Sabine (sa-been'), a river of Texas, | rises near the northern state boundary, and flows southeast to the border of Louisiana, and then south, forming the boundary between the two states. It empties through Sabine lake-18 miles long and nine miles wide-into the Gulf of Mexico. The Sabine is 500 miles long, is shallow, and only navigable in parts for small steamboats.

Sabines. An old Italian people who lived first among the central Apennines, but afterwards reached down into the western plains, even to Rome itself. According to the story a colony of Sabines occupied the Quirinal Hill in Rome, but were at last joined to the Latin followers of Romulus on the Palatine hill, and so helped to make up the Roman people. It is said that Romulus, finding it hard to get wives for his followers, who were rather looked down upon as runaways and criminals, invited the Sabines to a feast and games. While the games were going on, the garrison of the Palatine seized the unsuspecting women, whom they carried off to be their wives. After several wars the Sabines outside of Rome were conquered in 241 B. C.

Sable. See MARTEN.

Sable Island, a low lying island in the Atlantic, 110 miles east of Nova Scotia, to which it belongs. It is made up of two sand ridges with a lagoon between them. The island has been called "the sailors' grave," from the many shipwrecks happening there. Since 1873 three lighthouses have been built, of which two have been swept away and one undermined, as the island is fast sinking. Early in this century it was 40 miles long, but now it is not more than 20. Near it there are sandbanks and valuable fisheries. Sackett's Harbor, a village of New York on a bay of Lake Ontario at the mouth of Black River, 12 miles west of Watertown. The harbor is one of the best on the lake. In the war of 1812 Sackett's Harbor was the head

quarters of the northern division of the American fleet, and several war vessels were built here. It was twice attacked by the British, who were driven off, the last time with a loss of 150 men. Sackett's Harbor is now becoming a popular summer resort. Population, some 800.

Sacramento, capital of California, is on the east bank of the Sacramento river, at the mouth of the American river, 90 miles by rail northeast of San Francisco. The main public buildings are the capital, which cost about $2,000,000; the courthouse, hospital, postoffice, a Roman Catholic cathedral, the Crocker art gallery, and the Masonic and Odd Fellows' halls. There are flour and planing mills, carriage, box, and broom factories, foundries, potteries, spice mills, and a cannery. Here also are the shops of the Southern Pacific railroad covering twenty-five acres. Sacramento was settled in 1839 by a Swiss, who built a fort there in 1841. It was not till 1848, after the discovery of gold, that the city, at first a town of tents, was laid out. It became the state capital in 1854. Population, 26,386.

Sacramento, the largest river of California, rises in the northeastern part of the state, and flows southwest through the Sierra Nevada to Shasta, south to Sacramento, and thence southwest into Suisun Bay, through which its waters pass into San Pablo Bay, and so to the Pacific Ocean. It is about 500 miles long, and is navigable for small boats to Red Bluff, nearly 250 miles. Its chief branch is the San Joaquin.

Sacs and Foxes, Indian tribes which settled near Green Bay, Wisconsin. They lived and usually acted together. They both belong to the Algonquin family. Among the Sacs the children of each family at birth are marked white or black in turn, thus dividing the tribe into two bands, the white or Kiscoquah and the black or Oshkosh. The Foxes were also in two branches, the Outagamies (foxes) and

used for dyeing cloth yellow. Saffron was of much greater importance centuries ago than it is now. The early Greeks used it as a dye and both they and the Romans as a perfume. As late as the 15th century persons were burned alive in Nuremburg for adulterating saffron. The plant is raised in Persia, Afghanistan, Cashmere, southern Europe and England.

Sage. Common or garden sage, so much grown in gardens as a flavoring for food, is a native of southern Europe. It has a powerfully spicy odor and bitter taste. An oil is got from the plant, and tea is made from the leaves. Clary is a kind of sage. Meadow sage with its bluish-purple flowers is a common

SAGE.

ornament of meadows and borders of fields in most parts of Europe. Applebearing sage is remarkable for the large gall-nuts which grow on its branches. The peasants of Crete gather these nuts and sell them in the towns to be made into sweetmeats.

Saginaw (sag'-i-naw), the third city of Michigan, stands on both sides of the Saginaw river, 108 miles northwest of Detroit. The city is the headquarters of the Saginaw Bay lumber and salt trade, and its flour mills, furniture, and other factories reach for three miles along the river. It is a busy, growing place, and was until recently separated into the cities of Saginaw and East Saginaw. Saginaw was founded in 1822. Population, 46,322.

Saginaw Bay. An arm of Lake Huron, and the largest inlet of the

SAHARA

southern peninsula of Michigan, is 60 miles long and 30 miles wide. The River Saginaw, 30 miles long, falls into it. It has several good harbors, and under its islands and shores vessels find shelter from the fierce storms which sweep over the expanse of Lake Huron.

Sago (sa'-go), a nutritious, starchy substance got from the pith of several kinds of palms. The tree grows in large forests in New Guinea, the Moluccas, Celebes, Borneo and Sumatra, and less thickly in other countries. Each tree yields about 600 pounds of pith. The natives make a pottage of sago meal, and also bake it into biscuits. Sago is used in America and Europe chiefly for making starch and for feeding cattle.

Saguenay (sag'- eh-na), a large river of Canada, falling into the inlet of St. Lawrence, about 115 miles below Quebec. It drains Lake St. John, and is about 100 miles long. In its lower course it flows between cliffs, often from 500 to 1,500 feet high, and is in many places two or three miles broad. Its scenery is beautiful, and it is navigable for the largest steamers to Ha Ha Bay.

Saguntum, a wealthy and warlike town of early Spain, stood where is now the modern town of Murviedro, near the mouth of the Pallantias river. It was a Greek trading town of prominence, but is kept in memory because of its siege and destruction by the Carthaginians under Hannibal in 219 B. C. Having held out the greater part of a year against the great captain and his army of 150,000, the half starved Saguntines preferred death to unavoidable surrender. Heaping their valuables into one huge pile, and placing their women and children around it, the men made a last sally, and the women fired the pile, casting themselves upon it with their children, thus dying in the flames at the same time that their husbands were dying in battle.

Sahara (sa-hä'-rä), the vast desert region of North Africa, stretching from the Atlantic to the Nile and from Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and Tripoli south to the region of the Niger and Lake Tsad. The Sahara is a link in the chain. of great deserts which girdle the Old World from the Atlantic across Afri ca, Arabia, Persia, Turkestan and Mongolia to the Pacific. The old idea that the Sahara was a vast expanse of sand, and that it was once the bed of an in

land sea, is known to be false. The surface is mostly above sea level, and in one place reaches a height of 8,000 feet. However, of large tracts next to nothing is known. On the northern side of this desert is a vast bow of sand hills; the middle portion is a high tableland with snow-clad mountain peaks; and in the east and west are mountain ranges. Water can almost always be found in the hollows between the sand dunes, and also a little below the surface in the deep valleys between the western mountains, these valleys being mostly dry beds of old rivers. In many parts of the Sahara are oases, islands of green in the midst of an ocean of desert. These oases are found most plentiful on the southern side of the Atlas and Algerian mountains, on the northern side of the large central tableland, and along certain lines across the desert, which mark the caravan routes between the Soudan states and the Mediterranean.

A large part of the Sahara, though not the whole, was once undoubtedly under water. The greater part of the surface seems to have been raised, and a process of drying up, similar to that which is now going on in the Turkestan desert, has gone on here from the earliest historic times. The sand is the Saharan rocks ground to dust. The great heat by day causes the rocks to expand; the great fall of the temperature by night, together with the great evaporation which then takes place, makes them split and crack, and break in pieces; and the strong, fierce winds use these pieces like files or sand blasts to grind to fragments other rocks. These desert sand storms are more feared by the traveler than lack of water. Thick deposits of sand have been found on the floor of the Atlantic a long way west of the African coast. The thermometer falls from above 100° F. during the day to just below freezing point at night.

On the oasis grow date palms, oranges, peaches and other fruits, rice, millet, etc. In the desert little grows except thorny shrubs and coarse grasses. The giraffe, antelope, wild cattle, the wild ass, jackal, ostrich, crow, viper, python, locusts and flies are found. The camel is the great carrier across the Sahara. The people of the Sahara, numbering from 1,400,000 to 2,500,000, are Moors, and other Berbers, Negroes, Arabs and Jews. The chief products are dates and salt. But

Y. C.-72.

etc.

SAIL

a large trade is carried on by caravans, bringing to the Mediterranean ivory, ostrich feathers, gums, hides, gold dust, To get this trade the French are talking of building a railroad across the Sahara. Another railroad is proposed to join Algeria, the Saharamost of which belongs to France-and the French possessions on the Senegal and the Niger. Different plans for flooding the Sahara and so making it an inland sea, have been proposed, but have been dropped as it is now known that the greater part of it is above sea level. However, the French since 1856 have dug many artesian wells, striking water in abundance at a depth of 10 to 300 feet. Wherever these wells have been bored, date palm groves and orchards have increased in size, and the population has become greater. See Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa.

Saigon (si-gon'), capital of French Cochin China, stands on the River Saigon, 60 miles from the sea. The present town has grown up since 1861, and is one of the handsomest cities of the east. The governor's palace, cathedral, and arsenal are among its fine buildings. Chinese, Anamese and French make up the bulk of the population of 16,213, the suburb of Cholon, really a part of the city, having a population of 39,925. Saigon is the chief port between Singapore and Hong-Kong. The main export is rice.

Sail. Sails are generally made of flax and hemp, but jute, cotton and linen are also used, while savages make them of matting and vegetable fibers. Sails are stretched by means of masts, yards, booms, gaffs and ropes. A vessel of shallow draught or of narrow beam can bear little sail, while a vessel of deep draught and heavily ballasted, as a yacht, or a vessel of great breadth of beam, can carry large sail. A sail acts with greatest power when the wind is right astern, but in can be applied with less strength when on either beam. In the latter case the force of the wind is divided into two parts, one part tending to make the ship go forward, the other tending to make it go sideways, but from the shape of the vessel this second force causes little motion; any that it does cause is called leeway. The sails which are set square across the ship are nearly square in shape, and are called square sails. But many which are set parallel with the keel, called fore and aft sails, are also four sided.

Others are three-sided, as stay sails, which are suspended from the ropes which stay the masts. The larger sailing vessels usually carry both fore and aft and square sails. The schooner has mainly fore and aft sails. The brig is mainly square rigged, and the brigantine is a cross between the brig and the schooner. The cutter is a fore and aft one-master. The ordinary sails are mentioned under YACHT.

St. Albans, a town of Hertfordshire, England, famous for its Benedictine abbey, which was founded by Offa, king of Mercia, in 793. Cardinal Wolsey was its greatest abbot. It contains the tomb of the early traveler, Sir John Mandeville. In St. Michael's church is Lord Bacon's monument. Here were fought two battles during the war of the Roses. Population, 12,895.

St. Andrews, a Scottish town, stands on St. Andrew's bay, 42 miles northeast of Edinburgh. St. Rule's tower, the Bishop's castle, noted for its" battle-dungeon,” and within whose walls Cardinal Beaton was slain, and the cathedral consecrated in the presence of Robert Bruce, here, are among the interesting buildings of Scotland. The schools of St. Andrews were well known in 1120, but the university, the first in Scotland, was not founded till 1411. It is now one of the smaller universities, but it is doing much for the higher education of women. The library has over 100,000 volumes, and there is a good museum. Population, 6,853.

St. Augustine (aw -gus-teen'), an old Spanish town on the east coast of Florida, stands on Matanzas sound, two miles from the Atlantic and 37 miles southeast of Jacksonville. It was founded by Menendez, who built a fort here in 1565, and is the oldest town in the United States. It was several times attacked by the French, English and Indians. A sea wall a mile long affords a fine promenade. The post office was once the residence of the Spanish governor, and the large barracks occupy an old Franciscan monastery. The old fortress of San Marco, now Fort Marion, was built by Indian slaves, who worked on it more than a century. Besides its quaint Spanish lanes and balconied buildings, crumbling gates, and magnolias, palms, and oleanders, it has the most costly and magnificent hotels in the world. Two of these, the Ponce de Leon and the Alcazar, are massively built of shell concrete with towers, casinos and courtyards; a third is the

ST. CYR

| Hotel Cordova. Its attractive drives, its yachting, and above all its climate, bring to it thousands of northern visitors. Population, 2,300.

St. Bernard (sent běr′-nard), the name of two passes in the Alps. Great St. Bernard is 8,120 feet high. Almost on its crest stands the celebrated hospice, founded in 962 by Bernard de Menthon, a neighboring nobleman, for the benefit of pilgrims journeying to Rome. Now a telephone tells the Monks when travelers are on their way up the mountain. These dozen monks, all young and strong, with the aid of large dogs-no longer the famous St. Bernard dogs, but Newfoundlandsrescue travelers who are in danger of perishing from the snow and cold. There is a botanical garden for Alpine plants on the northern slope of the pass. It was this pass over which Napoleon marched his army. Little St. Bernard is the pass used by Hannibal when he led his troops into Italy. It also has a hospice, 7,143 feet high.

St. Bernard Dog. See Dog. St. Clair, a river of North America, in the line of the Great Lakes, carrying into Lake St. Clair the waters of Lake Huron, at the rate of 225,000 cubic feet per second. It is over 40 miles long and half a mile broad. In 1891 a railroad tunnel under its bed was finished between Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, including approaches 11,553 feet long.

LAKE ST. CLAIR is 26 miles long and 25 wide. From its southwest end passes the volume of water it has received into Lake Erie by means of the Detroit river.

St. Cloud, a French town near the Seine, 10 miles west of Paris. St. Cloud was long famous for its fine castle, built by the brother of Louis XIV., the duke of Orleans. It was afterward a favorite palace of Napoleon. It was destroyed during the siege of Paris in 1870. Population, 5,316.

St. Croix (kroi), called also the Passamaquoddy and the Schoodic, a river flowing out of Grand lake, on the eastern border of Maine, runs southeast 75 miles to Passamaquoddy bay. It forms part of the boundary between the United States and New Brunswick. It is navigable to St. Stephen, 20 miles from its mouth.

St. Cyr (son seer), a French town two miles west of Versailles. A school for poor girls was founded here by Louis XIV., and it was for its pupils