philologie, vol. iii. (Strassburg, 1900) ; and R. C. Boer,
Unlersuchungen iiber den Ursprung und die Enlwicklung der Nibe-
lungensage (Halle, 1906). Also T. Abeling, N ibelungenlied (1907).
(F. G. M. B.)
SIGUR5SSON, J6N (1811-1879), Icelandic statesman and
man of letters, was born in the west of Iceland in 1811. He
came of an old family, and received an excellent education.
In 1830 he was secretary to the bishop of Iceland, the learned
Steingrimr Jonsson. In 1833 he went to the university of
Copenhagen and devoted himself to the study of Icelandic
history and literature. His name soon became prominent in
the learned world, and it may safely be said that most of his
historical works and his editions of Icelandic classics have never
been surpassed for acute criticism and minute painstaking.
Of these we may mention Logsogumannalal og Logmanna 6,
Islandi ("Speakers of the Law and Law-men in Iceland");
his edition of Landnama and other sagas in Islendinga Sogur,
i.-ii. (Copenhagen, 1843-1847); the large collection of Icelandic
laws edited by him and Oddgeir Stephensen; and last, not least,
the Diplomatarium Islandicum, which after his death was con-
tinued by others. But although he was one of the greatest
scholars Iceland has produced, he was still greater as a politician.
The Danish rule had, during the centuries following the Reforma-
tion, gradually brought Iceland to the verge of economic ruin;
the ancient Parliament of the island, \vhich had degenerated
to a mere shadow, had been abolished in 1800; all the revenue
of Iceland went into the Danish treasury, and only very small
sums were spent for the good of the island; but worst of all
was the notorious monopoly which gave away the whole trade
of Iceland to a single Danish trading company. This monopoly
had been abolished in 1787, and the trade had been declared
free to all Danish subjects, but practically the old arrangement
was continued under disguised forms. Jon SigurBsson began a
hard struggle against the Danish government to obtain a reform.
In 1854 the trade of Iceland was declared free to all nations. In
1840 the Althing was re-established as an advisory, not as a
legislative body. But when Denmark got a free constitution
in 1848, which had no legal validity in Iceland, the island felt
justified in demanding full home rule. To this the Danish
government was vehemently opposed; it convoked an Icelandic
National Assembly in 1851, and brought before that body a
bill granting Iceland small local liberties, but practically incorpor-
ating Iceland in Denmark. This bill was indignantly rejected,
and, instigated by Jon Sigur3sson, another was demanded of
far more liberal tendencies. The Danish governor-general then
dissolved the assembly, but Jon Sigurdsson and all the members
with him protested to the king against these unlawful proceedings.
The struggle continued with great bitterness on both sides,
but gradually the Danish government was forced to grant many
important reforms. High schools were established at Reykjavik,
and efforts made to better the trade and farming of the country.
In 1871 the Danish parliament (Riksdag) passed a law defining
the political position of Iceland in the Danish monarchy, which,
though never recognized as valid by the Icelanders, became
dc facto the base of the political relations of Iceland and Denmark.
At last, in 1874, when King Christian IX. visited Iceland at the
festival commemorating the millenary of the colonization of
Iceland from Norway, he gave to the country a Constitution,
with full home rule in all internal matters. An immense victory
was gained, entirely due to Jon SigurSsson, whose high personal
qualities had rallied all the nation round him. He was a man
of fine appearance, with an eloquence and diplomatic gifts such
as no others of his countrymen possessed, and his unselfish love
of his country made itself felt in almost every branch of Icelandic
life. Recognizing the value of an intellectual centre, he made
Reykjavik not only the political, but the spiritual capital of Iceland
by removing all the chief institutions of learning to that city;
he was the soul of many literary and political societies, and the
chief editor of the Ny Felagsrit, which has done more than any
other Icelandic periodical to promote the cause of civilization
and progress in Iceland. After Iceland had got home rule in 1874,
the grateful people showered on Jon Sigurftsson all the honours
it could bestow. He lived the greater part of his life in Copen-
hagen, and died there in 1879; but his body, together with that
of his wife, Ingibjorg Einarsdottir, whom he had married in
1845, and who survived him only a few days, was taken to
Reykjavik and given a public funeral. On his monument was
placed the inscription: " The beloved son of Iceland, her
honour, sword, and shield." (S. BL.)
SIGWART, CHRISTOPH WILHELM VON (1789-1844),
German philosopher, was born at Remmingsheim in Wiirttem-
berg, and died in Stuttgart. He became professor of philosophy
at Tubingen, and wrote numerous books on the history of
philosophy: — Uber den Zusammenhang des Spinozismus mil
der Cartesianischen Philosophic (1816); Handbuchzu Vorlesungen
Uber die Logik (1818, 3rd ed., 1835); Der Spinozismus (1839);
and Geschichte der Philosophic (1844).
His son, CHRISTOPH VON SIGWART (1830-1894), after a course
of philosophy and theology, became" professor at Blaubeuren
(1859), and eventually at Tubingen, in 1865. His principal
work, Logik, published in 1873, takes an important place among
recent contributions to logical theory. In the preface to the
first edition, Sigwart explains that he makes no attempt to
appreciate the logical theories of his predecessors; his intention
was to construct a theory of logic, complete in itself. It re-
presents the results of a long and careful study not only of German
but also of English logicians. In 1895 an English translation by
SIGYNNAE— SIKHISM
Miss H. Dendy was published in London. Chapter v. of the
second volume is especially interesting to English thinkers as
containing a profound examination of the Induction theories
of Bacon, J. S. Mill and Hume. Among his other works are
Spinozas neu entdeckter Traktat von Gott, dent Menschen und
dessen Gluckseligkeit (1866); Kleine Schriflen (1881); Vorfragen
der Ethik (1886). The Kleine Schriflen contains valuable
criticisms on Paracelsus and Bruno.
SIGYNNAE (2iyvwai, Ztytcyoi), an obscure people of
antiquity. They are variously located by ancient authors.
According to Herodotus (v. 9), they dwelt beyond the Danube,
and their frontiers extended almost as far as the Eneti on the
Adriatic. Their horses (or rather, ponies) were small, with shaggy
long hair, not strong enough to carry men, but very speedy when
driven in harness. The people themselves wore a Medic costume,
and, according to their own account, were a colony of the Medes.
Strabo (xi. p. 520), who places them near the Caspian, also speaks
of their ponies, and attributes to them Persian customs. In
Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 320) they inhabit the shores of the
Euxine, hot far from the mouth of the Danube.
The statement as to their, Medic origin, regarded as incompre-
hensible by Herodotus, is doubtfully explained by Rawlinson as
indicating that " the Sigynnae retained a better recollection than
other European tribes of their migrations westward and Aryan
origin " ; R. W. Macan (on Herod, v. 9) suggests that it may be due
to a confusion with the Thracian Maedi (MaiSoi). If the last para-
graph in Herodotus be genuine, the Ligyes who lived above Massilia
called traders Sig_ynnae, while among the Cyprians the word meant
" spears." The similarity between Sigynnae and Zigeuner is obvious,
and it has been supposed that they were the forefathers of the
modern gipsies. According to J. L. Myres, the Sigynnae of Herodotus
were " a people widely spread in the Danubic basin in the 5th century
B.C.," probably identical with the Sequani, and connected with the
iron-working culture of Hallstatt, which produced a narrow-bladed
throwing spear, the sigynna spear (see notice of " Anthropological
Essays ' in Classical Review, November 1908).
SIKH, a member of the Sikh religion in India (see SIKHISM).
The word Sikh literally means " learner," " disciple," and was
the name given by the first guru Nanak to his followers. The
Sikhs are divided into two classes, Sahijdhari and Kesadhari.
The former were so named from living at ease and the latter from
wearing long hair. Both obey the general injunctions of the Sikh
gurus, but the Sahijdhari Sikhs have not accepted the pahul
or baptism of Guru Govind Singh, and do not wear the distin-
guishing habiliments of the Kesadhari, who are the baptized
Sikhs, also called Singhs or lions. Their distinguishing habili-
ments are long hair wound round a small dagger and bearing a
comb inserted in it, a steel bracelet and short drawers. Neither
the Sahijdhari nor the Kesadhari Sikhs may smoke tobacco or
drink wine. The prohibition of wine is, however, generally dis-
regarded except by very orthodox Sikhs.
In the census of 1901, the number of Sikhs in the Punjab
and North-Western Provinces was returned as 2,130,987, showing
an increase of 13-9% in the decade; but these figures are not
altogether reliable owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the
Sahijdhari from the Kesadhari Sikhs and both from the Hindus.
A man is not born a -Singh, but becomes so by baptism, the water
of which is called amrit or nectar. It is possible that one brother
may be a Hindu, while another is a true Sikh.
The Sikhs are principally drawn from the Arora, Jat and
Ramgarhia tribes, but any one may become a Sikh by accepting
the Sikh baptism. The Aroras are generally merchants or petty
dealers. The Jats are agriculturists variously described as
Scythian immigrants and as descendants of Rajputs who immi-
grated to the Punjab from central India. They are of a tougher
fibre than the Aroras; sturdy and self-reliant, slow to speak but
quick to strike. The Ramgarhias are principally mechanics.
To the temperament of the Jat, the Arora and the Ramgarhia
Sikh add the stimulus of a militant religion. The Sikh is a
fighting man, and his best qualities are shown in the army,
which is his natural profession. Hardy, brave and slow-witted,
obedient to discipline, attached to his officers, he makes the
finest soldier of the East. In victory he retains his steadiness,
and in defeat he will die at his post rather than yield. In peace
time he shows a decided fondness for money, and will go wherever
i. Nanak .
2. Angad .
3. Amar Das
4. Ram Das
5. Arjan . .
A.D.
1469-1539
1539-1552
1552-1574
i574-!58i
1581-1606
it is to be earned. There are some 30,000 Sikhs in the Indian
army, and the sect is cherished by the military authorities, who
insist on all recruits taking the pahul or Sikh baptism. Many
Sikhs are also to be found in the native regiments of east
and central Africa and of Hyderabad in the Deccan, and they
compose a great part of the police force in the treaty ports of
China. (M.M.)
SIKHISM, a religion of India, whose followers (Sikhs) are
principally found in the Punjab, United Provinces, Sind, Jammu
and Kashmir. Sikhism was founded by Nanak, a Khatri by
caste, who was born at Talwandi near Lahore in A.D. 1469, and
after travelling and preaching throughout a great part of southern
Asia died at Kartarpur in Jullundur in 1539. He was succeeded
by nine gurus, great teachers or head priests, whose dates are as
follows: —
A.D.
6. Har Govind. 1606-1645
7. Har Rai . 1645-1661
8. Har Krishan 1661-1664
9. Teg Bahadur 1664-1675
IO. Govind Singh 1675-1708
Nanak, like Buddha, revolted against a religion overladen
with ceremonial and social restrictions, and both rebelled against
the tyranny of the priesthood. The tendency of each religion
was to quietism, but their separate doctrines were largely in-
fluenced by the surroundings of their founders. Buddha lived
in the centre of Hindu India and among the many gods of the
Brahmans. These he rejected, he knew of nought else, and in
his theological system there was found no place for divinity.
Nanak was born in the province which then formed the borderland
between Hinduism and Islam. He taught that there was one
God; but that God was neither Allah nor Ram, but simply God;
neither the special god of the Mahommedan, nor of the Hindu,
but the God of the universe, of all mankind and of all religions.
v Starting from the unity of God, Nanak and his successors
rejected the idols and incarnations of the Hindus, and on the
ground of the equality of all men rejected also the system of
caste. The doctrines of Sikhism as set forth in the Granth (q.v.)
are that it prohibits idolatry, hypocrisy, class exclusiveness,
the concremation of widows, the immurement of women, the use
of wine and other intoxicants, tobacco-smoking, infanticide,
slander and pilgrimages to the sacred rivers and tanks of the
Hindus; and it inculcates loyalty, gratitude for all favours
received, philanthropy, justice, impartiality, truth, honesty and
all the moral and domestic virtues upheld by Christianity.
Sikhism mainly differs from Christianity in that it inculcates the
transmigration of the soul, and adopts a belief in predestination,
which is universal in the East.
The Sikh religion did not reach this full development at once,
nor was the first of the gurus even the first to feel dissatisfaction
with the existing order of things. Ideas of revolt and
reform of decadent systems are always in the air, it
may be for centuries, until some one man bolder than aurus.
the rest stands out to give them free expression; and
as John the Baptist preceded Jesus Christ, so Nanak was preceded
by several reformers, whose writings are incorporated in the
Granth itself. The chief of these reformers are Jaidev, Ramanand
and Kabir. Jaidev is better known as the author of the Gita-
gobind, which was translated by Sir Edwin Arnold, than as a
religious reformer; but in the Adi Granth are found two hymns
of his in the Prakrit language of the time, in which he represents
God as distinct from nature, yet everywhere present. He taught
at the end of the i2th century A.D. that the practice of yog,
sacrifices and austerities was as nothing in comparison with the
repetition of God's name, and he inculcated the worship of God
alone, in thought, word and deed. What was worthy of worship,
he said, he had worshipped; what was worthy of trust he had
trusted; and he had become blended with God, as water blends
with water.
Jaidev was succeeded by numerous Hindu saints, who per-
ceived that the superstitions of the age only led to spiritual
blindness. Of these saints Ramanand was one of the most
distinguished. He lived at the end of the i4th and beginning of
SIKHISM
the 1 5th centuries, and during a visit to Benares he renounced
some of the social and caste observances of the Hindus, called his
disciples the liberated, and freed them from all restrictions in
eating and social intercourse. Kabir denounced idolatry and
the ritualistic practices of the Hindus. He was born A.D. 1398,
and according to the legend was the son of a virgin widow, as
the result of a prayer offered for her by Ramanand in ignorance
of her status. Thus it will be seen that the doctrines of these
early reformers contained the germs of the later Sikh religion.
Nanak seems to have been produced by the same cyclic wave
of reformation as fourteen years later gave Martin Luther to
Europe. He taught, " There is but one God, the
Creator, whose name is true, devoid of fear and enmity,
immortal, unborn and self-existent, great and bounti-
ful." He held that the wearing of religious garb, praying and
practising penance to be seen of men, only produced hypocrisy,
and that those who went on pilgrimages to sacred streams,
though they might cleanse their bodies, only increased their
mental impurity. He pointed out that God " before all temples
prefers the upright heart and pure," and must be worshipped in
spirit and in truth, and not with the idolatrous accessories of
incense, sandal-wood and burnt-offerings. He abrogated caste
distinctions, and taught in opposition to ancient writings that
every man had the eternal right of searching for divine know-
ledge and worshipping his Creator. This doctrine of philosophic
quietism was common to his successors, until in the time of the
sixth guru, Har Govind, it was found necessary to support the
separate existence of Sikhism by force of arms, and this led to the
militant and political development of the tenth and most power-
ful of the gurus, Govind Singh. The Sikhs of to-day, though they
all derive primarily from Nanak, are only recognized as Singhs or
real Sikhs when they accept the doctrines and practices of Guru
Govind Singh.
Nanak's successor, Angad, was born in A.D 1 504 and died in 1 55 2.
He also was a Khatri, and was chosen by Guru Nanak in preference
to his own sons. The legend of his choice is that Nanak
w^ h's f°U°wers was going on a journey, when they
saw the dead body of a man lying by the wayside.
Nanak said, " Ye who trust in me eat of this food." All
hesitated save Angad (or own body), who knelt and uncovered
the dead, but, behold; the corpse had disappeared, and a dish of
sacred food was found in its place. The guru embraced his faith-
ful follower, saying that he was as himself, and that his spirit
should dwell within him. Thenceforward the Sikhs believe the
spirit of Nanak to have been incarnate in each succeeding
guru. Little is known of the ministry of Angad except that he
committed to writing much of what he had heard about Guru
Nanak as well as some devotional observations of his own, which
were afterwards incorporated in the Granth.
Angad, like his predecessor, postponed the claims of his own
sons to the guruship to those of Amar Das, who had been his
faithful servant. Amar Das preached the doctrine
Amar Das °^ forgiveness and endurance, upheld Guru Nanak's
abrogation of caste distinctions, and his precepts were
implicitly followed by his successors. He used to place all his
Sikhs and visitors in rows and cause them to eat together,
not separately, as is the practice of the Hindus. He said: "Let
no one be proud of his caste, for this pride of caste resulteth
in many sins. He is a Brahman who knoweth Brahma (God).
Every one prateth of four castes. All are sprung from the seed of
Brahm. The whole world is formed out of one clay, but the
Potter hath fashioned it in various forms." It was a maxim of
the Sikhs of his time: " If any one treat you ill, bear it. If you
bear it three times God himself will fight for you and humble
your enemies." Guru Amar Das also discountenanced the
practice of suttee, saying: " They are not satis who burn them-
selves with the dead. The true sati is she who dieth from the
shock of separation from her husband. They also ought to be
considered satis who abide in charity and contentment, who
serve and, when rising, ever remember their lord." Amar Das
was born in A.D. 1509 and died in 1574 after a ministry of twenty-
two and a half years.
Das<
Guru
Arjan.
The fourth guru, originally called Jetha, was attracted to the
third guru by his reputation for sanctity. He became the servant
of Amar Das, helped in the public kitchen, shampooed
his master, drew water, brought firewood from the
forest, and helped in the excavation of a well which
Amar Das was constructing at Goindwal. Jetha was of such a
mild temper that, even if any one spoke harshly to him, he would
endure it and never retaliate. He became known as Ram Das,
which means God's slave; and on account of his piety and devo-
tion Amar Das gave him his daughter in marriage and made him
his successor. Ram Das is amongst the most revered of gurus,
but no particular innovation is ascribed to him. He founded,
however, the golden temple of Amritsar in A.D. 1577, which has
remained ever since the centre of the Sikh religious worship.
From this time onward the office of guru became hereditary, but
the practice of primogeniture was not followed, each guru
selecting the relative who seemed most fitted to succeed him.
Ram Das himself, finding his eldest son Prithi Chand worldly
and disobedient, and his second unfitted by his too retiring
disposition for the duties of guru, appointed his
third son, Arjan, to succeed him. When Prithi Chand
represented that he ought to have received the turban
bound on Guru Arjan 's head in token of succession to his father,
Arjan meekly handed it to him, without, however, bestowing
on him the guruship. The Sikhs themselves soon revolted against
the exactions of Prithi Chand, and prayed Arjan to assert himself
else the seed of the True Name would perish. It was Guru
Arjan who compiled the Granth or Sikh Bible, out of his own and
his predecessors' compositions. On this account he was accused of
deposing the deities of his country and substituting for them a
new divinity, but he was acquitted by the tolerant Akbar. When
Akbar, however, was succeeded by Jahangir the guru aided the
latter's son Khusru to escape with a gift of money. On this account
his property was confiscated to the state, and he was thrown
into rigorous imprisonment and tortured to death. Arjan saw
clearly that it was impossible to preserve his sect without force
of arms, and one of his last injunctions to his son Har Govind
was to sit fully armed on his throne and maintain an army to the
best of his ability. This was the turning-point in the history of
the Sikhs. Hitherto they had been merely an insignificant
religious sect; now, stimulated by persecution, they became
a militant and political power, inimical to the Mahommedan
rulers of the country.
When Har Govind was installed as guru, Bhai Budha, the aged
Sikh who performed the ceremony, presented him with a turban
and a necklace, and charged him to wear and preserve
them as the founder of his religion had done. Guru
Har Govind promptly ordered that the articles should
be relegated to his treasury, the museum of the period. He said;
" My necklace shall be my sword-belt, and my turban shall be
adorned with a royal aigrette." He then sent for his bow,
quiver, arrows, shield and sword, and arrayed himself in martial
style, so that, as the Sikh chronicler states, his splendour shone
like the sun.
The first four gurus led simple ascetic lives and were regardless
of wordly affairs. Guru Arjan, who was in charge of the great
Sikh temple at Amritsar, received copious offerings and became
a man of wealth and influence, while the sixth guru became a
military leader, and was frequently at warfare with the Mogul
authorities. Several warriors and wrestlers, hearing of Guru Har
Govind's fame, came to him for service. He enrolled as his body-
guard fifty-two heroes who burned for the fray. This formed
the nucleus of his future army. Five hundred youths then came
to him for enlistment from the Manjha, Doab and Malwa
districts. These men told him that they had no offering to make
to him except their lives; for pay they only required instruction
in his religion; and they professed themselves ready to die in his
service. The guru gave them each a horse and five weapons of
war, and gladly enlisted them in his army. In a short time,
besides men who required regular pay, hordes gathered round
the guru who were satisfied with two meals a day and a suit of
clothes every six months. The fighting spirit of the people
86
SIKHISM
was roused and satisfied by the spiritual and military leader.
Har Govind was a hunter and eater of flesh, and encouraged his
followers to eat meat as giving them strength and daring.
It is largely to this practice that the Sikhs owe the superiority
of their physique over their surrounding Hindu neighbours.
The regal state that the guru adopted and the army that he
maintained were duly reported to the emperor Jahangir.
In the Autobiography of Jahangir it is stated that the guru
was imprisoned in the fortress of Gwalior, with a view to the
realization of the fine imposed on his father Guru Arjan, but the
Sikhs believe that the guru became a voluntary inmate of the
fortress with the object of obtaining seclusion there to pray for
the emperor 'who had been advised to that effect by his Hindu
astrologers. After a time Jahangir died and was succeeded by
Shah Jahan, with whom the guru was constantly at war. On
three separate occasions after desperate fighting he defeated the
royal troops sent against him. Many legends are told of his
military prowess, for which there is no space in this summary.
The guru before his death at Kiratpur, on the margin of the
Sutlej, instructed his grandson and successor, Guru Har Rai, to
retain two thousand two hundred mounted soldiers ever with him
as a precautionary measure.
Har Rai was charged with friendship for Dara Shikoh, the son
of Shah Jahan, and also with preaching a religion
distinct from Islam. He was, therefore, summoned to
Delhi, but instead of going himself he sent his son
Ram Rai and shortly afterwards died. His ministry was mild but
won him general respect.
The eighth guru was the second son of Har Rai, but he died
when a child and too young to leave any mark on
Krishaa' history. His elder brother Ram Rai was passed over
in his favour and also in favour of the next guru for
having allered a line of the Granth to please the emperor
Auran^ceb.
As the ilirecl line of succession died out with Har Krishan, the
guruship harked back at this point to Teg Bahadur, the second
son of liar Govind and uncle of Har Rai. Teg Bahadur
Baftadun v''as Put to death for refusal to embrace Islam by
Aurangzeb in A.D. 1675. It is of him that the legend
is told that during his imprisonment in Delhi he was accused by
the emperor of looking towards the west in the direction of the
imperial zenana. The guru replied, " Emperor Aurangzeb, I
was on the top storey of my prison, but I was not looking at thy
private apartments or at thy queen's. I was looking in the
direction of the Europeans who are coming from beyond the seas
to tear down thy purdahs and destroy thine empire." This
prophecy became the battle-cry of the Sikhs in the assault on
Delhi in 1857.
Teg Bahadur was succeeded by the tenth and most powerful
guru, his son Govind Singh; and it was under him that what
had sprung into existence as a quietist sect of a purely
religious nature, and had become a military society
for self-protection, developed into a national movement
which was to rule the whole of north-western India and
to furnish to the British arms their stoutest and most worthy
opponents. For some years after his father's execution Govind
Singh, then known as Gobind Rai, lived in retirement, brooding
over the wrongs of his people and the persecutions of the fanatical
Aurangzeb. He felt the necessity for a larger following and a
stronger organization, Und following the example of his Mahom-
medan enemies used his religion as the basis of political power.
Emerging from his retirement he preached the Khalsa, the
" pure," and it is by this name his followers are now known.
He, like his predecessors, openly attacked all distinctions of
caste, and taught the equality of all men who would join him,
and he instituted a ceremony of initiation with baptismal holy
water by which all might enter the Sikh fraternity.
The higher castes murmured, and many of them left him, for
he taught that the Brahmanical threads must be broken; but
the lower orders rejoiced and flocked in numbers to his standard.
These he inspired with military ardour in the hope of social
freedom and of national independence. He gave them outward
Singh.
signs of their faith in the five K's — which will subsequently be
explained — he signified the military nature of their calling by the
title of " singh " or " lion " and by the wearing of steel, and he
strictly prohibited the use of tobacco. The following are the
main points of his teaching: Sikhs must have one form of
initiation, sprinkling of water by five of the faithful; they should
worship the one invisible God and honour the memory of Guru
Nanak and his successors; their watchword should be, " Sri wah
guru ji ka khalsa, sri wah guru ji ki falah " (Khalsa of God,
victory to God!), but they should revere and bow to nought
visible save the Granth Sahib, the book of their belief; they should
occasionally bathe in the sacred tank of Amritsar; their locks
should remain unshorn; and they should name themselves
singhs or lions. Arms should dignify their person; they should
ever practise their use; and great would be the merit of those
who fought in the van, who slew the enemies of their faith, and
who despaired not although overpowered by superior numbers.
The religious creed of Guru Govind Singh was the same as
that of Guru Nanak: the God, the guru and the Granth remained
unchanged. But while Nanak had substituted holiness of life
for vain ceremonial, Guru Govind Singh demanded in addition
brave deeds and zealous devotion to the Sikh cause as proof of
faith; and while he retained his predecessors' attitude towards
the Hindu gods and worship he preached undying hatred to the
persecutors of his religion.
During the spiritual reign of Guru Govind Singh the religious
was partially eclipsed by the military spirit. The Mahommedans
promptly responded to the challenge, for the danger was too
serious to be neglected; the Sikh army was dispersed and two
of Guru Govind Singh's sons were murdered at Sirhind by the
governor of that fortress, and his mother died of grief at the cruel
death of her grandchildren. The death of the emperor Aurangzeb
brought a temporary lull: the guru assisted Aurangzeb's suc-
cessor, Bahadur Shah, and was himself not long after assassinated
at Nander in the Deccan. As all the guru's sons predeceased him,
and as he was disappointed in his envoy Banda, he left no human
successor, but vested the guruship in the Granth Sahib and
his sect. No formal alteration has been made in the Sikh religion
since Guru Govind Singh gave it his military organization,
but certain modifications have taken place as the result of time
and contact with Hinduism. After the guru's death the gradual
rise of the Sikhs into the ruling power of northern India until
they came in collision with the British arms belongs to the
secular history of the Punjab (q.v.).
The chief ceremony initiated by Guru Govind Singh was the
Khanda ka Pahul or baptism by the sword. This baptism may
not be conferred until the candidate has reached an age
of discrimination and capacity to remember obligations,
seven years being fixed as the earliest age, but it is
generally deferred until manhood. Five of the initiated
must be present, all of whom should be learned in the faith.
An Indian sweetmeat is stirred up in water with a two-edged
sword and the novice repeats after the officiant the articles of his
faith. Some of the water is sprinkled on him five times, and he
drinks of it five times from the palms of his hands; he then
pronounces the Sikh watchword given above and promises
adherence to the new obligations he has contracted. He must
from that date wear the five K's and add the word singh to his
original name. The five K's are (i) the kes or uncut hair of the
whole body, (2) the kachh or short drawers ending above the knee,
(3) the kara or iron bangle, (4) the khanda or small steel dagger, (5)
the khanga or comb. The five K's and the other esoteric observ-
ances of the Sikhs mostly had a utilitarian purpose. When
fighting was a part of the Sikh's duty, long hair and iron rings
concealed in it protected his head from sword cuts. The kachh
or drawers fastened by a waist-band was more convenient and
suitable for warriors than the insecurely tied dhoti of the Hindus
or the tamba of the Mahommedans. So also the Sikh's physical
strength was increased by the use of meat and avoidance of
tobacco. Another Sikh ceremony is the kara parshad or com-
munion made of butter, flour and sugar, and consecrated with
certain ceremonies. The communicants sit round, and the kara
Sikh
cere-
monies.
SIKH WARS
parshad is then distributed equally to all the faithful present, no
matter to what caste they belong. The object of this ceremony
is to abolish caste distinctions.
There may be said to be three degrees of strictness in the
observances of the Sikhs. There may first be mentioned the
zealots such as the Akalis, who, though generally
Tbe quite illiterate, aim at observing the injunctions of
ofto'-Sday. Guru Govind Singh; secondly, the true Sikhs or
Singhs who observe his ordinances, such as the prohibi-
tions of cutting the hair and the use of tobacco; and, thirdly,
those Sikhs who while professing devotion to the tenets of the
gurus are almost indistinguishable from ordinary Hindus.
These are largely Nanakpanti Sikhs, or followers only of Guru
Nanak. The Nanakpanti Sikhs do not wear the hair long, nor
use any of the outward signs of the Sikhs, though they reverence
the Crantft Schib and above all the memory of their guru. They
are distinguished from the Hindus by no outward sign except
a slight laxity in the matter of caste observances.
Sikhism attained its zenith under the military genius of
Ranjit Singh. After the British conquest of the Punjab the
military spirit of the Sikhs remained for some time in abeyance.
Then came the mutiny, and Sikhs once more were recruited in
numbers and saved India for the British crown. Peace returned,
and during the next twenty or twenty-five years Sikhism reached
its lowest ebb; but since then the demand for Sikhs in the
regiments of the Indian army and farther afield has largely
revived the faith. The establishment of Singh Sabhas, of Sikh
newspapers, and the spread of education have largely tended in
the same direction, but the strict ethical code of Sikhism and the
number of its obligatory divine services have caused many to
fall away from the faith: nor does the austere Sikh ritual appeal
to women, who generally prefer Hinduism with its picturesque
material worship and the brightness of its innumerable festivals.
At the present day the stronghold of Sikhism still remains the
great Phulkian states of . Patiala, Nabha and Jind and the
surrounding districts of Ludhiana, Lahore, Amritsar, Jullundur
and Gujranwala. In these states and districts are recruited
the soldiers who form one of the main bulwarks of the British
empire in India.
For authorities see Cunningham, History of the Sikhs; Sir Lepel
Griffin, Maharaja Ranjit Singh (" Rulers of India" series, 1892);
Falcon, Handbook on Sikhs; and specially M. Macauliffe, The Sikh
Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors (6 vols.,' 1909), and
two lectures before the United Service Institution of India on " The
Sikh Religion and its Advantages to the State " and " How the Sikhs
became a Militant Race." (M. M.)
SIKH WARS, two Indian campaigns fought between the Sikhs
and the British, which resulted in the conquest and annexation
of the Punjab (see PUNJAB).
First Sikh War (1845-46).— The first Sikh War was brought
about by the insubordination of the Sikh army, which after the
death of Ranjit Singh became uncontrollable and on the nth
of December 1845 crossed the Sutlej, and virtually declared
war upon the British. The British authorities had foreseen
the outbreak, and had massed sufficient troops at Ferozepore,
Ludhiana and Umballa to protect the frontier, but not to offer
provocation. So complete were the preparations for advance
that on the i2th, the day after the Sikhs crossed the Sutlej,
Sir Hugh Gough, the commander-in-chief, marched 16 m. with
the Umballa force to Rajpura; on the i3th the governor-general,
Sir Henry Hardinge, declared war, and by the i8th the whole
army had marched 150 m. to Moodkee, in order to protect
Ferozepore from the Sikh attack.
Wearied with their long march, the British troops were
enjoying a rest, when the news came in that the Sikhs were
advancing to battle at four o'clock in the afternoon. The
British had some 10,000 men, and the Sikhs are estimated
by some authorities as low as 10,000 infantry with 2000
cavalry and 22 guns. The battle opened with an artillery
duel, in which the British guns, though inferior in weight, soon
silenced the enemy, the 3rd Light Dragoons delivered a brilliant
charge, and the infantry drove the enemy from position after
position with great slaughter and the loss of seventeen guns.
The victory was complete, but the fall of night prevented it
from being followed up, and caused some of the native regiments
to fire into each other in the confusion.
After the battle of Moodkee Sir Henry Hardinge volunteered
to serve as1 second in command under Sir Hugh Gough, a step
which caused some confusion in the ensuing battle.
At 4 A.M. on the 2ist of December the British advanced
from Moodkee to attack the Sikh entrenched camp
under the command of Lai Singh at Ferozeshah, orders having
been sent to Sir John Littler, in command at Ferozepore. to
join the main British force. At n A.M. the British were in front
of the Sikh position, but Sir John Littler, though on his way,
had not yet arrived. Sir Hugh Gough wished to attack while
there was plenty of daylight; but Sir Henry Hardinge re-
asserted his civil authority as governor-general, and forbade
the attack until the junction with Littler was effected. The
army then marched on to meet Littler and the battle did not
begin until between 3.30 and 4 P.M. The engagement opened
with an artillery duel, in which the British again failed to gain
the mastery over the Sikhs. The infantry, therefore, advanced
to the attack; but the Sikh muskets were as good as the British,
and fighting behind entrenchments they were a most formidable
foe. Sir John Littler's attack was repulsed, the 6and regiment
losing heavily in officers and men, while the sepoys failed to
support the European regiments. But the Moodkee force,
undaunted, stormed and captured the entrenchment, though
the different brigades and regiments lost position and became
mixed up together in the darkness. The army then passed the
night on the Sikh position, while the Sikhs prowled round
keeping up an incessant fire. In the morning the British found
that they had captured seventy-three pieces of cannon and were
masters of the whole field; but at that moment a fresh Sikh
army, under Tej Singh, came up to the assistance of the scattered
forces of Lai Singh. The British were exhausted with their
sleepless night, the native troops were shaken, and a determined
attack by this fresh army might have won the day; but Tej
Singh, after a half-hearted attack, which was repulsed, marched
away, whether from cowardice, incapacity or treason, and left
the British masters of the position.
After the battle of Ferozeshah the Sikhs retired behind the
Sutlej, but early in January they again raided across the river
near Ludhiana, and Sir Harry Smith was detached
to protect that city. On the 2ist of January he was
approaching Ludhiana when he found the Sikhs under Runjoor
Singh in an entrenched position flanking his line of march at
Budhowal. Sir Harry Smith passed on without fighting a general
action, but suffered considerable loss in men and baggage.
After receiving reinforcements Sir Harry again advanced from
Ludhiana and attacked the Sikhs at Aliwal on the 28th of
January. An attack upon the Sikh left near the village of
Aliwal gave Sir Harry the key of the position, and a brilliant
charge by the i6th Lancers, which broke a Sikh square, com-
pleted their demoralization. The Sikhs fled in confusion, losing
sixty-seven guns, and by this battle were expelled from the
south side of the Sutlej.
Ever since Ferozeshah Sir Hugh Gough had been waiting
to receive reinforcements, and on the 7th of February his siege
train arrived, while on the following day Sir Harry
Smith's force returned to camp. On the loth of
February Sir Hugh attacked the Sikhs, who occupied a strong
entrenched position in a bend of the Sutlej. After two hours'
cannonading, the infantry attack commenced at 9 A.M. The
advance of the first brigade was not immediately successful,
but the second brigade following on carried the entrenchments.
The cavalry then charged down the Sikh lines from right to left
and completed the victory. The Sikhs, with the river behind
them, suffered terrible carnage, and are computed to have lost
10,000 men and 67 guns. The British losses throughout the
campaign were considerably heavier than was usual in Indian
warfare; but this was partly due to the fact that the Sikhs were
the best natural fighters in India, and partly to the lack of
energy of the Hindostani sepoys. After the battle of Sobraon
Aliwal.
SIKKIM
the British advanced to Lahore, where the treaty of Lahore
was signed on the nth of March.
Second Sikh War (1848-1849). — For two years after the battle
of Sobraon the Punjab remained a British protectorate, with
Sir Henry Lawrence as resident; but the Sikhs were unconvinced
of their military inferiority, the Rani Jindan and her ministers
were constantly intriguing to recover their power, and a further
trial of strength was inevitable. The outbreak came at Multan,
where on the 2oth of April 1848 the troops of the Dewan
Mulraj broke out and attacked two British officers, Mr Vans
Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson, eventually murdering them.
On hearing of the incident, Lieut. Herbert Edwardes, who was
Sir Henry Lawrence's assistant in the Derajat, advanced upon
Multan with a force of levies drawn from the Pathan tribes of
the frontier; but he was not strong enough to do more than keep
the enemy in check until Multan was invested by a Bombay
column under General Whish. In the meantime Edwardes
wished for an immediate British advance upon Multan; but
Lord Gough, as he had now become, decided on a cold season
campaign, on the ground that, if the Sikh government at Lahore
joined in the rising, the British would require all their available
strength to suppress it. Multan was invested on the i8th of
August by General Whish in conjunction with the Sikh general
Shere Singh; but during the course of the siege Shere Singh
deserted and joined the rebels, thus turning the rising into a
national war. The siege of Multan was temporarily abandoned,
but was resumed in November, when Lord Cough's main advance
had begun, and Mulraj surrendered on the 22nd of January. In
the meantime Lord Gough had collected his army and stores,
and on the gth of November crossed the Sutlej.
On the 22nd of November there was a cavalry skirmish at
Ramnagar, in which General Cureton and Colonel Havelock were
killed. For a month after this Lord Gough remained
walla ' inactive, waiting to be reinforced by General Whish
from Multan; but at last he decided to advance
without General Whish, and fought the battle of Chillianwalla
on the i3th of January 1849. Lord Gough had intended to
encamp for the night; but the Sikh guns opening fire revealed
the fact that their army had advanced out of its intrenchments,
and Lord Gough decided to seize the opportunity and attack
at once. An hour's artillery duel showed that the Sikhs had the
advantage both in position and guns, and the infantry advance
commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon. The battle resulted
in great loss to the European regiments, the 24th losing all its
officers in a few minutes, while the total loss in killed and wounded
amounted to 2338; but when darkness fell the British were in
possession of the whole of the Sikh line. Lord Gough subse-
quently retired to the village of Chillianwalla, and the Sikhs
returned and carried off their guns. After the battle Lord Gough
received an ovation from his troops, but his losses were thought
excessive by the public in England and the directors of the East
India Company, and Sir Charles Napier was appointed to super-
sede him. Before, however, the latter had time to reach India,
the crowning victory of Gujrat had been fought and won.
After the fall of Multan General Whish marched to join Lord
Gough, and the junction of the two armies was effected on the
1 8th of February. In the meantime the Sikhs had
withdrawn from their strong intrenchments at Russool,
owing to want of provisions, and marched to Gujrat, which Lord
Gough considered a favourable position for attacking them.
By a series of short marches he prepared the way for his " last
and best battle." In this engagement, for the first time in either
of the Sikh wars, the British had the superiority in artillery, in
addition to a picked force of 24,000 men. The battle began on
the morning of the 2ist of February with two and a half hours'
artillery fire, which was overwhelmingly in favour of the British.
At 11.30 A.M. Lord Gough ordered a general advance covered
by the artillery; and an hour and a half later the British were
in possession of the town of Gujrat, of the Sikh camp, and of the
enemy's artillery and baggage, and the cavalry were in full
pursuit on both flanks. In this battle the British only lost 96
killed and 700 wounded, while the Sikh loss was enormous, in
addition to 67 guns. This decisive victory ended the war. On
the 1 2th of March the Sikh leaders surrendered at discretion,
and the Punjab was annexed to British India.
See Sir Charles Gough and A. D. Innes, The Sikhs and the Sikh
Wars (1897) ; and R. S. Rait. Life and Campaigns of Viscount Cough
(1903).
SIKKIM, called by Tibetans Dejong (" the rice country "),
a protected state of India, situated in the eastern Himalaya,
between 27° 5' and 28° 9' N. and between 87° 59' and 88° 56' E.
It comprises an area of 2818 sq. m. of what may be briefly
described as the catchment basin of the headwaters of the rivers
Tista and Rangit. On the S. and S.E., branches of these rivers
form the boundary between Sikkim and British India, while
on the W., N. and N.E. Sikkim is separated from Nepal, Tibet
and Bhutan by the range of lofty mountains which culminate
in Kinchinjunga and form a kind of horse-shoe, whence dependent
spurs project southwards, gradually contracting and lessening
in height until they reach the junction of the Rangit and the
Tista. Thus the country is split up into a succession of deep
valleys surmounted by open plateaus cut off from one another
by high and steep ridges, and lies at a very considerable elevation,
rising from 1000 ft. above sea-level at its southern extremity
to 16,000 or 18,000 ft. on the north. The main trade-passes into
Tibet, such as the Jelep (14,500), Chola (14,550), and Kangra-la
(16,000), are not nearly so high as in the western Himalaya,
while those into Nepal are less than 12,000 ft.
Physical Features. — Small though the country is, a wide variation
of climate makes it peculiarly interesting. From a naturalist's
point of view it can be divided into three zones. The lowest, stretch-
ing from looo to 5000 ft. above sea-level, may be called the tropical
zone; thence to 13,000 ft., the upper limit of tree vegetation, the
temperate; and above, to the line of perpetual snow, the alpine.
Down to about 1880 Sikkim was covered with dense forests, only
interrupted where village clearances had bared the slopes for agri-
culture, but at the present time this description does not apply below
6000 ft., the upper limit at which maize ripens; for here, owing to
increase of population (particularly the immigration of Nepalese
settlers), almost every suitable spot has been cleared for cultivation.
The exuberance of its flora may be imagined when it is considered
that the total flowering plants comprise some 4000 species ; there are
more than 200 different kinds of ferns, 400 orchids, 20 bamboos, 30
rhododendrons, 30 to 40 primulas, and many other genera are equally
profuse; in fact Sikkim contains types of every flora from the
tropics to the poles, and probably no other country of equal or larger
extent can present such infinite variety. Butterflies abound and
comprise about 600 species, while moths are estimated at 2000.
Birds are profusely represented, numbering between 500 and 600.
species. Among mammals, the most interesting are the snow leopard
(Felis unica), the cat-bear (Aelurus fulgens), the musk deer (Moschus
moschiferus) and two species of goat antelope (Nemorhaedus bubalinus
and Cemas gpral). Copper and lime are the chief minerals found and
worked in Sikkim, but they are of little commercial value at present.
Government and Population. — The population is essentially agri-
cultural, each family living in a house on its own land : there are no
towns or villages, and the only collection of houses, outside the Lachen
and Lachung valleys, are the few that have sprung up round country
market-places, such as Rhenock, Dikkeling and Gangtok ; but in the
above-mentioned valleys the inhabitants, who are Bhutanese in
origin and herdsmen in occupation, have large clusters of well-built
houses at various altitudes up the valleys, which they occupytin
rotation according to the season of the year.
The seat of government, or in other words the palace of the raja,
was formerly situated at Rubdentze ; but when that place was taken
and destroyed by the Gurkhas, a new palace was built at Tumlong,
close to the eastern and Tibetan boundary, while a subsidiary
summer residence was erected on the other side of the Chola range
at Chumbi, in the Am-mochu valley. At the present time the raja
and his court remain in the more open country at Gangtok, where
the British political officer and a small detachment of native troops
are also stationed.
The first regular census of Sikkim, in 1901, returned the population
at 59,014, showing an apparent increase of nearly twofold in the
decade. Of the total, 65% were Hindus and 35% Buddhists.
The Lepchas, supposed to be the original inhabitants, numbered
only 8000, while no less than 23,000 were immigrants from Nepal.
The state religion is Buddhism as practised in Tibet, but is not
confined to one particular sect ; while among the heterogeneous popu-
lation of Sikkim all manner of religious cults can be found. Educa-
tion is at a low ebb, though the monasteries are supposed to maintain
schools, and missionary enterprise has established others.
The revenue of Sikkim has increased under British guidance from
Rs. 20,000 a year to nearly Rs. 1,60,000, derived chiefly from a land
and poll tax, excise, and sale of timber; the chief expenditure is on
SILA— SILENUS
89
the maintenance of the state, which practically means the raja's
family, and on the improvement of communications. The country
has a complete system of mountain roads, bridged and open to animal
(but not cart) traffic. British trade with Central Tibet is carried over
the Jelep route, on the south-eastern border of Sikkim.
History. — The earliest inhabitants of Sikkim were the Rong-pa
(ravine folk), better known as Lepchas, probably a tribe of Indo-
Chinese origin; but when or how they migrated to Sikkim is un-
known. The reigning family, however, is Tibetan, and claims descent
from one of the Gyalpos or princelings of eastern Chinese Tibet ; their
ancestors in course of several generations found their way westwards
to Lhasa and Sakya, and thence down the Am-mochu valley ; finally,
about the year 1604, Penchoo Namyg6 was born at Gangtok, and
in 1641, with the aid of Lha-tsan Lama and two other priests of the
Duk-pa or Red-hat sect of Tibet, overcame the Lepcha chiefs, who
had been warring among themselves, established a firm government
and introduced Buddhist Lamaism as a state religion. His son,
Tensung Namyge, very largely extended his kingdom, but much of it
was lost in the succeeding reign of Chak-dor Namyg6 (1700-1717),
who is credited with having designed the alphabet now in use among
the Lepchas.
In the beginning of the i8th century Bhutan appropriated a large
tract of country on the east. Between 1776 and 1792 Sikkim was
constantly at war with the victorious Gurkhas, who were, however,
driven out of part of their conquests by the Chinese in 1792 ; but it
was not until 1816 that the bulk of what is known to us as Sikkim
was restored by the British, after the defeat of the Nepalese by
General Ochterlony. In 1839 the site of Darjeeling was ceded by
the raja of Sikkim. In 1849 the British resumed the whole of the
plains (Tarai) and the outer hills, as punishment for repeated insults
and injuries. In 1861 a Britisn force was required to impose a treaty
defining good relations. The raja, however, refused to carry out his
obligations and defiantly persisted in living in Tibet ; his administra-
tion was neglected, his subjects oppressed, and a force of Tibetan
soldiers was allowed, and even encouraged, to seize the road and
erect a fort within sight of Darjeeling. After months of useless re-
monstrance, the government was forced in 1888 to send an expedi-
tion, which drove the Tibetans back over the Jelep pass. A con-
vention was then concluded with China in 1890, whereby the British
protectorate over Sikkim was acknowledged and the boundary of the
state defined; to this was added a supplemental agreement relating
to trade and domestic matters, which was signed in 1893. Since
that time the government has been conducted by the maharaja
assisted by a council of seven or eight of his leading subjects, and
guided by a resident British officer. Crime, of which there is little,
is punished under local laws administered by kazis or petty chiefs.
Since 1904 political relations with Sikkim, which had formerly been
conducted by the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, have been in the
hands of the Viceroy.
Rajas of Sikkim (Dejong-Gyalpo) : Penchoo Namgy6 (1641-
1670), Tensung Namgy6 (1670-1700), Chak-dor Namgy£ (1700-
1717), Gyur-m6 Namgy6 (1717-1734), Penchoo Namgy6 (1734-
1780), Tenzing Namgy6 (1780-1790), Cho-phoe Namgy6 (1790-
1861), Sikhyong Namgy6 (1861-1874), Tho-tub Namgy6 (1874), the
maharaja, whose son has been educated at Oxford.
AUTHORITIES. — Sir J. W. Edgar, Report on a Visit to Sikkim and the
Tibetan Frontier in 1873 (Calcutta, 1874); Macaulay, Report on a
Mission to Sikkim and the Tibetan Frontier (Calcutta, 1885); The
Gazetteer of Sikkim (Calcutta, 1894); Hooker, Himalayan Journals
(London, 1854); L. A. Waddell, Lamaism (London, 1895); Among
the Himalayas (London, 1898). (A. W. P.)
SILA, a mountainous forest district of Calabria, Italy, to the
E. of Cosenza, extending for some 37 m. N. to S. and 25 m. E.
to W. The name goes back to the Greek period, and then pro-
bably belonged to a larger extension of territory than at present.
In ancient times these mountains supplied timber to the Greeks
for shipbuilding, the forests have given way to pastures to
some extent; but a part of them, which belongs to the state, is
maintained. Geologically these mountains, which consist of
granite, gneiss and mica schist, are the oldest portion of the
Italian peninsula; their culminating point is the Botte Donate
(6330 ft.), and they are not free of snow until the late spring.
They are very rarely explored by travellers.
SILANION, a Greek sculptor of the 4th century B.C. He was
noted as a portrait-sculptor. Of two of his works, his heads of
Plato and of Sappho, we possess what seem to be copies. Both
are of simple ideal type, the latter of course not strictly a portrait,
since Sappho lived before the age of portraits. The best copy of
the Plato is in the Vatican.
SILAS (fl. A.D. 50), early Christian prophet and missionary,
was the companion of St Paul on the second journey, when he
took the place formerly held by Barnabas. The tour included
S. Galatia, Troas, Philippi (where he was imprisoned), Thes-
salonica'and Beroea, where Silas was left with Timothy, though
he afterwards rejoined Paul at Corinth. He is in all probability
the Silvanus ' who is associated with Paul in the letters to the
Thessalonians, mentioned again in 2 Cor. i. 19, and the bearer and
amanuensis of i Peter (see v. 12). It is possible, indeed, that he
has an even closer connexion with this letter, and some scholars
(e.g. R. Scott in The Pauline Epistles, 1909) are inclined to give
him a prominent place among the writers of the New Testament.
He was of Jewish birth and probably also a Roman citizen.
SILAY, a town of the province of Negros Occidental, island of
Negros, Philippine Islands, on the N.W. coast, about 10 m. N.
of Bacolod, the capital of the province. Pop. (1903, after the
annexation of Guimbalon and a portion of Eustaquio Lopez)
22,000. There are more than fifty barrios or villages in the town
and the largest of these had, in 1903, 3834 inhabitants. The
language is Visayan. There is a considerable coasting trade,
sugar, brought by a tramway from neighbouring towns, is shipped
from here, and the cultivation of sugar-cane is an important in-
dustry; Indian corn, tobacco, hemp, cotton and cacao are also
grown.
SILCHAR, a town of British India, in the Cachar district of
Eastern Bengal and Assam, of which it is the headquarters.
Pop. (1901) 9256. It is situated on the left bank of the river
Barak, with a station on the Assam-Bengal railway, 271 m.
N. of Chittagong. Silchar is the centre of an important tea
industry, and the headquarters of the volunteer corps known
as the Surma Valley Light Horse.
SILCHESTER, a parish in the north of Hampshire, England,
about 10 m. S. of Reading, containing the site of the Romano-
British town Calleva Atrebatum. This site has been lately
explored (1890-1909) and the whole plan of the ancient town
within the walls recovered; unfortunately the excavators had
to abandon their task before the suburbs, cemeteries and what-
ever else may lie outside the walls have been examined. The
results are published in Archaeologia, the official organ of the
London Society of Antiquaries (see BRITAIN: Roman). As the
excavations proceeded, the areas excavated were covered in again,
but the ruins of the town hall, which have been famous since the
1 2th century, still remain. The smaller and movable objects
found in the excavations have been deposited by the duke of
Wellington, owner of the site of Calleva, in the Reading museum.
SILENUS, a primitive Phrygian deity of woods and springs.
As the reputed inventor of music he was confounded with
Marsyas. He also possessed the gift of prophecy, but, like
Proteus, would only impart information on compulsion; when
surprised in a drunken sleep, he could be bound with chains
of flowers, and forced to prophesy and sing (Virgil, Eel. vi., where
he gives an account of the creation of the world; cf. Aelian,
Var. hist. iii. 18). In Greek mythology he is the son of Hermes
(or Pan) and a nymph. He is the constant companion of
Dionysus, whom he was said to have instructed in the cultivation
of the vine and the keeping of bees. He fought by his side in the
war against the giants and was his companion in his travels
and adventures. The story of Silenus was often the subject of
Athenian satyric drama. Just as there were supposed to be
several Pans and Fauns, so there were many Silenuses, whose
father was called Papposilenus (" Daddy Silenus "), represented
as completely covered with hair and more animal in appearance.
The usual attributes of Silenus were the wine-skin (from which
he is inseparable), a crown of ivy, the Bacchic thyrsus, the ass,
and sometimes the panther. In art he generally appears as a
little pot-bellied old man, with a snub nose and a bald head,
riding on an ass and supported by satyrs; or he is depicted
lying asleep on his wine-skin, which he sometimes bestrides.
A more dignified type is the Vatican statue of Silenus carrying
the infant Dionysus, and the marble group from the villa Borghese
in the Louvre.
See Preller-Robert, Griechische Mythplogie (1894), pp. 729-735;
Talfourd Ely, " A Cyprian Terracotta," in the Archaeological Journal
(1896); A. Baumeister, Denkmdler des klassischen Alterlums, iii.
(1888).
'For the abbreviation, cf. Lucas, Prisca ( = Priscilla), Sopater
( = Sosipater).
9°
SILESIA
SILESIA, the name of a district in the east of Europe, the greater
part of which is included in the German empire and is known as
German Silesia. A smaller part, called Austrian Silesia, is
included in the empire of Austria-Hungary.
German Silesia.
German Silesia is bounded by Brandenburg, Posen, Russian
Poland, Galicia, Austrian Silesia, Moravia, Bohemia and the
kingdom and province of Saxony. Besides the bulk of the old
duchy of Silesia, it comprises the countship of Glatz, a fragment
of the Neumark, and part of Upper Lusatia, taken from the
kingdom of Saxony in 1815. The province, which has an area
of 15,576 sq. m. and is the largest in Prussia, is divided into three
governmental districts, those of Liegnitz and Breslau comprising
lower Silesia, and of Oppeln taking in the greater part of moun-
tainous Silesia.
Physiographically Silesia is roughly divided into a flat and a
hilly portion by the so-called Silesian Langental, which begins
on the south-east near the river Malapane, and extends across the
province in a west-by-north direction to the Black Elster, following
in part the valley of the Oder. The south-east part of the province,
to the east of the Oder and south of the Malapane, consists of a
hilly outpost of the Carpathians, the Tarnowitz plateau, with a
mean elevation of about 1000 ft. To the west of the Oder the land
rises gradually from the Langental towards the southern boundary
of the province, which is formed by the central part of the Sudetic
system, including the Glatz Mountains and the Riesengebirge
(Schneekoppe, 5260 ft.). Among the loftier elevations in advance
of this southern barrier the most conspicuous is the Zobten (2356 ft.).
To the north and north-east of the Oder the province belongs almost
entirely to the great North-German plain, though a hilly ridge, rarely
attaining a height of 1000 ft., may be traced from east to west,
asserting itself most definitely in the Katzengebirge. Nearly the
whole ofSilesia lies within the basin of the Oder, which flows through
it from south-east to north-west, dividing the province into two
approximately equal parts. The Vistula touches the province on
the south-east, and receives a few small tributaries from it, while
on the west the Spree and Black Elster belong to the system of
the Elbe. The Iser rises among the mountains on the south. Among
the chief feeders of the Oder are the Malapane, the Glatzer Neisse,
the Katzbach and the Bartsch ; the Bober and Queiss flow through
Silesia, but join the Oder beyond the frontier. The only lake of
any extent is the Schlawa See, 7 m. long, on the north frontier;
and the only navigable canal, the Klodnitz canal, in the mining
district of upper Silesia. There is a considerable difference in the
climate of Lower and Upper Silesia; some of the villages in the
Riesengebirge have the lowest mean temperature of any inhabited
place in Prussia (below 40° F.).
Of the total area of the province 56% is occupied by arable land,
10-2 % by pasture and meadow, and nearly 29 % by forests. The
soil along the foot of the mountains is generally good, and the district
between Ratibor and Liegnitz, where 70 to 80% of the surface is
under the plough, is reckoned one of the most fertile in Germany.
The parts of lower Silesia adjoining Brandenburg, and also the district
to the east of the Oder, are sandy and comparatively unproductive.
The different cereals are all grown with success, wheat and rye
sometimes in quantity enough for exportation. Flax is still a
frequent crop in the hilly districts, and sugar-beets are raised over
large areas. Tobacco, oil-seeds, chicory and hops may also be
specified, while a little wine, of an inferior quality, is produced near
Griinberg. Mulberry trees for silk-culture have been introduced
and thrive fairly. Large estates are the rule in Silesia, where about
a third of the land is in the hands of owners possessing at least
250 acres, while properties of 50,000 to 100,000 acres are common.
The districts of Oppeln and Liegnitz are among the most richly
wooded parts of Prussia. The merino sheep was introduced by
Frederick the Great, and since then the Silesian breed has been
greatly improved. The woods and mountains harbour large
quantities of game, such as red deer, roedeer, wild boars and hares.
The fishery includes salmon in the Oder, trout in the mountain
streams, and carp in the small lakes or ponds with which the province
is sprinkled.
The great wealth of Silesia, however, lies underground, in the
shape of large stores of coal and other minerals, which have been
worked ever since the I2th century. The coal measures of Upper
Silesia, in the south-east part of the province, are among the most
extensive in continental Europe, and there is another large field
near Waldenburg in the south-west. The output in 1905 exceeded
34 million tons, valued at £12,500,000 sterling, and equal to more
than a quarter of the entire yield of Germany. The district of
Oppeln also contains a great quantity of iron, the production in
1905 amounting to 862,000 tons. The deposits of zinc in the vicinity
of Beuthen arc perhaps the richest in the world, and produce ^two-
thirds of the zinc ore of Germany (609.000 tons). The remaining
mineral products include lead, from which a considerable quantity
of silver is extracted, copper, cobalt, arsenic, the rarer metal cadmium,
alum, brown coal, marble, and a few of the commoner precious
stones, jaspers, agates and amethysts. The province contains
scarcely any salt or brine springs, but there are well-known mineral
springs at Warmbrunn, Salzbrunn and several other places.
A busy manufacturing activity has long been united with the
underground industries of Silesia, and the province in this respect
is hardly excelled by any other part of Prussia. On the plateau of
Tarnowitz the working and smelting of metals is the predominant
industry, and in the neighbourhood of Beuthen, Konigshiitte and
Gleiwitz there is an almost endless succession of iron-works, zinc-
foundries, machine-shops and the like. At the foot of the Riesenge-
birge, and along the southern mountain line generally, the textile
industries prevail. Weaving has been practised in Silesia, on a
large scale, since the I4th century; and Silesian linen still maintains
its reputation, though the conditions of production have greatly
changed. Cotton and woollen goods of all kinds are also made in
large quantities, and among the otherindustrial products are beetroot
sugar, spirits, chemicals, tobacco, starch, paper, pottery, and
" Bohemian glass." Lace, somewhat resembling that of Brussels,
is made by the women of the mountainous districts. The trade of
Silesia is scarcely so extensive as might be expected from its im-
portant industrial activity. On the east it is hampered by the
stringent regulations of the Russian frontier, and the great waterway
of the Oder, though in process of being regulated, is sometimes too
low in summer for navigation. The extension of the railway system
has, however, had its usual effect in fostering commerce, and the
mineral and manufactured products of the province are freely
exported.
At the census of 1905 the population of Silesia was 4,942,611,
of whom 2,120,361 were Protestants, 2,765,394 Catholics and
46,845 Jews. The density is 317 per sq. m., but the average is
of course very greatly exceeded in the industrial districts such
as Beuthen. Three-fourths of the inhabitants and territory are
German, but to the east of the Oder the Poles, more than i. ,000,000
in number, form the bulk of the population, while there are about
1 5,500 Czechs in the south part of the province and 25,000 Wends
near Liegnitz. The Roman Catholics, most of whom are under
the ecclesiastical sway of the prince bishop of Breslau, are
predominant in Upper Silesia and Glatz; the Protestants prevail
in Lower Silesia, to the west of the Oder, and in Lusatia. The
nobility is very numerous in Silesia, chiefly in the Polish districts.
The educational institutions of the province are headed by the
university of Breslau. In 1900 the percentage of illiterate
recruits, in spite of the large Polish-speaking contingent, was only
0-05. The capital and seat of the provincial diet is Breslau
(q.v.), which is also by far the largest and most important town.
The towns next in point of size are Gorlitz, Liegnitz, Konigshiitte,
Beuthen, Schweidnitz, Neisse and Glogau. The province sends
thirty-five members to the Reichstag and sixty-five to the
Prussian chamber of deputies. The government divisions of
Breslau and Oppeln together form the district of the 6th army
corps with its headquarters at Breslau, while Liegnitz belongs
to that of the 5th army corps, the headquarters of which are at
Posen. Glogau, Glatz and Neisse are fortresses.
History. — The beginnings of Silesian history do not reach back
beyond the roth century A.D., at which time the district was
occupied by clans of Slavonic nationality, one of which derived
its name from the mountain Zlenz (mod. Zobtenburg), near
Breslau, and thus gave rise to the present appellation of the
whole province. The etymology of place-names suggests that the
original population was Celtic, but this conjecture cannot be
verified in any historical records. About the year 1000 the
Silesian clans were incorporated in the kingdom of Poland,
whose rulers held their ground with difficulty against continuous
attacks by the kings of Bohemia, but maintained themselves
successfully against occasional raids from Germany. The
decisive factor in the separation of Silesia from Poland was
furnished by a partition of the Polish crown's territories in 1138.
Silesia was henceforth constituted as a separate principality,
and in 1201 its political severance from Poland became complete.
A yet more important result of the partition of ir38 was the
transference of Silesia to the German nation. The independent
dynasty which was then established was drawn under the
influence of the German king, Frederick Barbarossa, and two
princes who in 1163 divided the sovereignty among themselves
as dukes of Upper and Lower Silesia inaugurated the policy
SILESIA
91
of inviting German colonists to their vacant domains. More
extensive immigrations followed, in the course of which the whole
of Silesia was covered with German settlements. The numerous
townships which then sprang up acquired rights of self-govern-
ment according to German law, Breslau being refounded about
1 250 as a German town, and a feudal organization was introduced
among the landholding nobility. By the end of the i3th century
Silesia had virtually become a German land.
This ethnical transformation was accompanied by a great
rise in material prosperity. Large areas of forest or swamp
were reclaimed for agriculture; the great Silesian industries
of mining and weaving were called into existence, and Breslau
grew to be a leading centre of exchange for the wares of East and
West. The growing resources of the Silesian duchies are exempli-
fied by the strength of the army with which Henry II., duke of
Lower Silesia, broke the force of the Mongol invasion at the
battle of Liegnitz (1241), and by the glamour at the court of the
Minnesinger, Henry IV. (i 266-1 290). This prosperity, however,
was checked by a growing tendency among the Silesian dynasties
to make partitions of their territories at each new succession.
Thus by the end of the i4th century the country had been split
up into 18 principalities: Breslau, Brieg, Glogau, Jauer, Liegnitz,
Miinsterberg, Ols, Schweidnitz and Steinau in Lower Silesia;
Beuthen, Falkenberg, Kosel, Neisse, Oppeln, Ratibor, Strehlitz,
Teschen and Troppau in the upper district. The petty rulers
of these sections wasted their strength with internecine quarrels
and proved quite incompetent to check the lawlessness of their
feudal vassals. Save under the vigorous rule of some dukes
of Lower Silesia, such as Henry I. and Bolko I., and the above-
named Henry II. and IV., who succeeded in reuniting most of
the principalities under their sway, the country fell into a state
of growing anarchy.
Unable to institute an effective national government, and
unwilling to attach themselves again to Poland, the Silesian
princes began about 1290 to seek the protection of the German
dynasty then ruling in Bohemia. The intervention of these
kings resulted in the establishment of their suzerainty over the
whole of Silesia and the appropriation of several of its petty
states as crown domains. The earliest of these Bohemian
overlords, King John and the emperor Charles IV., fully justified
their intrusion by the vigorous way in which they restored order
and regularized the administration; in particular, the cities
at this time attained a high degree of material prosperity and
political importance. Under later rulers the connexion with
Bohemia brought the Silesians no benefit, but involved them
in the destructive Hussite wars. At the outbreak of this conflict
in 1420 they gave ready support to their king Sigismund against
the Bohemian rebels, whom they regarded as dangerous to their
German nationality, but by this act they exposed themselves
to a series of invasions (1425-1435) by which the country was
severely devastated. In consequence of these raids the German
element of population in Upper Silesia permanently lost ground ;
and a complete restitution of the Slavonic nationality seemed
imminent on the appointment of the Hussite, George Podiebrad,
to the Bohemian kingship in 1457. Though most of the Silesian
dynasts seemed ready to acquiesce, the burghers of Breslau
fiercely repudiated the new suzerain, and before he could enforce
his claims to homage he was ousted by the Hungarian king,
Matthias Corvinus, who was readily recognized as overlord (1469).
Matthias enforced his authority by the vigorous use of his
mercenaries and by wholesale confiscations of the lands of turbu-
lent nobles. By instituting a permanent diet of Silesian princes
and estates to co-operate with his vicegerent, he took an important
step towards the abolition of particularism and the establishment
of an effective central government. In spite of these reforms
the Silesians, who felt severely the financial exactions of Matthias,
began to resent the control of the Bohemian crown. Profiting
by the feebleness of Matthias' successor Vladislav, they extorted
concessions which secured to them a practical autonomy.
These privileges still remained to them at the outset of the
religious Reformation, which the Silesians, in spite of their
Catholic zeal during the Hussite wars, accepted readily and
carried out with singularly little opposition from within or
without. But a drastic revolution in their government was
imposed upon them by the German king, Ferdinand I., who
had been prevented from interference during his early reign by
his wars with the Turks, and who showed little disposition to
check the Reformation in Silesia by forcible means, but subse-
quently reasserted the control of the Bohemian crown by a
series of important enactments. He abolished all privileges
which were not secured by charter and imposed a more rigidly
centralized scheme of government in which the activities of the
provincial diet were restricted to some judicial and financial
functions, and their freedom in matters of foreign policy was
withdrawn altogether. Henceforth, too, annexations of territory
were frequently carried out by the Bohemian crown on the
extinction of Silesian dynasties, and the surviving princes showed
an increasing reluctance to the exercise of their authority.
Accordingly the Silesian estates never again chose to exercise
initiative save on rare occasions, and fiom 1550 Silesia passed
almost completely under foreign administration.
An uneventful period followed under the rule of the house of
Habsburg, which united the kingship of Bohemia with the
archduchy of Austria and the imperial crown. But this respite
from trouble was ended by the outbreak of the Thirty Years'
War (1618-48), which brought Silesia to the verge of ruin. Dis-
quieted by some forcible attempts on Rudolph II. 's part to
suppress Protestantism in certain parts of the country, and
mistrusting a formal guarantee of religious liberty which wa.s
given to them in 1609, the Silesians joined hands with the
Bohemian insurgents and renounced their allegiance to their
Austrian ruler. Their defection, which was terminated by a
capitulation in 1621, was not punished severely, but in spite
of their attempt to maintain neutrality henceforth they were
quite unable to secure peace. Silesia remained a principal
objective of the various contending armies and was occupied
almost continuously by a succession of ill-disciplined mercenary
forces whose depredations and exactions, accentuated at times
by religious fanaticism, reduced the country to a state of helpless
misery. Three-quarters of the population are estimated to have
lost their lives, and commerce and industry were brought to a
standstill. Recovery from these disasters was retarded by the
permanent diversion of trade to new centres like Leipzig and
St Petersburg, and by a state of unsettlement due to the govern-
ment's disregard of its guarantees to its Protestant subjects. A
greater measure of religious liberty was secured for the Silesians
by the representatives of King Charles XII. of Sweden on their
behalf, and effective measures were taken by the emperor Charles
VI. to stimulate commercial intercourse between Silesia and
Austria. Nevertheless in the earlier part of the i8th century the
condition of the country still remained unsatisfactory.
An important epoch in the history of Silesia is marked by the
year 1740, when the dominion of Austria was exchanged for that
of Prussia. Availing himself of a testamentary union made in
1537 between the duke of Liegnitz and the elector of Brandenburg,
and of an attempt by the elector Frederick William to call it into
force in spite of its annulment by Ferdinand I. in 1546, Frederick
II. of Prussia raised a claim to the former duchies of .Liegnitz,
Brieg, Jagerndorf and Wohlau. The empress Maria Theresa,
who was at this time involved with other enemies, was unable
to prevent the occupation of Lower Silesia by Frederick and in
1 741 ceded that province to him. In the following year Frederick
renewed his attack and extorted from Austria the whole of
Silesia except the districts of Troppau, Teschen and Jagerndorf,
the present province of Austrian Silesia.
Though constrained by the general dangers of her position to
make terms with Prussia, Maria Theresa long cherished the hope
of recovering a possession which she, unlike her predecessors,
valued highly and held by a far better title than did her opponent.
A second war which Frederick began in 1744 in anticipation of a
counter-attack from her only served to strengthen his hold upon
his recent conquest; but in the famous Seven Years' War (g.ii.)
of 1756-63 the Austrian empress, aided by France and Russia,
almost effected her purpose. Silesia was repeatedly overrun by
SILESIAN WARS— SILICA
Austrian and Russian troops, and Frederick's ultimate expulsion
seemed only a question of time. Yet the Prussian king recovered
his lost ground by gigantic efforts and eventually retained his
Silesian territory undiminished.
The annexation by Frederick was followed by a complete
reorganization in which the obsolete powers of the local dynasts
were abolished and Silesia became a mere province of the highly
centralized Prussian state. Owing to the lack of a corporate
Silesian consciousness and the feebleness of their local institutions,
the people soon became reconciled to their change of rulers.
Moreover Frederick, who had proved by his wars the importance
which he attached to Silesia, was indefatigable in times of peace
in his attempts to justify his usurpation. Making yearly visits
to the country, and further keeping himself in touch with it by
means of a special " minister of Silesia," he was enabled to effect
numerous political reforms, chief of which were the strict enforce-
ment of religious toleration and the restriction of oppressive
seignorial rights. By liberal endowments and minute but
judicious regulations he brought about a rapid development of
Silesian industries; in particular he revived the mining and
weaving operations which at present constitute the country's
chief source of wealth.
After its incorporation with Prussia Silesia ceases to have an
independent political history. During the Napoleonic wars it was
partly occupied by French troops (1806-1813), and at the begin-
ning of the War of Liberation it was the chief scene of operations
between the French and the allied armies. In 1815 it was
enlarged by a portion of Lusatia, which had become detached
from Silesia as far back as the nth century and since then had
been annexed to the kingdom of Saxony. During the rest of
the igth century its peace has been interrupted from time to time
by riots of discontented weavers. But the general record of
recent times has been fone of industrial development and
prosperity hardly inferior to that of any other part of Germany.
See C. Griinhagen, Geschichte Schlesiens (2 vols., Gotha, 1884-
1886), and Schlesien unter Friedrich dent Grossen (2 vols., Gotha,
1890-1892) ; M. Morgenbesser, Geschichte von Schlesien (Berlin, 1892) ;
Knotel, Geschichte Oberschlesiens (Kattowitz, 1906); H. Grotefend,
Stammtafeln der schlesischen Fiirsten bis 1740 (Breslau, 1889);
F. Rachfahl, Die Organisation der Gesamlstaatsverwaltung Schlesiens
vor dem dreissigjdhrigen Kriege (Leipzig, 1894); H. Fechner,
Geschichte des schlesischen Berg- und Huttenwesens 1741-1806 (Berlin,
1903) ; see also the Zeitschrift des Vereins fur Geschichte und Altertum
Schlesiens (Breslau, 1855 sqq.), and Oberschlesische Heimat, Zeit-
schrift des ober schlesischen Geschichtsvereins (Oppeln, 1905 sqq.).
Austrian Silesia.
Austrian Silesia (Ger. dsterreichisch-Schlesien) is a duchy and
crownland of Austria, bounded E. by Galicia, S. by Hungary
and Moravia, W. and N. by Prussian Silesia. It has an area of
1987 sq. m. and is the smallest province of Austria. Silesia is
divided by a projecting limb of Moravia into two small parts of
territory, of which the western part is flanked by the Sudetic
mountains, namely the Altvater Gebirge; while the eastern part
is flanked by the Carpathians, namely the Jablunka Gebirge
with their highest peak the Lissa Hora (4346 ft.). A great pro-
portion of the surface of Silesia is occupied by the offshoots of
these ranges. The province is traversed by the Vistula, which
rises in the Carpathians within eastern Silesia, and by the Oder,
with its affluents the Oppa and the Olsa. Owing to its mountain-
ous character, and its slopes towards the N. and N.E., Silesia
has a somewhat severe climate for its latitude, the mean annual
temperature being 50° F., while the annual rainfall varies from
20 to 30 in.
Of the total area 49-4% is arable land, 34-2% is covered by
forests, 6-2% by pasturages, while meadows occupy 5-8% and
gardens 1-3 %. The soil cannot, as a rule, be termed rich, although
some parts are fertile and produce cereals, vegetables, beetroot and
fruit. In the mountainous region dairy-farming is carried on after
the Alpine fashion and the breeding of sheep is improving. Large
herds of geese and pigeons are reared, while hunting and fishing
constitute also important resources. The mineral wealth of Silesia
is great and consists in coal, iron-ore, marble and slate. It possesses
several mineral springs, of which the best known are the alkaline
springs at Karlsbrunn. Like its adjoining provinces, Silesia boasts
of a great and varied industrial activity, chiefly represented by the
metallurgic and textile industries in all their branches. The cloth
and woollen industries are concentrated at Bielitz, Jagerndorf and
Engelsberg; linen is manufactured at Freiwaldau Freudenthal and
Bennisch; cotton goods at Friedek. The iron industry is con-
centrated at Trzinietz, near Teschen, and various industrial and
agricultural machines are manufactured at Troppau, Jagerndorf,
Ustron and Bielitz. The organs manufactured at Jagerndorf enjoy
a good reputation. Other important branches of industry are
chemicals at Hruschau and Petrowitz; sugar refineries, milling,
brewing and liqueurs.
In 1900 the population numbered 680,422, which corresponds
to 342 inhabitants per sq. m. The Germans formed 44-69%
of the population, 33-21% were Poles and 22-05% Czechs
and Slavs. According to religion, 84-73 were Roman Catholics,
14% Protestants and the remainder were Jews. The local diet
is composed of 3 1 members, and Silesia sends 1 2 deputies to the
Reichsrat at Vienna. For administrative purposes Silesia is
divided into 9 districts and 3 towns with autonomous munici-
palities: Troppau, the capital, Bielitz and Friedek. Other
principal towns are: Teschen, Polnisch-Ostrau, Jagerndorf,
Karwin, Freudenthal, Freiwaldau and Bennisch.
The actual duchy is only a very small part, which was left
to Austria after the Seven Years' War, from its former province
of the same name. It formed, with Moravia, a single province
until 1849, when it was created a separate duchy.
See F. Slama, Osterreichisch-Schlesien (Prague, 1887); and A.
Peter, Das Herzogtum Schlesien (Vienna, 1884).
SILESIAN WARS, the name given to the contests between
Austria and Prussia for the possession of Silesia. The first (1740-
1742) and second (1744-1745) wars formed a part of the great
European struggle called the War of the Austrian Succession
(q.v.), and the third war (1756-1762) similarly a part of the
Seven Years' War (q.v.).
SILHOUETTE, 1JTIENNE DE (1700-1767), controller-general
of France, was born at Limoges on the 5th of July 1709. He
travelled extensively while still a young man and drew attention
to himself by the publication of English translations, historical
writings, and studies on the financial system of England. Suc-
cessively councillor to the parlement of Metz, secretary to the
duke of Orleans, member of the commission on delimitation of
Franco-British interests in Acadia (1749), and royal commis-
sioner in the Indies Company, he was named controller-general
through the influence of the marquess de Pompadour on the
4th of March 1759. The court at first reposed a blind confidence
in him, but soon perceived not only that he was not a financier
but also that he was bent on attacking privilege by levying a
land-tax on the estates of the nobles and by reducing the pensions.
A storm of opposition gathered and broke: a thousand cartoons
and jokes were directed against the unfortunate minister who
seemed to be resorting to one financial embarrassment in order
to escape another; and in allusion to the sacrifices which he
demanded of the nobles, even the conversion of their table plate
into money, silhouette became the popular word for a figure
reduced to simplest form. The word was eventually (1835)
admitted to the dictionary by the French academy. Silhouette
was forced out of the ministry on the 2ist of November 1759 and
withdrew to Brie-sur-Marne, where during the remainder of
his life he sought refuge from scorn and sarcasm in religious
devotion. He died on the 2oth of January 1 767.
Silhouette left several translations from the English and the
Spanish, accounts of travel, and dull historical and philosophical
writings, a list of which is given in Querard, France litter aire, ix. 138.
A Testament politi^ue, published under his name in 1772, is apochry-
phal. See J. P. Clement and A. Lemoine, M. de Silhouette (Pans,
1872).
SILICA, in chemistry, the name ordinarily given to amorphous
silicon dioxide, Si02. This chemical compound is widely and
most abundantly distributed in nature, both in the free state and
in combination with metallic oxides. Free silica constitutes the
greater part of sand and sandy rocks; when fairly pure it occurs
in the large crystals which we know as quartz (q.v.}, and which,
when coloured, form the gem-stones amethyst, cairngorm,
cats'-eye and jasper. Tridymite (q.v.) is a rarer form, crystallo-
graphically different from quartz. Amorphous forms also occur:
chalcedony (q.v.), and its coloured modifications agate, carnelian,
SILICON
93
onyx and sard, together with opal (qq.v.) are examples. Amorph-
ous silica can be obtained from a silicate (a compound of silica
and a metallic oxide) by fusing the finely powdered mineral
with sodium carbonate, decomposing the sodium silicate thus
formed with hydrochloric acid, evaporating to dryness to convert
the colloidal silicic acid into insoluble silica, and removing the
soluble chlorides by washing with hot water. On drying, the
silica is obtained as a soft white amorphous powder, insoluble in
water and in all acids except hydrofluoric; it dissolves in hot
solutions of the caustic alkalis and to a less extent in alkali
carbonates. It melts at a high temperature, and in the electric
furnace it may be distilled, the vapours condensing to a bluish-
white powder. By heating a solution of sodium silicate in a glass
vessel the glass is attacked (an acid silicate being formed) and
silica separates at ordinary temperatures in a hydrated amorphous
form, at higher temperatures but below 180° as tridymite, and
above 180° as quartz.
Silicates. — These compounds are to be regarded as salts of silicic
acid, or combinations of silicon dioxide and metallic basic oxides;
they are of great importance since they constitute the commonest
rock-forming and many other minerals, and occur in every petro-
graphical species. The parent acid, silicic acid, was obtained by
T. Graham by dialysing a solution of hydrochloric acid to which
sodium silicate had been added; a colloidal silicic acid being re-
tained in the dialyser. This solution may be concentrated until
it contains about 14 % of silica by open boiling, and this solution on
evaporation in a vacuum gives a transparent mass of metasilicic
acid, H2SiOs. The solution is a tasteless liquid having a slight acid
reaction; it gradually changes to a clear transparent jelly, which
afterwards shrinks on drying. This coagulation is brought about
very quickly by sodium carbonate, and may be retarded by hydro-
chloric acid or by a solution of a caustic alkali. Several hydrated
forms have been obtained, e.g. 2SiO2-H2O, SSiCVHjO, 4SiO2-H2O,
8SiO2-H2O; these are very unstable, the first two losing water on ex-
posure whilst the others absorb water. The natural silicates may be
regarded as falling into 5 classes, viz. orthosilicates, derived from
Si(OH)4; metasilicates, from SiO(OH)2; disilicates, from Si2O3(OH)2;
trisilicates, from Si2Oe(OH)2; and basic silicates. These acids may
be regarded as derived by the partial dehydration of the ortho-acid.
Another classification is given in METALLURGY ; a list of mineral
silicates is given in MINERALOGY, and for the synthetical production
of these compounds see also PETROLOGY.
SILICON [symbol Si, atomic weight 28-3 (0 = i6)], a non-
metallic chemical element. It is not found in the uncombined
condition, but in combination with other elements it is, with
perhaps the exception of oxygen, the most widely distributed and
abundant of all the elements. It is found in the form of oxide
(silica), either anhydrous or hydrated as quartz, flint, sand,
chalcedony, tridymite, opal, &c., but occurs chiefly in the form
of silicates of aluminium, magnesium, iron, and the alkali and
alkaline earth metals, forming the chief constituent of various
clays, soils and rocks. It has also been found as a constituent of
various parts of plants and has been recognized in the stars.
The element exists in two forms, one amorphous, the other
crystalline. The older methods used for the preparation of the
amorphous form, namely the decomposition of silicon halides
or silicofluorides by the alkali metals, or of silica by magnesium,
do not give good results, since the silicon obtained is always
contaminated with various impurities, but a pure variety may
be prepared according to E. Vigouroux (Ann. Mm. phys., 1897,
(7) 12, p. 1 53) by heating silica with magnesium in the presence of
magnesia, or by heating silica with aluminium. The crystalline
form may be prepared by heating potassium silicofluoride with
sodium or aluminium (F. Wohler, Ann., 1856, 97, p. 266; 1857,
102, p. 382); by heating silica with magnesium in the presence of
zinc (L. Gattermann, Ber., 1889, 22, p. 186); and by the reduc-
tion of silica in the presence of carbon and iron (H. N. Warren,
Chem. News, 1888, 57, p. 54; 1893, 67, p. 136). Another
crystalline form, differing from the former by its solubility in
hydrofluoric acid, was prepared by H. Moissan and F. Siemens
(Comples rendus, 1904, 138, p. 1299). A somewhat impure
silicon (containing 90-98% of the element) is made by the
Carborundum Company of Niagara Falls (United States Patents
745122 and 842273, 1908) by heating coke and sand in an
electric furnace. The product is a crystalline solid of specific
gravity 2-34, and melts at about 1430° C. See also German
Patent 108817 f°r the production of crystallized silicon from
silica and carborundum.
Amorphous silicon is a brown coloured powder, the crystalline
variety being grey, but it presents somewhat different appear-
ances according to the method used for its preparation. The
specific gravity of the amorphous form is 2-35 (Vigouroux),
that of the crystalline variety varying, according to the method
of preparation, from 2-004 to 2-493. The specific heat varies with
the temperature, from 0-136 at -39° C. to 0-2029 at 232° C.
Silicon distils readily at the temperature of the electric furnace.
It is attacked rapidly by fluorine at ordinary temperature, and
by chlorine when heated in a current of the gas. It undergoes a
slight superficial oxidation when heated in oxygen. It combines
directly with many metals on heating, whilst others merely
dissolve it. When heated with sodium and potassium, appar-
ently no action takes place, but if heated with lithium it forms
a lithium silicide, Li6Si2(H. Moissan, Complex rendus, 1902, 134,
p. 1083). It decomposes ammonia at a red heat, liberating
hydrogen and yielding a compound containing silicon and nitro-
gen. It reduces many non-metallic oxides. It is only soluble
in a mixture of hydrofluoric and nitric acid, or in solutions of the
caustic alkalis, in the latter case yielding hydrogen and a silicate:
Si-f-2KHO+H2O = K2SiO3+2H2. On fusion with alkaline car-
bonates and hydroxides it undergoes oxidation to silica which
dissolves on the excess of alkali yielding an alkaline silicate.
Silicon hydride, SiHj, is obtained in an impure condition, as a
spontaneously inflammable gas, by decomposing magnesium silicide
with hydrochloric acid, or by the dir