Page:EB1911 - Volume 24.djvu/291

 Les Finances de la France sous la troisième république (1898–1901).

SAY, a town on the right bank of the river Niger in 13° 4′ N. and 2° 30′ E., in the French colony of Upper Senegal and Niger. In the agreement of 1890 between Great Britain and France for the delimitation of their respective spheres of influence in West Africa, Say was taken as the western end of an imaginary line which ran eastward to Barrua on Lake Chad. To the north the “ light soil ” of the Sahara&mdash;a phrase used by Lord Salisbury in explaining the nature of the agreement in the House of Lords&mdash;was recognized as French; to the south the Sokoto empire (northern Nigeria) fell to Great Britain. By the convention of 1898 Say, however, and a considerable tract of territory south and east of the town were ceded to France. (See, § 5.)

SAYAD, a descendant of Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet, by Fatima, Mahomet’s daughter. Many of the Pathan tribes in the North-West Frontier Province of India, such as the Bangash of Kohat and the Mishwanis of the Hazara border, claim Sayad origin. The apostles who completed the conversion of the Pathans to Islam were called Sayads if they came from the west, and Sheikhs if they came from the east; hence doubtless many false claims to Sayad origin. In Afghanistan the Sayads have much of the commerce in their hands, as their holy character allows them to pass unharmed where other Pathans would be murdered.

The Sayads gave a short-lived dynasty to India, which reigned at Delhi during the first half of the 15th century. Their name again figures in Indian history at the break up of the Mogul empire, when two Sayad brothers created and dethroned emperors at their will (1714–1720). In 1901 the total number of Sayads in all India was returned at 1,339,734. They include many well-known and influential families. The first Mahommedan appointed to the Council of India and the first appointed to the Privy Council were both Sayads. .

SAYAN MOUNTAINS, a range of Asia, forming the eastern continuation of the Sailughem or Altai range, stretching from 89° E. to 106° E. Orographically they are the N. border-ridge of the plateau of N .W. Mongolia, and separate that region from Siberia. The geology is imperfectly known. While the general elevation is 7000 to 9000 ft., the individual peaks, consisting largely of granites and metamorphic slates, reach altitudes of 10,000 ft. and 11,450 ft., e.g. in Munko Sardyk; while the principal passes lie 6000 to 7500 ft. above the sea, e.g. Muztagh 7480 ft., Mongol 6500 ft., Tenghyz 7480 ft. and Obo-sarym 6100 ft. In 92° E. the system is pierced by the Bel-kem or upper Yenisei, and in 106°, at its eastern extremity, it terminates above the depression of the Selenga-Orkhon valley. From the Mongolian plateau the ascent is on the whole gentle, but from the plains of Siberia it is much steeper, despite the fact that the range is masked by a broad belt of subsidiary ranges of an Alpine character, e.g. the Usinsk, Oya, Tunka, Kitoi and Byelaya ranges. Between the breach of the Yenisei and the Kosso-gol (lake) in 100° 30′ E. the system bears also the name of Yerghik-taiga. The flora is on the whole poor, although the higher regions carry good forests of larch, pitch pine, cedar, birch and alder, with rhododendrons and species of Berberis and Ribes. Lichens and mosses clothe many of the boulders that are scattered over the upper slopes.

SAYBROOK, a township of Middlesex county, Connecticut, U.S.A., at the mouth and on the W. bank of the Connecticut river, about 100 m. E.N.E. of New York City and about 40 m. S. of Hartford. Pop. (1900) 1634; (1910) 1907. The post office of the township is named Deep River. Mainly confined to Saybrook Point, jutting out into the river, is the township of Old Saybrook (pop. in 1910, 1516), separated from the township of Saybrook in 1852, but actually the mother colony; its post village is called Saybrook. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, the Valley branch of which here separates from the Shore Line branch. It is a beautiful place, with several old buildings, notably the Hart mansion built about 1783 by Captain Elisha Hart, whose seven daughters here entertained Washington Irving, J. R. Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck. Com. Isaac Hull and his nephew Joseph Bartine Hull married two of the daughters, and the younger of these in 1874 left the house to the township of Old Saybrook, which refused the gift. Fenwick (pop. in 1910, 34), the smallest borough in the state, is a part of Old Saybrook township, in which there are summer residences. The first settlement was made on Saybrook Point late in 1635 by John Winthrop, commissioned governor for one year by the company of which the principal shareholders were Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Pym and John Hampden, and which had a grant from the earl of Warwick. The English settlers forestalled the Dutch, who attempted to land here in November. A palisade was built across the narrowest part of the neck of the point by Lion Gardiner, who built a fort (burned in 1647) and planned a settlement, to which for a time it was thought Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, Oliver Cromwell, and other independents would immigrate. Gardiner called the place Saybrook from the names of its principal proprietors. He had practical control until 1639, when he was displaced by George Fenwick (d. 1657), whose wife, called Lady Fenwick (she was the widow of Sir John Botelier), died here in 1646, and who in 1644 sold to Connecticut the proprietors' rights.

In 1646 the First Church of Christ was organized; a church building was erected in 1647, and in 1680–1681 another, in which in September 1708, at the call of the General Assembly, met a Congregational Synod of 16 members which reaffirmed the Savoy Confession of Faith and the Heads of Agreement adopted in England in 1691 by Congregationalists and Presbyterians, and drew up the Saybrook Platform of discipline, providing for the promotion of harmony and order, the regular introduction of candidates into the ministry and the establishment of associations and consociations, the latter being tribunals with final and appellate jurisdiction. This platform was approved by the General Assembly, and churches organized under it were declared to be established by law. This establishment continued in full force until 1784. A granite boulder (1901) marks the site of the first home of Yale University, established here in 1701 as the Collegiate School of Connecticut; until 1716, when it was removed to New Haven, most of the school’s commencements were held here and all its exercises after 1707–1708, before which time most of the actual teaching was done in Killingworth, now Clinton, Connecticut. Saybrook was the home of David Bushnell (1742–1824), who devised in 1776 a submarine torpedo and a tortoise-shaped diving boat, the “American Turtle,” which were tried without success against the British in the War of American Independence.

The original township of Saybrook contained the present townships of Old Saybrook, Westbrook (1840), Essex (1854, taken from Old Saybrook), Saybrook and Chester (1836), and, on the east side of the river, parts of the present Lyme (1665), Old Lyme (1855, from Lyme), and East Lyme (1839, from Lyme and Waterford).

 SAYCE, ARCHIBALD HENRY (1846–), British Orientalist, was born at Shirehampton on the 25th of September 1846, son of the Rev. H. S. Sayce, vicar of Caldicot. He was educated at Bath, and at Queen’s College, Oxford, of which he became fellow in 1869. In 1891 he was elected professor of Assyriology at Oxford. He threw his whole energies into the study of biblical and other Oriental subjects, and though his conclusions have in a number of cases been considerably modified (e.g. in chronology and transliteration) by the work of other scholars (see, e.g. ) it is impossible to overestimate his services to Oriental scholarship. He travelled widely in the East and continued in later life annual trips up the Nile. An interesting example of the importance of his pioneer work is the fact that there has been a strong tendency to revert to the views which he advanced on the question of the Hittites in his early Oxford lectures. He was a member of the Old Testament Revision Company in 1874–1884; deputy professor of comparative philology in Oxford 1876–1890; Hibbert Lecturer 1887; Gifford Lecturer 1900–1902. 