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SALT MINES....SAMIEL....SANDWICH ISLANDS. 329

nected with it. They are taken with the hook and line; and are commonly from seven to ten pounds weight. Some have been taken which weighed twenty-five pounds; others have been seen leaping out of the water, which the fishermen supposed would weigh from thirty-five to forty pounds.... Williams.

SALT MINES. In Hungary there is a mine of saltrock that has been worked for six hundred years past, and is dug to the depth of 743 feet. But the salt mines in Poland, near the city of Cracow, are more extraordinary. These are wonderful caverns, several hundred yards deep, at the bottom of which, are several intricate" windings and labyrinths; and on one side of the mine is a stream of salt water, and on the other, one of fresh. The bottom of these mines is a spacious plain, scooped out of the vast bed of salt, which is all a hard rock, as bright and glittering as crystal, and tinged with all the colours of precious stones, as blue, yellow, purple, and green. Many lights are constantly burning; and the blaze of these, reflected from every part of the mine, gives a more glittering prospect than any thing above ground can exhibit. Here is a kind of subterraneous republic, of men, women, and children, with houses, villages, roads, horses, and carriages. Many hundreds of people are born and live all their lives here; never seeing the sun, nor any objects above ground....Morse.

SAMIEL, hot and suffocating-winds of Asia: they are most dangerous between twelve and three o'clock, when the atmosphere is at its greatest degree of heat. Their force entirely depends on the surface over which they pass. If it be over a desert where there is no vegetation they extend their dimensions with amazing velocity, and then their progress is sometimes to windward. If over grass, or any other vegetation, they soon diminish, and lose much of their force. If over water, they lose all their electrical fire, and ascend....Jackson.

SANDWICH ISLANDS, a cluster of islands, situated in the Pacific Ocean, about the 21st and 22d degrees of north latitude. The natives of these islands are remarkable for an astonishing expertness in swim

330

SANSCRIT....SARACENS.

ming. They leave their canoes on the most frivolous occasions, dive under them, and swim to others, though at a considerable distance. Women, with infants at their breasts when the surf is so high as to prevent their landing in the canoes, are frequently seen to leap overboard and swim to the shore, without endangering their infants....Cooke's Voyages.

SANSCRIT, the ancient and sacred language of Hindostan; understood, formerly, only by a few of the most learned among themselves; but, latterly, acquired and translated by Mr. Wilkins, and Sir William Jones. "The Sanscrit language, (says Sir William Jones) whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists."

SARACENS, a people celebrated some centuries ago, who came from the deserts of Arabia. They proceeded from Ishmael, whose descendants have been the wildest and fiercest race of men ever known on the earth, and have lived by rapine and plunder for more than four thousand years: thus fulfilling the prediction concerning Ishmael, namely, that he would be a wild man ; and that his hand would be against every man, and every man's hand against him. The Ishmaelites were called Arabians, from the name of their country, and Hagarenes as descending from Hagar; some say that they called themselves Saracens, in pretence that they sprung from Sarah, Abraham's wife; but others suppose that their name originated from the word Sarra, which in the Arabic language signifies a desert. The Saracens were among the first disciples of Mahomet; and, within sixty years after his death, conquered a great part of Asia, Africa, and Europe. They maintained a war in Palestine a long time against the western Christians, and, at length, drove them out of it. To this people the Euro

SARANA.....SARDAM.....SATURN.

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peans are indebted for the numerical figures, and for several discoveries in the arts and sciences. See ARA

BIA.

SARANA, a plant that grows at Kamptschatka, and is a substitute for bread in that dreary country, where no grain can be raised; the stem grows to the height of about five inches, and has a bulbous root like that of garlic. This plant grows wild, and in great quantities; and about the beginning of August the Kamptschadale women are employed in collecting the roots, and drying them. The root of the Sarana, when roasted in embers, is a better substitute for bread than any thing the country produces; and when baken in an oven and pounded, it supplies the place of flour and meal, and is mixed in all their soups and in many of their other dishes..... Cooke's Voyages.

SARDAM, a sea-port town of Holland, where formerly were vast magazines of timber for building ships, and a prodigious number of shipwrights. Here is still seen the hut in which Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, resided, while he worked as a shipwright in this town. This wonderful man, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, left his throne in order to obtain a knowledge of the useful arts, and residing at Sardam, he served a kind of apprenticeship at ship-building; laboring with his own hands in the ship-yard like a common mechanic, associating with the workmen, conforming to them in apparel, and partaking of their fare.

SATURN, a heathen god. As the god of time, or rather as time itself personified, Saturn was usually painted by the heathens holding a scythe in one hand, and in the other a snake with its tail in its mouth, the symbol of perpetual cycles and revolutions of ages: he was often represented in the act of devouring years, in the form of children, and sometimes, encircled by the seasons appearing like boys and girls..... Sir W. Jones.

SATURN, a primary planet, which was reckoned the most remote from the sun of all the planets in our system, before the discovery of the planet Herschell. It

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SAVANNAH CRANE.....SCHEIK.

shines but with a pale and feeble light. Its diameter is seventy-nine thousand and forty-two miles; its distance from the sun nine hundred million miles, and its periodic revolution in its orbit is performed in about twenty-nine years and one hundred and sixty-seven days all this space of time making only a year at that planet. Saturn has seven satellites or moons; and is also surrounded by a broad flat ring. We are told by astronomers that the width of this ring is about twenty-five thousand miles; forming around the planet a beautiful arch, which may be designed, among other purposes, to increase its light and heat, by reflecting upon it, like a concave mirror, the sun's rays; of which, by reason of its great distance from the sun, it would not otherwise have had a sufficient quantity....Bowdoin, Bowditch.

SAVANNAH CRANE, a stately bird common in Georgia and the Floridas. It is about six feet in length from the toes to the extremity of the beak when extended, and the wings expand eight or nine feet. They are above five feet high when standing erect; the beak is very long, straight, and sharp-pointed; the crown of the head bare of feathers, of a reddish rose colour; the legs and thighs are very long, and bare of feathers a great space above the knees; and the plumage is of a pale ash colour, with shades of pale, brown and sky blue. When these birds move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow and regular, and even when at a considerable distance in the air, the creeking of the shafts and webs of their pin feathers upon one another, is plainly heard.....Bartram.

SCHEIK, or Old Man of the Mountain, the chief of a most formidable tribe of assassins, who had their residence on Mount Lebanon, between Antioch and Damascus. In the East, the name Scheik was given to this monarch; but the Europeans génerally called him the Old Man of the Mountain. The first chief of this remarkable clan, was Hassan Sabah, a subtle impostor, who by his artifices made fanatical and most obedient slaves of his subjects. Their religion was compounded of that of the magi, the Jews, the Christians, and the

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Mahometans; and the capital article of their creed was, that the Holy Ghost resided in their chief, and that all his orders proceeded from God himself; implicit obedience to which would insure to them the joys of paradise. Accordingly, they were accustomed to prostrate themselves at the foot of his throne, and, at his command, would stab themselves, or throw themselves headlong down frightful precipices; not only without murmuring, but with the utmost alacrity and satisfaction. Some of his subjects had learned every language, and could conform themselves to the manners of every nation: and thus prepared they were sent abroad in disguise, to the courts of princes, not only through Asia and Africa, but also in Europe. Any prince that had refused tribute to the Scheik, or in any wise offended him, was in danger every moment of receiving death at the hands of his assassins. Philip Augustus, king of France, on being told that the Old Man of the Mountain intended to have him assassinated; he immediately instituted a new body-guard, and never appeared without a club fortified either with iron or gold. The Scheik, darting abroad his thunderbolts from the summit of Mount Lebanon, and sending death to monarchs and noblemen who offended him, held the world in terror, for more than a century; most sovereigns paid him a private tribute; and all beheld him with dread and dismay. The Mogul Tartars overthrew and completely conquered this tribe of assassins, in the year 1272.

SCORPION, one of the largest animals of the insect tribe, and not less terrible from its size than from its malignity. It resembles a lobster somewhat in shape, but is infinitely more hideous. The tail is armed with a crooked sting; that being the fatal instrument which renders this insect so formidable: it is long, pointed, hard and hollow; it is pierced near the base by two small holes, through which, when the animal stings, it ejects a drop of poison, which is white, caustic, and fatal, in some countries. It is the more dangerous, as it has a propensity to shelter itself in houses, hiding among the furniture. In some of the towns of Italy, and in France, in the province of Languedoc, it is one of the greatest pests that torment mankind; but its

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