The dialect which was mosr closely akin to Latin was

Faliscan. The men of Falerii, however, regularly took the side

of the Etruscans in wars with Rome, and it is clear that the

civilization of the old Falerii, destroyed for its rebellion

in 241 B.C., was Etruscan and not Roman in character.

Peculiar to this alphabet is the form for f--@. Much more

important than the scanty remains of Faliscan is the Oscan

alphabet. The history of this alphabet is different from that of

Rome. It is certain from the symbols which they develop or

drop that the people of Campania and Samnium borrowed their

alphabet from the Etruscans, who held dominion in Campania

from the 8th to the 5th century B.C. Previous to the Punic

wars Campania had reached a higher stage of civilization than

Rome. Unfortunately, the remains of that civilization are very

scanty, and our knowledge of the official alphabet outside

Capua, and at a later period Pompeii, is practically confined

to two important inscriptions, the tabula Agnonensis, now in

the British Museum, and the Cippus Abellanus, which is now

kept in the Episcopal Seminary at Nola. Of Etruscan origin

also is the Umbrian alphabet, represented first and foremost

in the bronze tablets from Gubbio (the ancient Iguvium).

The Etruscan alphabet, like the Latin, was of Chalcidian

origin. That it was borrowed at an early date is shown by

the fact that most of its numerous inscriptions run from

right to left, though some are written boustrofedon.

That it took over the whole Chalcidian alphabet is rendered

probable by the survival in Umbrian and Oscan, its daughter

alphabets, of forms which are not found in Etruscan itself.

This mysterious language, despite the existence of more than

6000 inscriptions, and the publication in 1892 of a book

written in the language and handed down to us by the accident

of its use to pack an Egyptian mummy, remains as obscure as

ever, but apparently it underwent very great phonetic changes

at an early period, so that the voiced mutes B, D, G

disappeared. Of the existence of the vowel O there is no

evidence. If it ever existed in Etruscan, it had been lost

before the Oscans and Umbrians borrowed their alphabets. On

the other hand, both of their alphabets preserve B and Umbrian

G in the form @. Etruscan also retained this symbol in

the form @, and utilized it exactly as Latin did to replace

@. Oscan, in order to represent D, introduced later a

form @, thus creating confusion between the symbols for d

and for r. This form was adopted for d because @ had

already been borrowed from Etruscan as the symbol for r,

although @ is also found on Etruscan inscriptions. For the

Greek digamma Etruscan used both @ and @, but the former

only was borrowed by the other languages. Etruscan, like

Latin, used @(from right to left) to represent the sound of

Latin F, but, unlike Latin, adopted @ not @ as the single

symbol. This form it then wrote as two lozenges @, whence

developed a later sign, @, which is used also in Umbrian and

Oscan. As the old digamma was kept, this new sign was placed

after those borrowed from the Chalcidian alphabet. Similarly

it used @ and I for the Chalcidian z; Umbrian borrowed

the first, Oscan the second form. The form for h was still

closed @, which Etruscan passed on to Oscan, while Umbrian

modified it to @. The form for m has five strokes; from

a later form @ the Oscan form was borrowed. Of the two

sibilants, M and @ or S, Oscan adopted only @, Umbrian

both M and the rounded form S. @ is found on Etruscan

inscriptions, but not in the alphabet series preserved;

neirher Umbrian nor Oscan has this form. T appears in

Etruscan as @, and X; of these Umbrian borrows the first

two, while Oscan has a form T like Latin. Etruscan took

over the three Greek aspirates, th, f, ch, in their Chalcidian

forms; th survives in Umbrian as @ , the others naturally

disappear. Both Umbrian and Oscan devised two new symbols.

Umbrian took over from Etruscan perhaps the sign @, but

gave it the new value of a spirant whirh developed out of an

earlier d-sound, but which is written in the Latin alphabet

with rs. The second Umbrian symbol was @, which was the

representative of an s-sound developed by palatalizing an

earlier k. In Oscan, which had an o-sound, but no symbol

for it, a new sign was invented by placing a dot between

the legs of the symbol for u-@. This, however, is found

only in the best-written documents, and on some materials

the dot cannot be distinguished. The symbol @ was invented

for the open i-sound and close e'm-sound.20 At a

much later epoch it was introduced into the Latin alphabet

by the emperor Claudius to represent y, and the sound

which was wrirten as i or u in maximus, maxumus, &c.

Besides the Italic alphabets already mentioned, which are all

derived from the alphabet of the Chalcidian Greek colonists

in Italy, there were at least four other alphabets in use in

different parts of Italy: (1) the Messapian of the south-east

part of the peninsula, in which the inscriptions of the

Illyrian dialect in use there were written, an alphabet

which, according to Pauli (Alt-italische Forschungen,

iii. chap. ii.) was borrowed from the Locrian alphabet;

(2) the Sabellic alphabet, derived from that of Corinth and

Corcyra, and found in a few inscriptions of eastern-central

Italy; (3) the alphabet of the Veneti of north-east Italy

derived from the Elean: (4) the alphabet of Sondrio (between

Lakes Como and Garda), which Pauli, on the insufficient

ground that it possesses no symbols corresponding to

f and ch, derives from a source at the same stage of

development as the oldest alphabets of Thera, Melos and Crete.

From the fact that upon the Galassi vase (unearthed at Cervetri,

but probably a product of Caere), which is now in the Gregorian

Museum of the Vatican, a syllabary is found along with one of

the most archaic Greek alphabets, and that a similar combination

was found upon the wall of a tomb at Colle, near Siena, it

has been argued that syllabic preceded alphabetic writing in

Italy. But a syllabary where each syllable is made by the

combinations of a symbol for a consonant with that for a vowel

can furnish no proof of the existence of a syllabary in the

strict sense, where each symbol represents a syllable; it is

rather evidence against the existence of such writing. The

syllabary upon the Galassi vase indicates in all probability

that the vase, which resembles an ink-bottle, belonged to a

child, for whose edification the syllables pa, pi, pe, pu and

the rest were intended. The evidence adduced from the Latin

grammarians, and from abbreviations on Latin inscriptions like

lubs for lubens, is not sufficient to establish the theory.

Teutonic runes.

It has been argued that the runes of the Teutonic peoples

have been derived from a form of the Etruscan alphabet,

inscriptions in which are spread over a great part of northern

Italy, but of which the most characteristic are found in the

neighbourhood of Lugano, and in Tirol near Innsbruch, Botzen and

Trent. The Danish scholar L. F. A. Wimmer, in his great

work Die Runenschrift (Berlin, 1887), contends that the

resemblance, though striking, is superficial. Wimmer's own

view is that the runes were developed from the Latin alphabet

in use at the end of the 2nd century A.D. Wimmer supports his

thesis with great learning and ingenuity, and when allowance

is made for the fact that a script to be written upon wood,

as the runes were, of necessity avoids horizontal lines which

run along the fibres of the wood, and would therefore be

indistinct, most of the runic signs thus receive a plausible

explanation. The strongest argument for the derivation from

the Latin alphabet is undoubtedly the value of attaching to

@; for, as we have seen, the Greek value of this symbol is w,

and its value as f arises only by abbreviation from FH. On

the other hand, several of Wimmer's equations are undoubtedly

forced. Even if we grant that the Latin symbols were inverted

or set at an angle (a proceeding which is paralleled by the

treatment of the Phoenician signs in Greek hands), so that

@ represents Latin V, M, Latin E, @ and @ Latin D;

while the symbol for the voiced spirant th is @ doubled,

@, @, it is difficult to believe that the symbol for the

spirant g, viz. @, represents a Latin K (which was of

rare occurrence), or again @, @ a Latin N, or that the

symbol for ng, do, represents @ = c doubled. Moreover,

the date of the borrowing seems too late. The runes are

found in all Teutonic countries,and the Romans were in close

contact with the Germans on the Rhine before the beginning

of the Christian era. We hear of correspondence between

the Romans and German chieftains in the early day's of the

empire. It is strange, therefore, if the Roman alphabet,

which formed the model for the runes, was that of two

whole centuries later, and even then the formal alphabet of

inscriptions. By that time the Teutons were likely to have more

convenient materials than wood whereon to write, so that the

adaptation of the forms would not have been necessary. That

the Germans were familiar with some sort of marks on wood at

a much earlier period is shown by Tacitus's Germania, chap.

x. There we are told that for purposes of divination certain

signs were scratched on slips of wood from a fruit-bearing

tree (including, no doubt, tile beech; cp. book, German

Buch, and Buchstabe, a letter of the alphabet); the

slips were thrown down promiscuously on a white cloth. whence

the expert picked them up at random and by them interpreted

fate. In these slips we have the origin of the Norse

kefli, the Scots kaivel, which were and are still used as

lots. The fishermen of north-east Scotland, when they return

after a successful haul, divide the spoil into as many shares

as there are men in the boat, with one share more for the

boat. Each man then procures a piece of wood or stone,

on which he puts a private mark. These lots are put in a

heap, and an outsider is called in who throws one lot or

kaivel upon each heap of fish. Each fisherman then finds his

kaivel, and the heap on which it lies is his. This system of

``casting kaivels,'' as it is called, is certainly of great

antiquity. But its existence will not help to prove an

early knowledge of reading or writing, for in order that

everything may be fair, it is clear that the umpire should

not be able to identify the lot as belonging to a particular

individual. It has, however, been contended that a system

of primitive runes existed whence some at least of the later

runes were borrowed, and the ownership marks of the Lapps, who

have no knowledge of reading and writing, have been regarded

as borrowed from these early Teutonic runes.21 Be this as it

may, the resemblances between the runic and the Mediterranean

alphabets are too great to admit of denial that it is from

a Greek alphabet, whether directly or indirectly, that the

runes are derived. That Wimmer postdates the introduction

of the runic alphabet seems clear from the archaic forms

and method of writing. It is very unlikely that a people

borrowing an alphabet which was uniformly written from left

to right should have used it in order to write from right

to left, or boustrofedon. Hence Hempl contends22 that

Wimmer's view must be discarded, and that the runes were

derived about 600 B.C. from a western Greek alphabet which

closely resembled the Formello alphabet (one of the ancient

Chalcidian abecedaria) and the Sabellic and North Etruscan

alphabets. He thus fixes the date at the same period as

Isaac Taylor had done in his Greeks and Goths and The

Alphabet. Taylor, however, derived the runes from the alphabet

of a Greek colony on the Black Sea. Hempl's initiative was

followed by Professor Gundermann of Giessen, who announced

in November 180723 that he had discovered the source of

the runic alphabet, the introduction of which he declares

preceded the first of the phonetic changes known as the

``Teutonic sound-shifting,'' since @ = g is used for k,

X = ch for g, a Theta-like symbol for d, while zd

is used for st. If this view (which is identical with

Taylor's) be true, we have a parallel in the Armenian alphabet,

which is similarly used for a new value of the sounds.

Hempl, on the other hand, contends that the sound-shifting

had already taken place, and, arguing that several of the

symbols have changed places (e.g. @ f and @ a,

@ u and @ b, because at this time b was a bilabial

spirant and not a stop), ultimately obtains an order-- a b

d e f z kgw h i j @@ p r s t u l m n th o. As neither

Gundermann nor Hempl has published the full evidence for his

view, no definite conclusion at the moment is possible.

Ogam writing.

In one of the earliest runic records which we possess, the

pendant found at Vadstena in Sweden in 1774, and dating

from about A.D. 600 (see Plate) the signs are divided up

into three series of eight (the twenty fourth, @, being

omitted for want of room). Upon the basis of this division

a system of cryptography (in the sense that the symbols are

unintelligible without knowledge of the runic alphabet) was

developed, wherein the series and the position within the

series of the letter indicated, were each represented by

straight strokes, the strokes for the series being shorter

than those for the runes or the series being represented

by strokes to the left the runes by strokes to the right of

a medial line.24 From this system probably developed the

ogam writing employed among the Celtic peoples of Britain and

Ireland. The ogam inscriptions in Wales are frequently

accompanied by Latin legend, and they date probably as

far back as the 5th and 6th centuries A D. Hence the

connexion between Celt and Teuton as regards writing must

go back to a period preceding the Viking inroads of the 8th

century. Taylor, however, conjectures (The Alphabet ii.

p 227) that the ogams originated in Pembroke, ``where there

was a very ancieni Teutonic settlement, possibly of Jutes,

who as is indicated by the evidence of runic inscriptions

fonnd in Kent, seem to have been the only Teutonic people

of southern Britain who were acquainted with the Gothic

Futhoro.'' However this may be, the ogam alphabet shows

some knowledge of phonetics and some attempt to classifv

the sounds accordingly. The symbols are as follows25:--

The form of the ogam alphabet made it easy to carve hastily;

hence in the old sagas, when a hero is killed we had the

common formula. ``His grave was dug and his stone was raised,

and his name was written in ogam.'' mccording to Sophus

Muller (Nordische Altertumskunde, ii. p. 264), it was

from Britain that the use of runes upon gravestones was

derived a use which, to judge from the number of bilingual

inscriptions in Britain, the Celts derived from the Romans.

The special forms of the alphabet--the Cyrillic and the Glagolitic

--which have been adopted by certain of the Slavonic peoples

are both sprung directly from the Greek alphabet of the ninth

century A.D , with the considerable additions rendered necessary

by the greater variety of sounds in Slavonic as compared with

Greek. Apart from other evidence, the use of B with the

value of v, of H as well as I with the value of i, of

F with the value of f and X wiih that of the Scotch ch,

would be proof that the alphabet was not borrowed till long

after the Greek classical period, for not till later did b,

f, ch become spirants and e become identified with i.

The confusion of b wirh v necessitated the invention of

a new symbol b in the Cyrillic, @ in the Glagolithic for

b, while new symbols were also required for the sounds or

combinations of sounds z (zh), dz, st (sht), c (ts),

c (ch in church), s (sh), u, i, y (u without

protrusion of the lips), e (a close long e sound), for

the combination of o, a and e with consonantal I (English

y) and for the nasalized vowels e, a (nasalized o

in pronunciation) and the combinations je and ja (English

je and ja) In all these matters Glagolitic differs

very little from Cyrillic; it has only one symbol for ja

(ya) and e because both in this dialect were pronounced the

same. It has also only one symbol for e and je (ye)

for the phonetic reason that je always appears in the

old ecclesiastical Slavonic, for which the alphabets were

fashioned, at the beginning of words and after vowels: cp. the

English use of the symbol u in unspoken and uniform.

Glagolitic has a symbol for the palatalized g (@), but it

is used only in the transcription of Greek words, g having

become y early between vowels in the popular dialects.

Such an elaborate alphabet could hardly have been invented

except by a scholar, and tradition, probably rightly, has

attached the credit for its invention to Cyril (originally

Constantine), who along wi1h his brother Methodius

proceeded in A.D. 863 to Moravia from Constantinople,

for the purpose of converting the Slavonic inhabitants to

Christianity. The only question which concerns us here is

which of the two alphabets was the earlier in use, and after

much discussion authorities on Slavonic seem generally agreed

that it was the Glagolitic (the name is derived from the Old

Bulgarian, i.e old ecclesiastical Slavonic glagolu,

``word''). According to Professor Leskien (Grammatlk der

altbulgariechen (altkirchenslavischen) Sprache, Heidelberg,

1909, p. xxi.), Cyril had probably made a prolonged and

careful study of Slavonic before proceeding on his missionary

journey, and probably in the first instance with a view to

preaching the Gospel to the Slavs of Macedonia and Bulgaria,

who were much nearer his own home, Thessalonica, than were

those of Moravia. The Glagolitic was founded upon the

ordinary Greek minuscule writing of the period, as was shown

by Dr Isaac Taylor,26 though the writing of the letters

separately without abbreviations and an obvious attempt at

artistic effect has gradually differentiated it from Greek

writing. This alphabet, which is much more difficult to

read than the bolder Cyrillic founded on the Greek uncial,

survived for ordinary purposes in Croatia and in the islands

of the Quarnero till the 17th century. The Servians and

Russians apparently always used the Cyrillic, and its

advantages gradually ousted the Glagolitic elsewhere, though

the service book in the old ecclesiastical language which

is used by the Roman Catholic Croats is in Glagolitic.27

Phrygian.

While the Carian and Lycian were probabIy independent of the

Greek in origin, so, too, at the opposite end of the Mediterranean

was the Iberian. On the other hand, the Phrygian was very

closely akin to the Greek in alphabet as well as in linguistic

character. The Greek alphabet, with which it was most closely

connected, was the Western, for 1he evidence is strongly in

favour of the form @ having the value of ch, not ps, in

Phrygian, as it certainly has in the Etruscan inscription found

on Lemnos in 1886, which is in an alphabet practically identical.

Armenian.

To a much later era belongs the Armenian alphabet, which,

according to tradition, was revealed to Bishop Mesrob in a

dream. The land might have been Grecized had it not, about

A.D. 387, been divided between Persia and Byzantium, the

greater part falling to the former, who discouraged Greek

and favoured Syriac, which the Christian Armenians did not

understand. As those within Persian terrirory were forbidden

to learn Greek, an Armenian Christian liierature became a

necessity. Taylor contends that the alphabet is Iranian

in origin, but the circumstances justify Gardthausen and

Hubschmann in claiming it for Greek. That some symbols

are like Persian only shows that Mesrob was not able

to rid himself of the influences under which he lived.

Of the later development of Phoenician amongst Phoenician people

little need be said here. It can be traced in the graffiti

of the mercenaries of Psammetichus at Abu Simbel in Upper

Egyrt, where Greeks, Carians and Phoenicians all cut their

names upon the legs of the colossal statues. Still later it

is found on the stele of Byblos, and on the sarcophagus of

Eshmunazar (about 300 B.C.). The most numerous inscriptions

come from the excavations in Carthage, the ancient colony of

Sidon. One general feature characterizes them all, though

they differ somewhat in detail. The symbols become longer

and thinner; in fact, cease to be the script of monuments

and become the script of a busy trading people. While the

Phoenician alphabet was thus fertile in developing daughter

alphabets in the West, the progress of writing was no less

great in the East, first among the Semitic peoples, and through

them among other peoples still more remote. The carrying

of the alphabet to the Greeks by the Phoenicians at an early

period affords no clue to the period when Semitic ingenuity

constructed an alphabet out of a heterogeneous multitude of

signs. If it be possible to assign to some of the monuments

discovered in Arabia by Glaser a date not later than 1500

B.C., the origin of the alphabet and its dissemination are

carried back to a much earlier period than had hitherto been

supposed. Next in date amongst Semitic records of the

Phoenician type to the bowl of Baal-Lebanon and the Moabite

stone comes the Hebrew inscription found in the tunnel at

the Pool of Siloam in 1881, which possibly dates back to

the reign of Hezekiah (700 B.C.). The only other early

records are seals with Hebrew inscriptions and potters'

marks upon clay vessels found in Lachish and other towns.28

Like the Phoenician, these Hebrew signs are distinctly

cursive in character but, as the legend on the coins of

the Maccabees shows, became stereotyped for monumental use,

while the Jews after the exile gradually adopted the Aramaic

writing, whence the square Hebrew script is descended. The

Samaritans alone stuck fast to the old Hebrew as part of their

contention that they, and not the Jews, were the true Hebrews.

Aramaic

The oldest records in Aramaic were found at Sindjirli, in the

north of Svria, in 1890, and date to about 800 B.C. At this

epoch the Aramaic alphabet, or at any rate the alphabet of these

records, is but little different from that shown upon the Moabite

stone. Either two sounds are confused under one symbol,

or these records represent a dialect which, like Hebrew and

Assyrian, shows sh, z, and c, where the ordinary Aramaic

representation is t, d and t the Arabic th, dh, and

th. The Aramaic became in time by far the most important

of the northern Semitic alphabets. Even while long and

important documents in Assyria were still written on clay

tablets, in cuneiform, a docket or precis of the contents

was made upon the side in Aramaic, which thus became the

alphabet of cursive writing--a fact which explains its later

development. Two changes, the inception of which is early, but

the completion of which belongs to the Persian period, gave the

impulse which Aramaic obeyed in all its later developments.

These were (a) the opening of the heads of letters, so that

beth @, daleth @, and resh @ become respectively

@, @, and @, while O becomes first U and ultimatelv

V. In thc later development the heads tend to be reduced in

size, and finally to disappear. (b) As was natural in cursive

wriiing, angles tend to become rounded, and the tails of the

letters, which in, Phoenician are very long are curved round

in the middie of words so as to join on to the succeeding

letter. These characteristics were naturally emphasized in the

Aramaic writing on papyrus which, beginning about 500 B.C.,

during the Persian sovereignty in Egypt, lasted on there till

about 200 B.C. The gradual development of this script into

the square Hebrew, and the more ornamental writing of Palmyra,

may be traced in the works of Berger and Lidzbarski.30

Arabic.

In the land of the Nabataeans, a people of Arabian origin,

the Aramaic alphabet was employed in a form which ultimately

developed into the modern Arabic alphabet. Probably the

earliest example of the Aramaic script in Atrabia is the stele

of Tema, in north-western Arabia, whereon is commemorated

the establishment of a worship of an Aramaic diviniry. This

monument, now in the Louvre, is not later than the 5th century

B.C. In it the writing preserves its ancient form, the heads

of the closed letters being only very slightly opened. The

Nabataean inscriptions belong to a different epoch and a different

style. They were first discovered by Charles Doughty in

1876-1877, who was followed between 1880 and 1884 by Huber

and Euting, to whom a complete collection of these records is

due. The records are fortunately dated, and belong to the

period from 9 B.C. to A.D. 75. A further development can

be traced in the graffiti wirh which pilgrims adorned the

rocks of Mount Sinai down to the 2nd or 3rd century A.D.

By the help of these inscriptions it is possible to trace the

development of the modern Arabic where so many of the forms

of the letters have become similar that diacritic points

are essential to distinguish them, the original causes of

confusion being the continuous development of cursive writing

and the adoption of ligatures. Arabic writing, as known to

us from documents of the early Mahommedan period, exhibits

two principal types which are known respectively as the

Cufic and the nashki. The former soon fell into disuse for

ordinary purposes and was retained only for inscriptions,

coins, &c.; the latter, which is more cursive in character, is

the parent of the Arabic writing of the present day. Another

form of the Aramaic alphabet, namely, the so-called Estrangela

writing which was in use amongst the Christians of northern

Syria, mas carried by Nestorian missionaries into Central

Asia and became the ancestor of a multitude of alphabets

spreading through the Turkomans as far east as Manchuria.

South Semitic.

There still remains a branch of the Semitic languages which,

except for one or two of the languages belonging to it, was

practically unknown till recent years. This is the South

Semitic. Till the 19th century the earliest form known of

this alphabet was the Ethiopian or Geez, in which Christian

documents have been preserved from the early centuries of our

era, and which is still used by the Abyssinians for liturgical

purposes. The travels of two English naval officers,

Wellsted and Cruttenden, through Yemen in southern Arabia in

1835, first called attention to the earlier monuments of

Arabia. Fulgence Fresnel first established the importance

of the inscriptions discovered by these Englishmen, and in

1843, when French consul at Jeddah, obtained through a

French traveller, Francois Arnaud, information about other

monuments of the same kind. In 1869 Joseph Halevy brought

back nearly seven hundred inscriptions from Yemen, and this

number has been increased from other quarters by several

thousands, through the energy of several adventurous scholars,

but chiefly by Eduard Glaser's repeated journeys. The south

Arabian inscrip1ions to which the terms Himyaritic aud Sabaean

are applied fall into two groups, the Sabaean proper and the

Minaean. These are distinguished by differences in grammar and

phraseology rather than in alphabet. The relative age of the

Minaean and Sabaean monuments is a matter of dispute amongst

Semitic scholars. Inscriptions in a kindred dialect were

brought from El-Ola, in the north of the Hedjaz, by Professor

Euting. To these D. H. Muller31 gave the title of

Lihyanite, from the name of the tribe (Lihjan) to which they

belong. Their date is supposed to be earlier than that of

the Sabaean and Minaean. Minaean inscriptions were found

at the same place, the Minaeans having had a trading station

there. In 1893 J. Theodore Bent copied carefully at Yeha

in Abyssinia a few inscriptions, some of which had been

already copied in 1814 by the English traveller Salt. These

inscriptions are of the greatest importance, because they

demonstrate, according to D. H. Muller,32 that the Sabaeans

had colonized Abyssinia as early as 1000 B.C. Other inscriptions

copied by Bent at Aksum belong to the 4th century A.D. and

later. Two of the earliest are written in Sabaean characters,

but in the language which is known as Geez or Ethiopic. From

about A.D 500 Ethiopic was written in an alphabet which

according to Muller was no gradual growth but an ingenious

device of a Greek scholar of this period at the court of

Abyssinia. The Sabaean, like other Semitic, inscriptions

are generallv written from right to left, but a few are

boustrofedon; the Ethiopic is written from left to right,

and makes a marked advance upon the ordinary Semitic manner

of writing by indicating the vowels. This is done by varying

the form of the consonant according to the vowel which follows

it. The Ethiopic system is thus rather a syllabary than an

alphabet. It is noticeable that the changes thus established

were made upon the basis of the old Sabaean script, which

in its oldest form is evidently closely related to the old

Phoenician, though it would be premature to say that the

Sabaean alphabet is derived from the Phoenician. It is as

likely, considering the date of both, that they are equally

descendants from an older source. The characteristics of the

Sabaean are great squareness aud boldness in outline. It has

twenty-nine symbols, whereby it is enabled to differentiate

certain sounds which are not distinguished from one another in

the writing of the northern Semites. As we have seen, it is a

tendency in northern Semitic to open the heads of letters, and

therefore it is possible that the Sabaean form for Jod @ may

be older32 than the Phoenician @. Similarly if Pe means

mouth, Hommel is right in contending that the Sabaean @ is

more like the object than the Phoenician @, if we suppose the

form, like @ or the Phoenician @ and @ for the Phoenician

@ turned through an angle of 90 deg. . So also if Kaf corresponds

to the Babylonian Kappu, ``hollow-hand,'' the Sabaean form

@ which Hommel33 interprets as the outline of the hand

with the fingers turned in and the thumb raised is a better

pictograoh than the various meaningless forms of k (@, &c.).

The rock inscriptions in the wild district of Safah near Damascus

which have been collected by Halevv are also written in an Arabic

dialect, but, owing chiefly to their careless execution, they

are to a large extent unintelligible. The character appears to

be akin to the Sabaean. It has been suggesred that they were

the work of Arabs who had wandered thus far from the south.

Persia.

There still remain for discussion the alphabets of the

Indo-European peoples of Persia and India from which the other

alphabets of the Farther East are descended. When Darius

in 516 B.C. caused the great Behistun inscription to be

engraved, it was the cuneiform writing, already long in use

for the languages of Mesopotamia, that was adopted for this

purpose. We have seen that at Babylon itself the Aramaic

language and character were well known. It is probable

therefore, a priori, that from the Aramaic alphabet the later

writing of Persia should be developed. The conclusion is

confirmed by the coins, the only records with Iranian script

which go back so far; but the special form of Aramaic from

which the Iranian alphabet is derived must at present be left

undecided. The later developments of the Iranian alphabet are

the Pahlavi and the Zend, in which the MSS. of the Avesta are

written. Of Cese manuscripts none is older than the 15th

century A.D. The Pahlavi is properly the alphabet of the

Sassanid kings who ruled in Persia from A.D. 226 till the

Arab conquest in the 7th century A.D. Under the Sassanids

the old Persian worship, which had fallen with the Achaemenid

dynasty in Alexander's time, and had been neglected by the

subsequent Arsacid line, was revived and the remains of

its liturgical literature collected. The name is, however,

also applied to the alphabet on the coins of the Parthian or

Arsacid dynasty, which in its beginnings was clearly under

Greek influence; while later, when a knowledge of Greek

had disappeared, the attempts to imitate the old legends

are as grotesque as those in western Europe to copy the

inscriptions on Roman coins. The relationship between the

Pahlavi and the Aramaic is clearest in the records written

in the ``Chaldaeo-Pahlavi'' characters; the most important of

these documents is the liturgical inscription of Hadji-abad,

where the Arsacid and Sassanian alphabets are found side by

side. Taylor (The Alphabet, ii. p. 248 f.) regards the former

as probably derived from the ``ancient alphabet of Eastern

Iran, a sister alphaber of the Aramaean of the satrapies,''

while the Sassanian belongs to a later stage of Aramaic.

India.

The alphabets of India all spring from two sources: (a) the

Kharosthi, (b) the Brahmi alphabet. The history of

the former is clear. It was always a local alphabet, and

never attained the importance of its rival. According to

Buhler,34 its range lay between 69 deg. and 73 deg. 30' E. and

33 deg. to 35 deg. N., a conclusion which is not invalidated by the

fact that some important modifications are found beyond this

area, nor by Dr Stein's discovery of a great mass of documents

in this alphabet at Khotan in Turkestan, for, according to

tradition, the ancient inhabitants of Khotan were emigrants

banished in the time of King Acoka from the area to which

Buhler assigns this alphabet (see Stins's Preliminary

Report, 1901, p. 51). Rapson35 has pointed out that both

Kharosthi and Brahmi letters are found upon Persian

silver sigloi, which were coined in the Punjab and belong

to the period of the Achaemenid kings of Persia. As Buhler

shows in detail, the Kharosthi alphabet is derived from

the alphabet of the Aramaic inscriptions which date from the

earlier part of the Achaemenid period. The Aramaic alphabet

passed into India with the staff of subordinate officials

by whom Darius organized his conquests there. The people of

India already possessed their Brahmi alphabet, but had this

other alphabet forced upon them in their dealings with their

rulers. The Kharosthi is then the gradual development under

local conditions of the Aramaic alphabet of the Persian

period. As Stein's explorations show, both alphabets

may be found on ooposite sides of the same piece of wood.

The history of the Brami alphabet is more difficult. In

its later forms it is so unlike other alphabets that many

scholars have regarded it as an invention within India

itself. The discovery of earlier inscriptions than were

hitherto known has, however, caused this view to be discarded,

and the problem is to decide from which form of the Semitic

alphabet it is derived. Taylor (The Alphabet, ii. p. 314

ff.), following Weber, argues that it comes from the Sabaeans

who were carrying on trade with India as early as 1000

B.C. Even if the alphabet had not reached India till the

6th century B.C., there would be time, he contends, for

the peculiarities of the Indian form of it to develop before

the period when records begin. The alphabet, according to

Taylor, shows no resemblance to any northern Semitic script,

while its stiff, straight lines and its forms seem like the

Sabaean. Buhler, on the other hand, shows from literary

evidence that writing was in common use in India in the

5th, possibly in the 6th, century B.C. The oldest alphabet

must have been the Brahmi lipi, which is found all over

India. But he rejects Taylor's derivation of this alphabet

from the Sabaean script, and contends that it is borrowed from

the North Semitic. To the pedantry of the Hindu he attributes

its main characteristics, viz. (a) letters made as upright

as possible, and with few exceptions equal in height; (b)

the majority of the letters constructed of vertical lines,

with appendages attached mostly at the foot, occasionally at

the foot and at the top, or (rarely) in the middle, but never

at the top alone: (c) at the tops of the characters the

ends of vertical lines, less frequently straight horizontal

lines, still more rarely curves or the points of angles opening

downwards, and quite exceptionally, in the symbol ma, two

lines rising upwards. A remarkable feature of the alphabet is

that the letters are hung from and do not stand upon a line,

a characteristic which, as Buhler notes (Indian Studies,

iii. p. 57 n.), belongs even to the most ancient MSS.,

and to the Asoka inscriptions of the 3rd century B.C. When

these specially Indian features have been allowed for, Buhler

contends that the symbols borrowed from the Semitic alphabet

can be carried back to the forms of The Phoenician and Moabite

alphabets. The proof deals with each symbol separarately;

as might be expected of its author, it is both scholarly and

ingenious, but, it must be admitted, not very convincing.

Further evidence as to the early history of this alphabet must

be discovered before we can definitely decide what its origin may

be. That such evidence will be forthcoming there is little

doubt. Even since Buhler wrote, the vase, the top of which

is reproduced (see Plate), has been discovered on the borders

of Nepal in a stupa where some of the relics of Buddha were

kept. The inscription is of the same type as the Asoka

inscriptions, but, in Buhler's opinion (Journal of the Royal

Asiatic Society, xxx., 1898, p. 389), is older than Asoka's

time. It reads as follows: iyam salilanidhane Budhasa

bhagavate sakiyanam sukitibhatinaim sabhaginikam

saputadalanam. ``This casket of relics of the blessed Buddha

is the pious foundation (so Pischel, no doubt rightly, Zeitsch.

d. deutsch. morg. Gesell. lvi. 158) of the Sakyas, their

brothers and their sisters, together with children and wives.''

How this alphabet was modified locally, and how it spread to

other Eastern lands, must be sought in the specialist works to

which reference has already been made. Its extension to new and

hitherto unknown languages was in 1910 in process of being rapidly

demonstrated by English and German expeditions in Chinese Turkestan.

AUTHORITIES.---Owing to the rapid increase of materials,

all early works are out of date. The best general accounts,

though already somewhat antiquated, are: (1) The Alphabet (2

vols., with references to earlier works), by Canon Isaac Taylor

(1883), reprinted from the stereotyped plates with small

necessary corrections (1899); and (2) Histoire de l'ecriture

dans l'antiquite, by M. Philippe Berger (Paris, 1891, 2nd ed.

1892). An excellent popular account is The Story of the

Alphabet, by E. Clodd (no date, about 1900). Faulmann's

Illustrierte Geschichte der Schrift (1880) is a popular

work with good illustrations. For the beginnings of the

alphabet, Dr A. J. Evans's Scripta Minoa (vol. i., 1900)

is indispensable, whether his theories hold their ground or

not. The Semitic alphabet is excellently treated by Lidzbarski

in the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1901); his Nordsemitlsche

Epigraphik (1898) has excellent facsimiles and tables of the

alphabets, and there are many contributions to the history of

the alphabet in the same writer's Ephemeris fur semitische

Epigraphik (Giessen, since 1900). See also ``Writing''

(by A. A. Bevan) in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, and

``Alphabet''(by Isaac Taylor) in Hastings' Dictionary of

the Bible. A very good article, now somewhat antiquated,

is Schlottmann's ``Schrift und Schriftzeichen'' in Riehm's

Handworterbuch des biblischen Altertums (1884, reprinted

1894). For Greek epigraphy the fullest and also most recent

work is W. Larfeld's Handbuch der griechischen Epigraphik

(vol. ii., 1902; vol. i., 1907) (see especially Herkunft un

Alter des griechischen Alphabets, i. 330 ff.). For the history

of the Greek alphabet the fundamental work was A. Kirchhoff's

Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets (4th

ed., 1887).: His theories were adopted and worked out on a

much larger scale in E. S. Roberts's Introduction to Greek

Epigraphy, pt. i. ``The Archaic Inscriptions and the Greek

Alphabet'' (1887), pt. ii. (wirh E. A. Gardner) ``The Inscriptions

of Attica'' (1905); See also Salomon Reinach's Traite d'

epigraphie grecque (1885). in Iwan von Muller's Handbuch

der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft important articles on

both Greek and Latin epigraphy and alphabets have appeared

(Greek in edition 1 by G. Heinrichs, 1886; in edition 2 by W.

Larfeld, 1892; Latin by Emil Hubner). See also ``Alphabet,''

by W. Deecke, in Baumeister's Denkmaler des klassischen

Altertums (1884), and by Szanto (Greek) and Joh. Schmidt

(italic) in Pauly's Realencyclopadie edited by Wissowa

(1894). Mommsen's Die unteritalischen Dialekte (1850) is

not without value even now. Other literature and references to

fuller bibliographies in separate departments have been given

in the notes. Elsewhere in this edition of the Encyclopaedia

Britannica the articles on the various languages and under

the headings INSCRIPTIONS, PALAEOGRAPHY, WRITING, &c.,

should be consulted, while separate articles are given on each

letter of the English alphabet. The writer is indebted to

Dr A. J. Evans for a photograph of the Cretan linear script,

and to Professors A. A. Bevan and Rapson of Cambridge, and to

Mr F. W. Thomas, librarian of the India Office, for help in

their respective departments of Semitic and Indian languages.

(P. Gt.)

1 Breasted, History of Egypt (1906), p. 45.

2 Op. cit. p. 484.

3 Die Schrift und Sprache der alten Agypter (1907), p. 24.

4 Scripta Minoa, i. (1909), sec. 10, pp. 77 ff.

5 E. Piette, L'Anthropologie, vii. (1896) pp. 384 ff.

6 E. Piette, L'Anthropologie, xvi. (1905) pp. 8-9. The

apparent inscriptions of this period are conveniently collected

and figured together in Dechelette's Malnuel d'archeologie

prehistorique celtique et gallo-romaine, i. (1908) p. 233.

7 Der Ursprung des alt-semitischen Alphabets aus der

neu-assyrischen Keilschrift (ZDMG. xxxi. pp. 102

ff.). A still more sweeping theory of the same nature is

propounded by the Rev. C. J. Ball in the Proceedings of

the Society of Biblical Archaeology, xv. 1893) pp. 392 ff.

8 In an excellent summary of the different views held as to

the origin of the alphabet (Journal of the American Oriental

Society, vol. xxii, first half, 1901), Dr J. P. Peters

agrees (pp. 191 fl.) that the best test is ihe etymology

of the names of the letters. He shows that twelve of the

letter-names are words wiih meanings [in the northern dialects

of Semitic], all of them indicating simple objects, six of

the twelve being parts of the body. The objects denoted by

the other six names--ox, house, valve of a door, water, fish

and mark or cross--clearly do not belong to any people in

a nomadic state, but to a settled, town-abiding population.

. . . Six of the letter-names are not words in any known

tongue, and appear to be syllables only. Four lerter-names

are triliterals, and resemble in their form Semitic words.''

As 11 of the 12 which have meanings are to be found in the

Assyrian-Babylonian syllabaries, he suggests a possible Babylonian

origin. Different views with regard to some of these symbols

are expressed by Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fur semitische

Epigraphik, ii. pp. 125 ff. (1906). The earliest tradition

of the names is discussed by Noldeke in his Beitrage

zur semitischen Sprachwissenschait (1904), pp. 124 fl.

9 See, for example, the tables at the end of Roberts's

Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887); or Kirchhoff's Studien

zur Geschichte des grieschischen Alphabets (4th ed. 1887); or

Larfeld's Handbuch der grieschischen Epigraphik, vol. i. (1907).

10 Cp. Frankel, Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum Pelopennesi, i., No. 1607.

11 See Witton, in American Journal of Philology, xix. pp. 420

ff., and Lagercrantz, Zur griechischen Lautgeschichte (Upsala, 1898).

12. See Foat, ``Tsade and Sampi'' (Journal of Hellenic Studies,

xxv. pp. 338 fl., xxvi. p. 286). A number of ingenious points

often uncertain are raised by A. Gercke, ``Zur Geschichie des

altesten griechischen Alphabets'' (Hermes, xli., 1906, pp. 540 ff.).

13 See especially Proceedings of the Society of Biblical

Archaology for 1895, p. 40; cf. also Kalinka, Neue Jahrbucher

fur Philologie, iii. (1899), p. 683. Similar forms are also

found in the Safa inscriptions (South Semitic) with similar

values, and Praetorius argues (Z.D.M.G. lvi., 1902, pp.

677 ff., and again lviii., 1904, pp. 725 f.) that these

were somehow borrowed by Greek in the 8th century B.C.,

while in lxii. pp.283 ff. he argues that the reason why the

Greeks borrowed Th for the aspirated t was its form, the

cross in @ being regarded as T and the surrounding circle

as a variety of @ an occasional form of @ the aspirate.

Here also (p. 287) as in his Ursprung des kanaanaischen

Alphabets, pp. 13 f., he argues that the two forms of the

digamma f and @, and also the South Semitic @ = o, could

all have developed from the Cyprian I = we. But proof

is impossible without evidence of the intermediate steps.

14 Inscriptiones Graecae, xii., fasc. iii. Nos. 811, 1149.

15 See especially Athenische Mitteilungen, xxi. p. 426.

16 Figured in Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, p. 65.

17 Details of the history of the individual

letters will be found in separate articles.

18 It is figured most accessibly in Egbert's

Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions, p. 16.

19 Gardthausen ``Ursprung und Entwicklung der grieschen-lateinischen

Schrift '' (Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, i. (1909),

pp. 337 ff.) argues for a ``proto-Tyrrhenian '' alphabet from

which Etruscan, Umbrian and Oscan descended as one group,

and Faliscan and Latin as the other. Evidence in favour of

such a position for the Latin alphabet is not forthcoming.

20 For further details of these alphabets, see Conway, The

Italic Dialects, ii. pp. 458 ff. The recent discovery by

Keil and Premerstein (Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie,

liii., 1908) of Lydian inscriptions containing the symbol

@ suggests that the old derivation of the Etruscans from

Lydia may be true and that they brought this symbol with

them (see article on f.) But the inscriptions are not yet

deciphered, so that conclusive proof is still wanting.

21 R. M. Meyer, Paul Braune und Sievers'

Beitrage, xxi. (1896), pp. 162 ff.

22 In a paper published in the volume of Philologische

Studien, presented as a ``Festgabe'' to Professor

Sievers in 1896, and in a second paper in the Journal

of Germanic Philology, ii. (1899), pp. 370 ff.

23 See Literaturblott fur germanische und

romanische Philologie for 1897, col. 429 f.

24 A species of cryptography exactly like this, based upon the

`abjad' order of the Arabic letters, is still in use among the Eastern

Persia is (E G. Browne, A Year amongst the Persians, p. 391 f.).

25 Cf. Rhys, Outlines of Manx Phonology, p. 73 (publications

of the Manx Society, vol. xxxiii.) ; Rhys and Brynmor

Jones, The Welsh People, pp 3, 502. An interpretation

of the oldest ogam inscriptions is given by Whitley Stokes

in Bezzenberger's Beitrage, xi (1886), p 183 ff. Besides

the collections of ogams by Brash (1879) and Fergeson (1887),

a new collection by Mr R. A. S. Macalister is in course of

publication (Studies in Irish Epigraphy, 1897, 1902, 1907).

Professor Rhys, who at one time considered runes and ogam

to be connected, now thinks that ogam was the invention of a

grammarian in South Wales who was familiar with Latin letters.

26 Archiv fur slavische Philologie, v. 191 ff.,

where the Glagolitic and the cursive Greek, the Cyrillic

and the Greek uncial are set side by side in facsimile.

27 For further details and references to literature see

the introduction to Leskien's Grammatik (not to be confused

with his Handbuch), from which this is abbreviated.

28 These are figured most accessibly in Lidzbarski's

article on the alphabet in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, vol.

i. (1901) ; see also his table of symbols added to the 27th

edition of Gesenius' Hebraische, Grammatik (1902).

29 See Berger's Histoire de l'ecriture dans l'antiquite,

p. 252 ff.; Nordsemitische Epigraphik, p. 186 ff., from

whom this summary is taken. Lidzbarski's second volume

and G. A. Cooke's Textbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions

(Oxford, 1903) contain the most convenient collections of

Northern Semitic inscriptions for the student's purposes.

30 Muller, Epigraphische Denkmaler aus Arabien (Vienna, 1889).

31 Epigraphische Denkmaler aus Abessinien (Vienna,

1894). Praetorius (Z.D.M.G. lviii. p. 724) holds that

the oldest Sabaean inscriptions may date from about 700

B.C., that the Lihyan inscriptions are at earliest of the

Hellenistic period and the Safa inscriptions still later.

32 Praetorius (Z.D.M.G. lviii. p. 461 f.) attempts to

trace the development of the Sabaean form from the Phoenician.

33 Hommel, Sud-arabische Chrestomathie (Munich, 1893), p. 5.

34 Buhler, Indian Studies, iii. (2nd. ed., 1898), p. 93.

The account of these alphabets is drawn from this work and from

the same author's Indische Palaographie in the Grundriss der

indo-arischen Philologie, to which is attached an atlas of plates

(Strassburg, 1896), and in which a full bibliography is given.

35 For a coin and a gild token with inscriptions see Rapson's

Indian Coins (in Grundriss d. ind.-ar. Phil.), Plate I.

AL-PHASI, ISAAC (1013--1103), Jewish rabbi and codifier, known

as Riph, was born near Fez in 1013 and died at Lucena in 1103.

'Al-Pinasi means the ``man of Fez'' (medieval Jews were often

named after their birthplaces). He was forced to leave Fez

when an old man of 75, being accused on some unknown political

charge. He then settled in Spain where he was held in much

esteem. His magnanimous character was illustrated by two

incidents. When 'Al-phasi's opponent Isaac 'Albalia died,

'Al-pinasi received 'Albalia's son with the greatest kindness

and adopted him as a son. When, again, 'Al-phasi was himself

on the point of death, he recommended as his successor in the

Lucena rabbinate, not his own son, but his pupil Joseph ibn

Migash. The latter became the teacher of Maimonides, and

thus 'Al-phasi's teaching as well as his work must have

directly influenced Maimonides. 'Al-phasi's fame rests on

his Talmudical Digest called Halakhoth or Decisions. The

Talmud was condensed by him with a special view to practical

law. He omitted all the homiletical passages, and also

excluded those parts of the Talmud which deal with religious

duties practicable only in Palestine. 'Al-pinasi thus occupies

an important place in the development of the Spanish method

of studying the Talmud. In contradistinction to the French

rabbis, the Spanish sought to simplify the Talmud and free it

from casuistical detail. 'Al-pinasi succeeded in producing a

Digest, which became the object of close study, and led in

its turn to the great Codes of Maimonides and of Joseph Qaro.

ALPHEGE [AELFHEAH], SAINT (954-1023), archbishop of

Canterbury, came of a noble family, but in early life gave up

everything for religion. Having assumed the monastic habit

in the monastery of Deerhurst, he pased thence to Bath, where

he became an anchorite and ultimately abbot, distinguishing

himself by his piety and the austerity of his life. In 984 he

was appointed through Dunstan's inlluence to the bishopric of

Winchester, and in 1006 he succeeded AElfric as archbishop of

Canterbury. At the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in

1011 AElfheah was captured and kept in prison for seven

months. Refusing to pay a ransom he was barbarously murdered

at Greenwich on the 19th of April 1012. He was buried in St

Paul's, whence his body was removed by Canute to Canterbury

with all the ceremony of a great act of state in 1023.

Lives of St. Alphege in prose (which survives) and in

verse were written by command of Lanfranc by the Canterbury

monk Osborn (d. c. 1090), who says that his account of

the solemn translation to Canterbury in 1023 was received

from the dean, (Godric, one of Alphege's own scholars.

ALPHEUS ('Alfeios; mod. Ruphia), the chief river of

Peloponnesus. Strictly Ruphia is the modern name for the ancient

Ladon, a tributary which rises in N.E. Elis, but the name

has been given to the whole river. The Alpheus proper rises

near Asea; but its passage thither by subterranean channels

from the Tegean plain and its union with the Eurotas are

probably mythical (see W. Loring, in Journ. Hell. Studies,

xv. p. 67). It consists for the most part of a shallow and

rapid stream, occupying but a small part of its broad, stony

bed. It empties itself into the Ionian sea. Pliny states that

in ancient times it was navigable for six Roman miles from its

mouth. Alpheus was recognized in cult and myth as the chief

or typical river-god in the Peloponnesus, as was Acholous in

northern Greece. His waters were said to pass beneath the sea

and rise again in the fountain Arethusa at Syracuse; such is

the earlier version from which later mythologists and poets

evolved the familiar myth of the loves of Alpheus and Arethusa.

ALPHONSE I., COUNT OF TOULOUSE (1103-1148), son of Count

Raymond IV. by his third wife, Elvira of Castile, was born

in 1103, in the castle of Mont-Pelerin, Tripoli. He was

surnamed Jourdain on account of his being baptized in the river

Jordan. His father died when he was two years old and he

remained under the guardianship of his cousin, Guillaume

Jourdain, count of Cerdagne (d. 1109), until he was five.

He was then taken to Europe and his brother Bertrand gave him

the countship of Rouergue; in his tenth year, upon Bertrand's

death (1112), he succeeded to the countship of Toulouse and

marquisate of Provence, but Toulouse was taken from him by

William IX., count of Poitiers, in 1114. He recovered a part

in 1119, but continued to fight for his possessions until

about 1123. When at last successful, he was excommunicated

by Pope Calixtus II. for having expelled the monks of

Saint-Gilles, who had aided his enemies. He next fought

for the sovereignty of Provence against Raymond Berenger I.,

and not till September 1125 did the war end in an amicable

agreement. Under it Jourdain became absolute master of the

regions lying between the Pyrenees and the Alps, Auvergne

and the sea. His ascendancy was an unmixed good to the

country, for during a period of fourteen years art and industry

flourished. About 1134 he seized the countship of Narbonne,

only restoring it to the Viscountess Ermengarde (d. 1197) in

1143. Louis VII., for some reason which has not appeared,

besieged Toulouse in 1141, but without result. Next year

Jourdain again incurred the displeasure of the church by

siding with the rebels of Montpellier against their lord.

A second time he was excommunicated; but in 1146 he took the

cross at the meeting of Vezelay called by Louis VII., and

in August 1147 embarked for the East. He lingered on the way

in Italy and probably in Constantinople; but in 1148 he had

arrived at Acre. Among his companions he had made enemies

and he was destined to take no share in the crusade he had

joined. He was poisoned at Caesarea, either the wife of Louis

or the mother of the king of Jerusalem suggesting the draught.

See the documentary Histoire generale de Languedoc

by De Vie and Vaissette, vol. iii. (Toulouse, 1872).

ALPHONSE, COUNT OF TOULOUSE AND OF POITIERS (12201271),

the son of Louis VIII., king of France, and brother of St

Louis, was born on the 11th of November 1220. He joined the

county of Toulouse to his appanage of Poitou and Auvergne,

on the death, in September 1249, of Raymond VII., whose

daughter Jeanne he had married in 1237. He took the cross

with his brother, St Louis, in 1248 and in 1270. In 1252,

on the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, he was joint

regent with Charles of Anjou until the return of Louis IX.,

and took a great part in the negotiations which led to the

treaties of Abbeville and of Paris (1258--1259). His main

work was on his own estates. There he repaired the evils of

the Albigensian war and made a first attempt at administrative

centralization, thus preparing the way for union with the

crown. The charter known as ``Alphonsine,'' granted

to the town of Riom, became the code of public law for

Auvergne. Honest and moderate, protecting the middle

classes against exactions of the nobles, he exercised a happy

influence upon the south, in spite of his naturally despotic

character and his continual and pressing need of money.

He died without heirs on his return from the 8th crusade,

in Italy, probably at Savona, on the 21st of August 1271.

See B. Ledain, Histoire d'Alphonse, frere de S. Louis et du

comte de Poltou sous son administration (1241-1271) (Poitou,

1869); E. Bourarie, Saint Louis et Alphonse de Poitiers

(Paris, 1870); A. Molinier, Etude sur l'administration de S.

Louis et d'Alphonse de Poitiers (Toulouse, 1880); and also

his edition of the Correspondance adminiistrative d'Alphonse

de Poitiers in the Collection de documents inedits

pour servir a l'histoire de France (Paris, 1894 and 1895).

ALPHONSO, the common English spelling of Alfonso, Alonso

and Alfonso, which are respectively the Galician, the

Leonese and the Castilian forms of Ildefonso (Ildefonsus),

the name of a saint and archbishop of Toledo in the 7th

century. The name has been borne by a number of Portuguese

and Spanish kings, who are distinguished collectively below.

Kings of Portugal.

Portuguese Kings.--ALPHONSO I. (Affonso Henriques),

son of Henry of Burgundy, count of Portugal, and Teresa of

Castile, was born at Guimaraes in 1094. He succeeded his

father in 1112, and was placed under the tutelage of his

mother. When he came of age, he was obliged to wrest from

her by force that power which her vices and incapacity had

rendered disastrous to the state. Being proclaimed sole

ruler of Portugal in 1123, he defeated his mother's troops

near Guimaraes, making her at the same time his prisoner.

He also vanquished Alphonso Raymond of Castile, his mother's

ally, and thus freed Portugal from dependence on the crown of

Leon. Next turning his arms against the Moors, he obtained,

on the 26th July 1139, the famous victory of Ourique, and

immediately after was proclaimed king by his soldiers.

He assembled the Cortes of the kingdom at Lamego, where he

received the crown from the archbishop of Braganza; the assembly

also declaring that Portugal was no longer a dependency of

Leon. Alphonso continued to distinguish himself by his

exploits against the Moors, from whom he wrested Santarem in

1146 and Lisbon in 1147. Some years later he became involved

in a war that had broken out among the kings of Spain; and in

1167, being disabled during an engagement near Badajoz by a

fall from his horse, he was made prisoner by the soldiers of

the king of Leon, and was obliged to surrender as his r:asom

almost all the conquests he had made in Galicia. In 1184,

in spite of his great age, he had still sufficient energy to

relieve his son Sancho, who was besieged in Santarem by the

Moors. He died shortly after, in 1185. Alphonso was a man of

gigantic stature, being 7 ft. high according to some authors.

He is revered as a saint by the Portuguese, both on account

of his personal character and as the founder of their kingdom.

ALPHONSO II., ``the Fat,'' was born in 1185, and succeeded

his father, Sancho I., in 1211. He was engaged in war with

the Moors and gained a victory over them at Alcacer do Sal in

1217. He also endeavoured to weaken the power of the clergy

and to apply a portion of their enormous revenues to purposes

of national utility. Having been excommunicated for this

by the pope (Honorius III.), he promised to make amends to

the church; but he died in 1223 before doing anything to

fulfil his engagement. He framed a code which introduced

several beneficial changes into the laws of his kingdom.

ALPHONSO III., son of Alphonso II., was born in

1210, and succeeded his brother, Sancho II., in 1248.

Besides making war upon the Moors, he was, like his

father, frequently embroiled with the church. In his

reign Algarve became part of Portugal. He died in 1279.

ALPHONSO IV. was born in 1290, and in 1325 succeeded his

father, Dionis, whose death he had hastened by his intrigues and

rebellions. Hostilities with the Castilians and with the

Moors occupied many years of his reign, during which he gained

some successes; but by consenting to the barbarous murder of

Inez de Castro, who was secretly espoused to his son Peter,

he has fixed an indelible stain on his character. Enraged

at this barbarous act, Peter put himself at the head of an

army and devastated the whole of the country between the

Douro and the Minho before he was reconciled to his father.

Alphonso died almostimmediately after, on the 12th of May 1357.

ALPHONSO w., ``Africano,'' was born in 1432, and succeeded his

father Edward in 1438. During his minority he was placed under

the regency, first of his mother and latterly of his uncle, Dom

Pedro. In 1448 he assumed the reins of government and at

the same time married Isabella, Dom Pedro's daughter. In the

following year, being led by what he afterwards discovered

to be false representations, he declared Dom Pedro a rebel

and defeated his army in a battle at Alfarrobeira, in which

his uncle was slain. In 1458, and with more numerous forces

in 1471, he invaded the territories of the Moors in Africa

and by his successes there acquired his surname of ``the

African.'' On his return to Portugal in 1475 his ambition

led him into Castile, where two princesses were disputing

his succession to the throne. Having been affianced to the

Princess Juana, Alphonso caused himself to be proclaimed

king of Castile and Leon; but in the following year he was

defeated at Toro by Ferdinand, the husband of Isabella of

Castile. He went to France to obtain the assistance of Louis

XI., but finding himself deceived by the French monarch, he

abdicated in favour of his son John. When he returned to

Portugal, however, he was compelled by his son to resume

the sceptre, which he continued to wield for two years

longer. After that he fell into a deep melancholy and

retired into a monastery at Cintra, where he died in 1481.

ALPHONSO VI., the second king of the house of Braganza,

was born in 1643 and succeeded his father in 1656. In 1667

he was compelled by his wife and brother to abdicate the

throne and was banished to the island of Terceira. These

acts, which the vices of Alphonso had rendered necessary, were

sanctioned by the Cortes in 1668. He died at Cintra in 1675.

Kings of medieval and modern Spain.

Spanish Kings.--From Alphonso I. (739-757) to Alphonso

V. (999-1028) the personal history of the Spanish kings

of this name is unknown and their very dates are disputed.

ALPHONSO I. is said to have married Ormesinda, daughter of

Pelavo, who was raised on the shield in Asturias as king

of the Goths after the Arab conquest. He is also said to

have been the son of Peter. duke of Cantabria. It is not

improbable that he was in fact an hereditary chief of the

Basques, but no contemporary records exist. His title of``the

Catholic'' itself may very well have been the invention

of later chronicles. ALPHONSO II. (789-842), his reputed

grandson, bears the name of ``the Chaste.'' The Arab writers

who speak of the Spanish kings of the north-west as the

Beni-Altons, appear to recognize them as a royal stock derived

from Alphonso I. The events of his reign are in reality

unknown. Poets of a later generation invented the story

of the secret marriage of his sister Ximena with Sancho,

count of Saldana, and the feats of their son Bernardo del

Carpio. Bernardo is the hero of a cantar de gesta (chanson de

geste) written to please the anarchical spirit of the nobles.

The first faint glimmerings of medieval Spanish history begin

with ALPHONSO III. (866--914) surnamed ``the Great.'' Of him

also nothing is really known except the bare facts of his reign

and of his comparative success in consolidating the kingdom

known as ``of Galicia'' or ``of Oviedo'' during the weakness

of the Omayyad princes of Cordova. ALPHONSO IV. (924-931)

has a faint personality. He resigned the crown to his brother

Ramiro and went into a religious house. A certain instability

of character is revealed by the fact that he took up arms

against Ramiro, having repented of his renunciation of the

world. He was defeated, blinded and sent back to die in the

cloister of Sahagun. It fell to ALPHONSO V. (999-1028)

to begin the work of reorganizing the Christian kingdom of

the north-west after a most disastrous period of civil war

and Arab inroads. Enough is known of him to justify the

belief that he had some of the qualities of a soldier and a

statesman. His name, and that of his wife Geloria (Elvira),

are associated with the grant of the first franchises of

Leon. He was killed by an arrow while besieging the town

of Viseu in northern Portugal, then held by the Mahommedans.

(For all these kings see the article SPAIN: History.)

With ALPHONSO VI. (1065-1109) we come to a sovereign of

strong personal character. Much romance has gathered round his

name. In the cantar de gesta of the Cid he plays the part

attributed by medieval poets to the greatest kings, to Charlemagne

himself. He is alternately the oppressor and the victim of

heroic and self-willed nobles--the idealized types of the patrons

for whom the jongleurs and troubadours sang. (For the events of

his reign see the article SPAIN: History.) He is the hero

of a cantar de gesta which, like all but a very few of the

early Spanish songs, like the cantar of Bernardo del Carpio

and the Infantes of Lara, exists now only in the fragments

incorporated in the chronicle of Alphonso the Wise or in ballad

form. His flight from the monastery of Sahagnn, where his

brother Sancho endeavoured to imprison him. his chivalrous

friendship for his host Almamun of Toledo, caballero aunique

moni, a gentleman although a Moor, the passionate loyalty of

his vassal Peranzules and his brotherly love for his sister

Urraca of Zamora, may owe something to the poet who took him for

hero. They are the answer to the poet of the nobles who

represented the king as having submitted to take a degrading

oath at the hands of Ruy Diaz of Bivar (the Cid), in the church

of Santa Gadea at Burgos, and as having then persecuted the

brave nian who defied him. When every allowance is made,

Alphonso Vl. stands out as a strong man fighting for his

own hand, which in his case was the hand of the king whose

interest was law and order and who was the leader of the

nation in the reconquest On the Arabs he impressed himself

as an enemy very fierce and astute, but as a keeper of his

word. A story of Mahommedan origin, which is probably no

more historical than the oath of Santa Gadea, tells of how

he allowed himself to be tricked by Ibn Ammar, the favourite

of Al Motamid, the king of Seville. They played chess for

an extremely beautiful table and set of men, belonging to Ibn

Ammar. Table and men were to go to the king if he won.

If Ibn Ammar gained he was to name the stake. The latter

did win and demanded that the Christian king should spare

Seville. Alphonso kept his word. Whatever truth may lie

behind the romantic tales of Christian and Mahommedan, we know

that Alphonso represented in a remarkable way the two great

influences then shaping the character and civilization of

Spain. At the instigation, it is said, of his second

wife. Constance of Burgundy, he brought the Cistercians

into Spain, established them in Sahagun, chose a French

Cistercian, Bernard, as the first archbishop of Toledo after

the reconquest in 1085, married his daughters, legitimate and

illegitimate, to French princes, and in every way forwarded

the spread of French influence--then the greatest civilizing

force in Europe. He also drew Spain nearer to the papacy,

and it was his decision which established the Roman ritual

in place of the old missal of Saint Isidore--the so-called

Mozarabic. On the other hand he was very open to Arabic

influence. He protected the Mahommedans among his subjects and

struck coins with inscriptions in Arabic letters. After the

death of Constance he perhaps married and he certainly lived

with Zaida, said to have been a daughter of ``Benabet'' (Al

Alotamid), Mahommedan king of Seville. Zaida, who became a

Christian under the name of Maria or Isabel, bore him the only

son among his many children, Sancho, whom Alphonso designed

to be his successor, but who was slain at the battle of

Ucles in 1108. Women play a great part in Alphonso's life.

[ALPHOASO I., king of Aragon, ``the Battler,'' who married

Urraca, daughter of Alphonso VI. (1104-1134), is sometimes

counted the VIIth in the line of the kings of Leon and

Castile. A passionate fighting-man (he fought twenty-nine

battles against Christian or Moor), he was married to Urraca,

widow of Raymond of Burgundy, a very dissolute and passionate

woman. The marriage had been arranged by Alphonso VI. in

1106 to unite the two chief Christian states against the

Almoravides, and to supply them with a capable military

leader. But Urraca was tenacious of her right as proprietary

queen and had not learnt chastity in the polygamous household

of her father. Husband and wife quarrelled with the brutality

of the age and came to open war. Alphonso had the support

of one section of the nobles who found their account in the

confusion. Being a much better soldier than any of his

opponents he gained victories at Sepalveda and Fuente de

la Culebra, but his only trustworthy supporters were his

Aragonese, who were not numerous enough to keep down Castile and

Leon. The marriage of Alphonso and Urraca was declared null

by the pope, as they were third cousins. The king quarrelled

with the church, and particularly the Cistercians, almost

as violently as with his wife. As he beat her, so he drove

Archbishop Bernard into exile and expelled the monks of

Sahagun. He was finally compelled to give way in Castile

and Leon to his stepson Alphonso, son of Urraca and her first

husband. The intervention of Pope Calixtus II. brought

about an arrangement between the old man and the young.

Alphonso the Battler won his great successes in the middle

Ebro, where he expelled the Moors from Saragossa; in the

great raid of 1125, when he carried away a large part of the

subject Christians from Granada, and in the south-west of

France, where he had rights as king of Navarre. Three years

before his death he made a will leaving his kingdom to the

Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Knights of the Sepulchre,

which his subjects refused to carry out. He was a fierce,

violent man, a soldier and nothing else, whose piety was wholly

militant. Though he died in 1134 after an unsuccessful battle

with the Moors at Braga, he has a great place in the reconquest.]

ALPHONSO VII., ``the Emperor'' (1126-1157), is a dignified

and somewhat enigmatical figure. A vague tradition had

always assigned the title of emperor to the sovereign who

held Leon as the most direct representative of the Visigoth

kings, who were themselves the representatives of the Roman

empire. But though given in charters, and claimed by Alphonso

VI. and the Battler, the title had been little more than a

flourish of rhetoric. Alphonso VII. was crowned emperor in

1155 after the death of the Battler. The weakness of Aragon

enabled him to make his superiority effective. He appears

to have striven for the formation of a national unity, which

Spain had never possessed since the fall of the V'isigoth

kingdom. The elements he had to deal with could not be welded

together. Alphonso was at once a patron of the church,

and a protector if not a favourer of the Mahommedans, who

formed a large part of his subjects. His reign ended in

an unsuccessful campaign against the rising power of the

Almohades. Though he was not actually defeated, his death

in the pass of Muradel in the Sierra Morena, while on his

way back to Toledo, occurred in circumstances which showed

that no man could be what he claimed to be---``king of the

men of the two religions.'' His personal character does not

stand out with the emphasis of those of Alphonso VI. or the

Battler. Yet he was a great king, the type and to some extent

the victim of the confusions of his age--Christian in creed

and ambition, but more than half oriental in his household.

ALPHONSO VIII. (1158-1214), king of Castile only, and grandson

of Alphonso VII., is a great name in Spanish history, for he

led the coalition of Christian princes and foreign crusaders

who broke the power of the Almohades at the battle of the Navas

de Tolosa in 1212. The events of his reign are dealt with

under SPAIN. His personal history is that of many medieval

kings. He succeeded to the throne on the death of his father,

Sancho, at the age of a year and a half. Though proclaimed

king, he was regarded as a mere name by the unruly nobles to

whom a minority was convenient. The devotion of a squire of

his household, who carried him on the pommel of his saddle

to the stronghold of San Esteban de Gormaz, saved him from

falling into the hands of the contending factions of Castro

and Lara, or of his uncle Ferdinand of Leon, who claimed the

regency. The loyalty of the town of Avila protected his

youth. He was barely fifteen when he came forth to do a man's

work by restoring his kingdom to order. It was only by a surprise

that he recovered his capital Toledo from the hands of the

Laras. His marriage with Leonora of Aquitaine, daughter of

Henry II. of England, brought him under the influence of the

greatest governing intellect of his time. Alphonso VIII.

was the founder of the first Spanish university, the studium

generale of Palencia, which, however, did not survive him.

ALPHONSO IX. (1188--1230) of Leon, first cousin of Alphonso

VIII. of Castile, and numbered next to him as being a junior

member of the family (see the article SPAIN for the division

of the kingdom and the relationship), is said by Ibn Khaldun

to have been called the ``Baboso'' or Slobberer, because he

was subject to fits of rage during which he foamed at the

mouth. Though he took a part in the work of the reconquest,

this king is chiefly remembered by the difficulties into which

his successive marriages led him with the pope. He was first

married to his cousin Teresa of Portugal, who bore him two

daughters, and a son who died young. The marriage was declared

null by the pope, to whom Alphonso paid no attention till he

was presumably tired of his wife. It cannot have been his

conscience which constrained him to leave Teresa, for his next

step was to marry Berengaria of Castile, who was his second

cousin. For this act of contumacy the king and kingdom were

placed under interdict. The pope was, however, compelled to

modify his measures by the threat that if the people could

not obtain the services of religion they would not support the

clergy, and that heresy would spread. The king was left under

interdict personally, but to that he showed himself indifferent,

and he had the support of his clergy. Berengaria left him

after the birth of five children, and the king then returned

to Teresa, to whose daughters he left his kingdom by will.

ALPHONSO X., El Sabio, or the learned (1252-1284), is

perhaps the most interesting, though he was far from being

the most capable, of the Spanish kings of the middle ages.

(His merits as a writer are dealt with in the article SPAIN:

Literature). His scientific fame is based mainly on his

encouragement of astronomy. It may be pointed out, however,

that the story which represents him as boasting of his ability

to make a better world than this is of late authority. If

he said so, he was speaking of the Ptolemaic cosmogony as

known to him through the Arabs, and his vaunt was a humorous

proof of his scientific instinct. As a ruler he showed

legislative capacity, and a very commendable wish to provide

his kingdoms with a code of laws and a consistent judicial

system. The Fuero Real was undoubtedly his work, and he

began the code called the Slete Partidas, which, however,

was only promulgated by his great-grandson. Unhappily for

himself and for Spain, he wanted the singleness of purpose

required by a ruler who would devote himself to organization,

and also the combination of firmness with temper needed for

dealing with his nobles. His descent from the Hohenstaufen

through his mother, a daughter of the emperor Philip, gave him

claims to represent the Swabian line. The choice of the German

electors, after the death of Conrad IV. in 1254, misled him

into wildechemes which never took effect but caused immense

expense. To obtain money he debased the coinage, and then

endeavoured to prevent a rise in prices by an arbitrary

tariff. The little trade of his dominions was ruined, and the

burghers and peasants were deeply offended. His nobles, whom

he tried to cow by sporadic acts of violence, rebelled against

him. His second son, Sancho, enforced his claim to be heir,

in preference to the children of Ferdinand de la Cerda, the

elder brother who died in Alphonso's life. Son and nobles

alike supported the Moors, when he tried to unite the nation

in a crusade; and when he allied himself with the rulers of

Morocco they denounced him as an enemy of the faith. A reaction

in his favour was beginning in his later days, but he died

defeated and deserted at Seville, leaving a will by which he

endeavoured to exclude Sancho and a heritage of civil war.

ALPHONSO XI. (1312-1350) is variously known among Spanish

kings as the Avenger or the Implacable, and as ``he of the

Rio Salado.'' The first two names he earned by the ferocity

with which he repressed the disorder of the nobles after

a long minority; the third by his victory over the last

formidable African invasion of Spain in 1340. The chronicler

who records his death prays that ``God may be merciful to

him, for he was a very great king.'' The mercy was needed.

Alphonso XI. never went to the insane lengths of his son

Peter the Cruel, but he could be abundantly sultanesque in his

methods. He killed for reasons of state without form of trial,

while his open neglect of his wife, Maria of Portugal, and his

ostentatious passion for Leonora de Guzman, who bore him a large

family of sons, set Peter an example which he did not fail to

better. It may be that his early death, during the great

plague of 1350, at the siege of Gibraltar, only averted a

desperate struggle with his legitimate son, though it was a

misfortune in that it removed a ruler of eminent capacity,

who understood his subjects well enough not to go too far.

[Four other kings of Aragon, besides the Battler, bore the

name of Alphonso. All these princes held territory in the

south-east of France, and had a close connexion with Italy.

ALPHONSO II. of Aragon (i162--1106) was the son of Raymond

Berenger, Count of Barcelona, and of Petronilla, niece of

Alphonso the Battler, and daughter of Ramiro surnamed the

Monk. He succeeded to the county of Barcelona in 1162 on

the death of his father, at the age of eleven, and in 1164

his mother renounced her rights in Aragon in his favour.

Though christened Ramon (Raymond), the favourite name of his

line, he reigned as Alphonso out of a wish to please his

Aragonese subjects, to whom the memory of the Battler was

dear. As king of Aragon he took a share in the work of the

reconquest, by helping his cousin Alohonso VIII. of Castile

to conquer Cuenca, and to suppress one Pero Ruiz de Azagra,

who was endeavouring to carve out a kingdom for himself in

the debatable land between Christian and Mahommedan. But his

double position as ruler both north and south of the eastern

Pyrenees distracted his policy. In character and interests

he was rather Provencal than Spanish, a favourer of the

troubadours, no enemy of the Albigensian heretics, and himself

a poet in the southern French dialect. ALPHONSO III. of

Aragon (12851291), the insignificant son of the notable Peter

III., succeeded to the Spanish and Provencal possessions of

his father, but his short reign did not give him time even to

marry. His inability to resist the demands of his nobles left

a heritage of trouble in Aragon. By recognising their right

to rebel in the articles called the Union he helped to make

anarchy permanent. ALPHONSO IV. of Aragon (1327-1336) was a

weak man whose reign was insignificant. ALPHONSO V. of Aragon

(1416-1458), surnamed the Magnanimous, who represented the

old line of the counts of Barcelona only through women, and

was on his father's side descended from the Castilian house of

Trastamara, is one of the most conspicuous figures of the early

Renaissance. No man of his time had a larger share of the

quality called by the Italians of the day ``virtue.'' By

hereditary right king of Sicily, by the will of Joanna II.

and his own sword king of Naples, he fought and triumphed amid

the exuberant development of individuality which accompanied

the revival of learning and the birth of the modern world.

When a prisoner in the hands of Filipo Maria Visconti, duke of

Milan, in 1435, Alphonso persuaded his ferocious and crafty

captor to let him go by making it plain that it was the interest

of Milan not to prevent the victory of the Aragonese party in

Naples. Like a true prince of the Renaissance he favoured

men of letters whom he trusted to preserve his reputation to

posterity. His devotion to the classics was exceptional even

in that time. He halted his army in pious respect before

the birthplace of a Latin writer, carried Livy or Caesar on

his campaigns with him, and his panegyrist Panormita did not

think it an incredible lie to say that the king was cured of

an illness by having a few pages of Quintus Curtius read to

him. The classics had not refined his taste, for he was

amused by setting the wandering scholars, who swarmed to his

court, to abuse one another in the indescribably filthy

Latin scolding matches which were then the fashion. Alphonso

founded nothing, and after his conquest of Naples in 1442

ruled by his mercenary soldiers, and no less mercenary men of

letters. His Spanish possessions were ruled for him by his

brotherjohn. He left his conquest of Naples to his

bastard son Ferdinand; his inherited lands, Sicily and

Sardinia, going to his brother John who survived him.]

ALPHONSO XII. (1857-1885), king of modern Spain, son of

Isabella II. and Maria Fernando Francisco de Assisi, eldest

son of the duke of Cadiz, was born on the 28th of November

1857. When Queen Isabella and her husband were forced to

leave Spain by the revolution of 1868 he accompanied them to

Paris, and from thence he was sent to the Theresianum at

Vienna to continue his studies. On the 25th of June 1870

he was recalled to Paris, where his mother abdicated in his

favour, in the presence of a number of Spanish nobles who

had followed the fortunes of the exiled queen. He assumed

the title of Alphonso XII.; for although no king of united

Spain had previously borne the name, the Spanish monarchy

was regarded as continuous with the more ancient monarchy,

represented by the eleven kings of Leon and Castile already

referred to. Shortly afterwards he proceeded to Sandhurst

to continue his military studies, and while there he issued,

on the 1st of December 1874, in reply to a birthday greeting

from his followers, a manifesto proclaiming himself the sole

representative of the Spanish monarchy. At the end of the

year, when Marshal Serrano left Madrid to take command of the

northern army, General Martinez Campos, who had long been working

more or less openly for the king, carried off some battalions

of the central army to Sagunto, rallied to his own flag the

troops sent against him, and entered Valencia in the king's

name. Thereupon the president of the council resigned, and

the power was transferred to the king's plenipotentiary and

adviser, Canovas del Castillo. In the course of a few days

the king arrived at Madrid, passing through Barcelona and

Valencia, and was received everywhere with acclamation

(1875). In 1876 a vigorous campaign against the Carlists, in

which the young king took part, resulted in the defeat of Don

Carlos and his abandonment of the struggle. Early in 1878

Alphonso married his cousin, Princess Maria de las Mercedes,

daughter of the duc de Montpensier, but she died within six

months of her marriage. Towards the end of the same year a

young workman of Tarragona, Oliva Marcousi, fired at the king in

Madrid. On the 29th of November 1879 he married a princess of

Austria, Maria Christina, daughter of the Archduke Charles

Ferdinand. During the honeymoon a pastrycook named Otero

fired at the young sovereigns as they were driving in

Madrid. The children of this marriage were Maria de las

Mercedes, titular queen from the death of her father until

the birth of her brother, born on the 11th of September 1880,

married on the 14th of February 1901 to Prince Carlos of

Bourbon, died on the 17th of October 1904; Maria Teresa, born

on the 12th of November 1882, married to Prince Ferdinand

of Bavaria on the 12th of January 1906; and Alphonso (see

below). In 1881 the king refused to sanction the law by which the

ministers were to remain in office for a fixed term of eighteen

months, and upon the consequent resignation of Canovas del

Castillo, he summoned Sagasta, the Liberal leader, to form a

cabinet. Alphonso died of phthisis on the 24th of November

1885. Coming to the throne at such an early age, he had served

no apprenticeship in the art of ruling, but he possessed great

natural tact and a sound judgment ripened by the trials of

exile. Benevolent and sympathetic in disposition, he won the

affection of his people by fearlessly visiting the districts

ravaged by cholera or devastated by earthquake in 1885. His

capacity for dealing with men was considerable, and he never

allowed himself to become the instrument of any particular

party. In his short reign, peace was established both at

home and abroad, the finances were well regulated, and the

various administrative services were placed on a basis that

afterwards enabled Spain to pass through the disastrous war

with the United States without even the threat of a revolution.

ALPHONSO XIII. (1886- ), king of Spain, son of Alphonso

XII., was born, after his father's death, on the 17th of May

1886. His mother, Queen Maria Christina, was appointed

regent during his minority (see SPAIN: History.) In 1902,

on attaining his 16th year, the king assumed control of the

government. On the 31st of May 1906 he married Princess

Victoria Eugenie Julia Ena Maria Christina of Battenberg,

niece of Edward VII. of England. As the king and queen were

returning from the wedding they narrowly escaped assassination

in a bomb explosion, which killed and injured many bystanders

and members of the royal procession. An heir to the throne was

born on the 10th of May 1907, and received the name of Alphonso.

AUTHORITIES--The lives of all the early kings of Spain

will be found in the general histories (see the article

SPAIN: Authorities), of which the most trustworthy is

the Anales de la Corona de Aragon, by Geronimo Zurita

(Saragossa, 1610). See also the Chronicles of the Kings

of Castile in the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles de

Riva deneyra Madrid, 1846-1880, vols. 66, 68, 70).

(D.H.)

ALPHONSUS A SANCTA MARIA, or ALPHONSO DE CARTAGENA

(1396-1456), Spanish historian, was born at Carthagena, and

succeeded his father, Paulus, as bishop of Burgos. In 1431

he was deputed by John II., king of Castile, to attend the

council of Basel, in which he made himself conspicuous by his

learning. He was the author of several works, the principal

of which is entitled Rerum Hispanorum Romanorum imperatorum,

summorum pontificum, nec non regum Francorum anacephaleosis.

This is a history of Spain from the earliest times down

to 1456, and was printed at Granada in 1545, and also in

the Rerum Hispanicarum Scriptores aliquot, by R. Bel

(Frankfort, 1579). Alphonsus died on the 12th of July 1456.

ALPINI, PROSPERO (PROSPER ALPINUS), 1553-1617, Italian

physician and botanist, was born at Marostica, in the republic

of Venice, on the 23rd of November 1553. In his youth he

served for a time in the Milanese army, but in 1574 he went to

study medicine at Padua. After taking his doctor's degree in

1578, he settled as a physician in Campo San Pietro, a small

town in the Paduan territory. But his tastes were botanical,

and to extend his knowledge of exotic plants he travelled to

Egypt in 1580 as physician to George Emo or Hemi, the Venetian

consul in Cairo. In Egypt he spent three years, and from a

practice in the management of date-trees, which he observed

in that country, he seems to have deduced the doctrine of

the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the

foundation of the Linnaean system. He says that ``the female

date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches

of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is

generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or

male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers.'' On his

return, he resided for some time at Genoa as physician to Andrea

Doria, and in 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at

Padua, where he died on the 6th of February 1617. He was

succeeded in the botanical chair by his son Alpino Alpini (d.

1637). His best-known work is De Plantis Aegypti liber

(Venice, 1592). His De Medicina Egyptiorum (Venice,

1591) is said to contain the first account of the coffee

plant published in Europe. The genus Alpinia, belonging

to the order Zingiberaceae, was named after him by Linnaeus.

ALPS, the collective name for one of the great mountain systems of Europe.

1. Position and Name.---The continent of Europe is no more

than a great poninsula extending westwards from the much vaster

continent of Asia, while it is itself broken up by two inland

seas into several smaher peninsulas--the Mediterranean forming

the Iberian, the Italian and the Greek peninsulas, while the

Baltic forms that of Scandinavia and the much smaller one of

Denmark. Save the last-named, all these peninsulas of Europe

are essentially mountain ranges. But in height and importance

the ranges that rise therein are much surpassed by a great

mountain-chain, stretching from south-eastern France to the

borders of Hungary, as well as between the plains of northern

Italy and of southern Germany. This chain is collectively

known as the Alps, and is the most important physical feature

of the European continent. The Alps, however, do not present

so continuous a barrier as the Himalayas, the Andes or even the

Pyrenees. They are formed of numerous ranges, divided by

comparatively deep valleys, which, with many local exceptions,

tend towards parallelism with the general direction of the

whole mass. This, between the Dauphine and the borders of

Hungary, forms a broad band convex towards the north, while

most of the valleys lie between the directions west to east and

south-west to north-east. But in many parts deep transverse

valleys intersect the prevailing direction of the ridges, and

facilitate the passage of man, plants and animals, as well

as of currents of air which mitigate the contrast that would

otherwise be found between the climates of the opposite slopes.

The derivation of the name Alps is still very uncertain, some

writers connecting it with a Celtic root alb, said to mean

height, while others suggest the Latin adjective albus (white),

referring to the colour of the snowy peaks. But in all parts of

the great chain itself, the term Alp (or Alm in the Eastern

Alps) is exclusively applied to the high mountain pastures

(see ALP), and not to the peaks and ridges of the chain.

2. Limits.---These will depend on the meaning we attach to the

word Alps as referring to the great mountain-chain of central

Europe. If we merely desire to distinguish it from certain

minor ranges (e.g. the Cevenues, the Jura, the hills of

central Germany, the Carpathians, the Apennines), which are

really independent ranges rather than offshoots of the main

chain, the best limits are on the west (strictly speaking

south), the Col d'Altare or di Cadibona (1624 ft.), leading

from Turin to Savona and Genoa, and on the east the line

of the railway over the Semmering Pass (3215 ft.) from

Vienna to Marburg in the Mul valley, and on by Laibach to

Trieste. But if we confine the meaning of the term Alps to

those parts of the chain that are what is commonly called

``Alpine,', where the height is sufficient to support a

considerable mass of perpetual snow, our boundaries to the

west and to the east must be placed at spots other than

those mentioned above. To the west the limit will then be

the Col de Tenda (6145 ft.), leading from Cuneo (Coni) to

Ventimigha, while on the east our line will be the route over

the Radstadter Tauern (5702 ft.) and the Katschberg (5384

ft.) from Salzburg to Villach in Carinthia, and thence by

Klagenfurt to Marburg and so past Laibach in Carniola on to

Trieste; from Villach the direct route to Trieste would be

over the Predil Pass (3813 ft.) or the Pontebba or Saifnitz

Pass (2615 ft.), more to the west, but in either case this

would exclude the Terglou (9400 ft.), the highest summit of

the entire South-Eastern Alps, as well as its lower neighbours.

On the northern side the Alps (in whichever sense we take

this term) are definitely bounded by the course of the

Rhine from Basel to the Lake of Constance, the plain of

Bavaria, and the low region of foot-hills that extend from

Salzburg to the neighbourhood of Vienna. One result of this

limit, marked out by Nature herself, is that the waters

which flow down the northern slope of the Alps find their

way either into the North Sea through the Rhine, or into the

Black Sea by means of the Danube, not a 1lrop reaching the

Baltic Sea. On the southern side the mountains extending from

near Turin to near Trieste subside into the great plain of

Piedmont, Lombardy and Venetia. But what properly forms the

western bit of the Alps runs, from near Turin to the Col de

Tenda, in a southerly direction, then bending eastwards

to the Col d'Altare that divides it from the Apennines.

It should be borne in mind that the limits adopted above refer

purely to the topographical aspect of the Alps as they exist

at the present day. Naturalists will of course prefer other

limits according as they are geologists, botanists or zoologists.

3. Climate.---It is well known that as we rise from the

sea-level into the upper regions of the atmosphere the

temperature decreases. The effect of mountain-chains on

prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower

region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at

the cost of a proportionate loss of heat, often accompanied

by the precipitation of moisture in the form of snow or

rain. The position of the Alps about the centre of the

European continent has profoundly modified the climate of all

the surrounding regions. The accumulation of vast masses of

snow, which have gradually been converted into permanent

glaciers, maintains a gradation of very different climates

within the narrow space that intervenes between the foot of

the mountains and their upper ridges; it cools the breezes

that are wafted to the plains on either side, but its

most important function is to regulate the water-supply of

thatlarge region which is traversed by the streams of the

Alps. Nearly all the moisture that is precipitated during

six or seven months is stoled upin the form of snow, and is

gradually diffused in the course of the succeeding summer;

even in the hottest and driest seasons the reserves accumulated

during a long preceding period of years in the form of glaciers

are available to maintain the regular flow of the greater

streams. Nor is this all; the lakes that fill several of the

main valleys on the southern side of the Alps are somewhat

above the level of the plains of Lombardy and Venetia, and

afford an inexhaustible supply of water, which, from a remote

period, has been used for that system of irrigation to

which they owe their proverbial fertility. Six regions or

zones, which are best distinguished by their characteristic

vegetation, are found in the Alps. It is an error to

suppose that these are indicated by absolute height above the

sea-level. Local conditions of exposure to the sun, protection

from cold winds, or the reverse, are of primary importance

in determinin8 the climate and the corresponding vegetation.

Olive region.

The great plain of Upper Italy has a winter climate colder than

that of the British Islands. The olive and the characteristic

shrubs of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean do not

thrive in the open air, but the former valuable tree ripens

its fruit in sheltered places at the foot of the mountains, and

penetrates along the deeper valleys and the shores of the Italian

lakes. The evergreen oak is wild on the rocks about the Lake

of Garda, and lemons are cultivated on a large scale, with

partial protection in winter. The olive has been known to

survive severe cold when of short duration, but it cannot be

cultivated with success where frosts are prolonged, or where

the mean winter temperature falls below 42 deg. F.; and to produce

fruit it requires a heat of at least 75 deg. F. during the day,

continued through four or five months of the summer and autumn.

Vine region.

The vine is far more tolerant of cold than the olive, but to

produce tolerable wine it demands, at the season of ripening, a

degree of heat not much less than that needed by the more delicate

tree. These conditions are satisfied in the deeper valleys

of the Alps, even in the interior of the chain, and up to a

considerable height on slopes exposed to the sun. The protection

afforded by winter snow enables the plant to resist severe

and prolonged frosts, such as would be fatal in more exposed

situations. Many wild plants characteristic of the warmer

parts of middle Europe are seen to flourish along with the

vine. A mean summer temperature of at least 68 deg. F. is considered

necessary to produce tolerable wine, but in ordinary seasons

this is much exceeded in many of the great valleys of the Alps.

Mountain region, or region of deciduous trees.

Many writers take the growth of grain as the characteristic of

the mountain region; but so many varieties of all the common

species are in cultivation, and these have such different

climatal requirements, that they do not afford a factory

criterion. A more natural limit is afforded by the presence

of the chief deciduous trees---oak, beech, ash and sycamore.

These do not reach exactly to the same elevation, nor are they

often found growing together; but their upper limit corresponds

accurately enough to the change from a temperate to a colder

climate that is further proved by a change in the wild herbaceous

vegetation. This limit usually lies about 4000 ft. above

the sea on the north side of the Alps, but on the southern

slopes it often rises to 5000 ft., sometimes even to 5500

ft. It must not be supposed that this region is always

marked by the presence of the characteristic trees. The

interference of man has in many districts almost extirpated

them, and, excepting the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, a

considerable wood of deciduous trees is scarcely anywhere to be

found. In many districts where such woods once existed, their

place has been occupied by the Scottish pine and spruce, which

suffer less from the ravages of goats, the worst enemies of tree

vegetation. The mean annual temperature of this region differs

little from that of the British Islands; but the climatal

conditions are widely different. Here snow usually lies for

several months, till it gives place to a spring and summer

considerably warmer than the average of British seasons.

Subalpine region, or region of coniferous trees.

The Subalpine is the region which mainly determines the manner

of life of the population of the Alps. On a rough estimate

we may reckon that, of the space lying between the summits

of the Alps and the low country on either side, one-quarter

is available for cultivation, of which about one-half may

be vineyards and corn-fields, while the remainder produces

forage and grass. About another quarter is utterly barren,

consisting of snow-fields, glaciers, bare rock, lakes and

the beds of streams. There remains about one-half, which

is divided between forest and pasture, and it is the produce

of this half which mainly supports the relatively large

population. For a quarter of the year the flocks and herds

are fed on the upper pastures; but the true limit of the

wealth of a district is the number of animals that can be

supported during the long winter, and while one part of the

population is engaged in tending the beasts and in making

cheese and butter, the remainder is busy cutting hay and

storing up winter food for the cattle. The larger villages

are mostly in the mountain region, but in many parts of the

Alps the villages stand in the subalpine region at heights

varying from 4000 ft. to 5500 ft. above the sea, more rarely

extending to about 6000 ft. The most characteristic feature

of this region is the prevalence of coniferous trees,

which, where they have not been artificially kept down, form

vast forests that cover a large part of the surface. These

play a most important part in the natural economy of the

country. They protect the valleys from destructive avalanches,

and, retaining the superficial soil by their roots, they

mitigate the destructive effects of heavy rains. In valleys

where they have been rashly cut away, and the waters pour

down the slopes unchecked, every tiny rivulet becomes a raging

torrent, that carries off the grassy slopes and devastates

the floor of the valley, covering the soil with gravel and

debris. In the pine forests of the Alps the prevailing

species are the common spruce and the silver fir; on siliceous

soil the larch flourishes, and surpasses every other European

species in height. The Scottish pine is chiefly found at a

lower level and rarely forms forests. The Siberian fir is

found scattered at intervals throughout the Alps but is not

common. The mughus, creeping pine, or Krummholz of the

Germans, is common in the Eastern Alps, and sometimes forms

on the higher mountains a distinct zone above the level of its

congeners. In the Northern Alps the pine forests rarely

surpass the limit of 6000 ft. above the sea, but on the

south side they commonly attain 7000 ft., while the larch,

Siberian fir and mughus often extend above that elevation.

Alpine region.

Throughout the Teutonic region of the Alps the word Alp

is used specifically for the upper pastures where cattle

are fed in summer, but this region is held to include

the whole space between the uppermost limit of trees and

the first appearance of permanent masses of snow. It is

here that the characteristic vegetation of the Alps is

developed in its full beauty and variety. Shrubs are not

wanting. Three species of rhododendron vie with each other

in the brilliancy of their masses of red or pink flowers;

the common juniper rises higher still, along with three

species of bilberry; and several dwarf willows attain nearly

to the utmost limit of vegetation. The upper limit of this

region coincides with the so-called limit of perpetual snow.

Glacial region.

On the higher parts of lofty mountains more snow falls in

each year than is melted on the spot. A portion of this is

carried away by the wind before it is consolidated; a larger

portion accumulates in hollows and depressions of the surface,

and is gradually converted into glacier-ice, which descends

by a slow secular motion into the deeper valleys, where it

goes to swell perennial streams. As on a mountain the snow

does not lie in beds of uniform thickness, and some parts

are more exposed to the sun and warm winds than others, we

commonly find beds of snow alternating with exposed slopes

covered with brilliant vegetation; and to the observer near

at hand there is no appearance in the least corresponding

to the term limit of perpetual snow, though the case

is otherwise when a high mountain-chain is viewed from a

distance. Similar conditions are repeated at many different

points, so that the level at which large snow-beds show

themselves along its flanks is approximately horizontal. But

this holds good only so far as the conditions are similar. On

the opposite sides of the same chain the exposure to the sun

or to warm winds may cause a wide difference in the level of

permanent snow; but in some cases the increased fall of snow

on the side exposed to moist winds may more than compensate

the increased influence of the sun's rays. Still, even with

these reservations, the so-called line of perpetual snow is not

fixed. The occurrence of favourable meteorological conditions

during several successive seasons may and does increase the

extent of the snow-fields, and lower the limit of seemingly

permanent snow; while an opposite state of things may cause

the limit to rise higher on the flanks of the mountains.

Hence all attempts to fix accurately the level of pernetual

snow in the Alps are fallacious, and can at the best approach

only to local accuracy for a particular district. In some

parts of the Alps the limit may be set at about 8000 ft. above

the sea, while in others it cannot be placed much below 9500

ft. As very little snow can rest on rocks that lie at an

angle exceeding 60 deg. , and this is soon removed by the wind,

some steep masses of rock remain bare even near the summits

of the highest peaks, but as almost every spot offering the

least hold for vegetation is covered with snow, few flowering

plants are seen above 11,000 ft. There is reason to think,

however, that it is the want of soil rather than climatal

conditions that checks the upward extension of the alpine

flora. Increased direct effect of solar radiation compensates

for the cold of the nights, and in the few spots where

plants have been found in flower up to a height of 12,000

ft., nothing has indicated that the processes of vegetation

were arrested by the severe cold which they must sometimes

endure. The climate of the glacial region has often been

compared to that of the polar regions, but they are widely

different. Here, intense solar radiation by day, which

raises the surface when dry to a temperature approaching

80 deg. F., alternates with severe frost by night. There, a

sun which never sets sends feeble rays that maintain a low

equable temperature, rarely rising more than a few degrees

above the freezing-point. Hence the upper region of the

Alps sustains a far more varied and brilliant vegetation.

4. Main Chain.---In the case of every mountain system

geographers are disposed to regard, as a general rule, the

watershed (or boundary dividing the waters flowing towards

opposite slopes of the range) as marking the main chain,

and this usage is justified in that the highest peaks often

rise on or very near the watershed. Yet, as a matter of

fact, several important mountain groups are situated on one

or other side of the watershed of the Alps, and form almost

independent ranges, being only connected with the main chain

by a kind of peninsula: such are the Dauphine Alps, the

Eastern and Western Graians, the entire Bernese Oberland, the

Todi, Albula and Silvretta groups, the Ortler and Adamello

ranges, and the Dolomites of south Tirol, not to speak of the

lower Alps of the Vorarlberg, Bavaria and Salzburg. Of course

each of these semi-detached ranges has a watershed of its

own, like the lateral ridges that branch off from the main

watershed. Thus there are lofty ranges parallel to that which

forms the main watershed. The Alps, therefore, are not composed

of a single range (as shown on the old maps) but of a great

``divide,'' flanked on either side by other important ranges,

which, however, do not comprise such lofty peaks as the main

watershed. In the following remarks we propose to follow

the main watershed from one end of the Alps to the other.

Starting from the Col d'Altare or di Cadibona (west of

Savona), the main chain extends first south-west, then

north-west to the Col de Tenda, though nowhere rising much

beyond the zone of coniferous trees. Beyond the Col de Tenda

the direction is first roughly west, then north-west to the

Rocher des Trois Eveques (9390 ft.), just south of the

Mont Enchastraye (9695 ft.), several peaks of about 10,000

ft. rising on the watershed, though the highest of all, the

Punta dell' Argentera(10,794 ft.) stands a little way to its

north. From the Rocher des Trois Eveques the watershed

runs due north for a long distance, though of the two loftiest

peaks of this region One, the Aiguille de Chambeyron (11,155

ft.), is just to the west, and the other, the Monte Viso

(12,609 ft.), is just to the east of the watershed. From the

head of the Val Pellice the main chain runs north-west, and

diminishes much in average height till it reaches the Mont

Thabor (10,440 ft.), which forms the apex of a salient angle

which the main chain here presents towards.the west. Hence

the main watershed extends eastwards, culminating in the

Aiguille de Scolette (11,500 ft.), but makes a great curve

to the north-west and back to the south-east before rising

in the Rochemelon (11,605 ft.), which may be considered as

a re-entering angle in the great rampart by which Italy is

guarded from its neighbours. Thence the direction taken is

north as far as the eastern summit (11,693 ft.) of the Levanna,

the watershed rising in a series of snowy peaks, though the

loftiest point of the region, the Pointe de Charbonel (12,336

ft.), stands a little to the west. Gnce more the chain bends

to the north-west, rising in several lofty peaks (the highest

is the Aiguille de la Grande Sassiere, 12,323 ft.), before

attaining the considerable depression of the Little St Bernard

Pass. Thence for a short way the direction is north to the

Col de la Soigne, and then north-east along the crest of the

Mont Blanc chain, which culminates in the peak of Mont Blanc

(15,782 ft.), the loftiest in the Alps. A number of high peaks

crown our watershed before it attains the Mont Dolent (12,543

ft.). Thence after a short dip to the south-east, our chain

takes near the Great St Bernard Pass the generally eastern

direction that it maintains till it reaches Monte Rosa,whence

it bends northwards, making one small dip to the east as far

as the Simplon Pass. It is in the portion of the watershed

between the Great St Bernard and the Simplon that the main

chain maintains a greater average height than in any other

part. But, though it rises in a number of lofty peaks, such

as the Mont Velan ( 12,353 ft. ), the Matterhorn (14,782 ft.),

the Lyskamm (14,889 ft.), the Nord End of Monte Rosa (15,132

ft.), and the Weissmies (13,226ft.), yet manyof the highest

points of the region, such as the Grand Combin (14,164 ft.),

the Dent Blanche (14,318 ft.), the Weisshorn (14,804 ft.), the

true summit or Dufourspitze (15,217 ft.) of Monte Rosa itself,

and the Dom (14,942 ft.), all rise on its northern slope and

not on the main watershed. On the other hand the chain between

the Great St Bernard and the Simplon sinks at barely half a

dozen points below a level of 10,000 ft. The Simplon Pass

corresponds to what may be called a dislocation of the main

chain. Thence to the St Gotthard the divide runs north-east,

all the higher summits (including the Monte Leone, 11,684

ft., and the Pizzo Rotondo, 10,489 ft.) rising on it, a curious

contrast to the long stretch just described. From the St

Gotthard to the Maloja the watershed between the basins of the

Rhine and Po runs in an easterly direction as a whole, though

making two great dips towards the south, first to near the

Vogelberg (10,565 ft.) and again to near the Pizzo Gailegione

(10,201 ft.), so that it presents a broken and irregular

appearance. But all the loftiest peaks rise on it: Scopi

(10,499 ft.), Piz Medel (10,509 ft.), the Rheinwaldhorn (11,I49

ft.), the Tambohorn (10,749 ft.) and Piz Timun (10,502 ft.).

From the Maloja Pass the main watershed dips to the south-east

for a short distance, and then runs eastwards and nearly over

the highest summit of the Bernina group, the Piz Bernina (13,304

ft.), to the Bernina Pass. Thence to the Reschen Scheideck

Pass the main chain is ill-defined, though on it rises the

Corno di Campo (10,844 ft.), beyond which it runs slightly

north-east past the sources of the Adda and the Fraele Pass,

sinks to form the depression of the Ofen Pass, soon hends

north and rises once more in the Piz Sesvenna (10,568 ft.).

The break in the continuity of the Alpine chain marked by the

deep valley, the Vintschgau, of the upper Adige (Etsch) is

one of the most remarkable features in the orography of the

Alps. The little Reschen lake which forms the chief source

of the Adige is only 13 ft. below the Reschen Scheideck

Pass (4902 ft.), and by it is but 5 m. from the Inn valley.

Eastward of this pass, the main chain runs north-east to the

Brenner Pass along the snowy crest of the Oetzthal and Stubai

Alps, the loftiest point on it being the Weisskugel (12,291

ft., Oetzthal), for the highest summits both of the Oetzthal

and of the Stubai districts, the Wildspitze (12,382 ft.) and

the Zuckerhutl (11,520 ft.) stand a little to the north.

The Brenner (4495 ft.) is almost the lowest of all the great

Carriage-road passes across the main chain, and has always

been the chief means of communication between Germany and

Italy. For some way beyond it the watershed runs eastwards

over the highest crest of the Zillerthal Alps, which attains

11,559 ft. in the Hochfeiler. But, a little farther, at

the Dreiherrenspitze (11,500 ft.) we have to choose between

following the watershed southwards, or keeping due east along

the highest crest of the Greater Tauern Alps. (a) The latter

course is adopted by many geographers and has much in its

favour. The eastward direction is maintained and the watershed

(though not the chief Alpine watershed) continues through

the Greater Tauern Alps, culminating in the Gross Venediger

(12,008 ft.), for the Gross Glockner (12,461 ft.) rises to the

south. Our chain bends north-east near the Radstadter Tauern

Pass, and preserves that direction through the Lesser Tauern

Alps to the Semmering Pass. (b) On the other hand, if from

the Dreiherrenspitze we cleave to the true main watershed

of the Alpine chain, we find that it dips south, passes

over the Hochgall (11,287 ft.), the culminating point of the

Rieserferner group, and then sinks to the Toblach Pass, but at

a point a little east of the great Dolomite peak of the Drei

Zinnen it hends east again, and rises in the Monte Coghans

(9128 ft., the monarch of the Carnic Alps). Soon after our

watershed makes a last bend to the south-east and culminates

in the Terglou (9400 ft.), the highest point of the Julio

Alps, though the Grintovc (8429 ft., the culminating point

of the Karawankas Alps) stands more to the east. Finally

our watershed turns south and ends near the great limestone

plateau of the Birnbaumerwald, between Laibach and Gorz.

As might be expected, the main chain boasts of more glaciers

and eternal snow than the independent or external ranges.

Yet it is a curious fact that the three longest glaciers in

the Alps (the Great Aletsch, 16 1/2 m., and the Unteraar and the

Fiescher, each 10 m.) are all in the Bernese Oberland. In

the main chain the two longest are both 9 1/4 m., the Mer de

Glace at Chamonix and the Gomer at Zermatt. In the Eastern

Alps the longest glacier is the Pasterze (rather over 6 1/4

m.), which is not near the true main watershed, though it

clings to the slope of the Greater Tauern range, east of the

Dreiherrenspitze. But the next two longest glaciers in the Eastern

Alps (the Hintereis, 6 1/2 m., and the Gepatsch, 6 m.) are both

in the Oetzthal Alps, and so close to the true main watershed.

The so-called alpine lakes are the sheets of water found at the

foot of the Alps, on either slope, just where the rivers that

form them issue into the plains. There are, however, alpine

lakes higher up (e.g. the lake of Thun, and those in the

Upper Engadine, in the heart of the mountains, though these are

naturally smaller in extent, while the true lakes of the High

Alps are represented by the glacier lakes of the Marjelensee

(near the Great Aletsch glacier) and those on the northern

slope of the Col de Fenetre, between Aosta and the Val de

Bagnes. The most singular, and probably the loftiest, lake

in the Alps is the ever-frozen tarn that forms the summit

of the Roccia Viva (11,976 ft.) in the Eastern Graians.

Among the great alpine rivers we may distinguish two

classes: those which spring directly from glaciers and those

which rise in lakes, these being fed by eternal snows or

glaciers. In the former class are the Isere, the Rhone,

the Aar, the Ticino, the Tosa, the Hinter (or main)

Rhine and the Linth; while in the latter class we have the

Durance, the Po, the Reuss, the Vorder and middle branches

of the Rhine, the Inn, the Adda, the Ogho and the Adige.

The Piave and the Drave seem to be outside either class.