Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/417

Rh (R. J. M.)

TANEGA-SHIMA, an island lying to the south of Kiushiu, Japan, in 30º 50' N. and 131º E., 36½ m. long and 7¼ m. broad at its widest part. It is a long low stretch of land, carefully cultivated, and celebrated as the place where Mendez Pinto landed when he found his way to Japan in 1543. Until modern times firearms were colloquially known in Japan as &ldquo;Tanega-shima,&rdquo; in allusion to the fact that they were introduced by Pinto.

TANEY, ROGER BROOKE (1777-1864), American jurist, was born in Calvert county, Maryland, on the 17th of March 1777, of Roman Catholic parentage. He graduated from Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1795, began the study of law at Annapolis in 1796, and was admitted to the bar in 1799. In 1806 he married Anne Phebe Key, sister of Francis Scott Key. He entered politics as a Federalist, and was a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1799-80. His faith in Federalism was weakened by the party's opposition to the War of 1812, and he gradually became associated with the Jacksonian wing of the Republican party. He served in the state Senate in 1816-21, was attorney-general of Maryland in 1827-31; and in July 1831 entered President Jackson's cabinet as attorney-general of the United States. He was the President's chief adviser in the attack on the United States Bank, and was transferred to the treasury department in September 1833 for the special purpose of removing the government deposits. This conduct brought him into conflict with the Senate, which passed a vote of censure, and (in June 1834) refused to confirm his appointment as secretary of the treasury. He returned to his law practice in Baltimore, but on the 28th of December 1835 was nominated Chief-Justice of the United States Supreme Court to succeed John Marshall. After strong opposition the nomination was confirmed, on the 15th of March 1836, by the Senate. Under the guidance of Judges John Jay, Marshall, and Joseph Story, the judiciary from 1790 to 1835 had followed the Federalist loose construction methods of interpreting the constitution. The personnel of the supreme bench was almost entirely changed during President Jackson's administration (1820-37). Five of the seven judges in 1837 were his appointees, and the majority of them were Southerners who had been educated under Democratic influences at a time when the slavery controversy was forcing the party to return to its original strict construction views. In consequence, although the high judicial character of the men appointed and the lawyers' regard for precedent served to keep the court in the path marked out by Marshall and Story, the state sovereignty influence was occasionally manifest, as, for example, in the opinion (written by Taney) in the Dred Scott case (1857, 19 Howard, 393) that Congress had no power to abolish slavery in territory acquired after the formation of the national government. During the Civil War, Judge Taney struggled unsuccessfully to protect individual liberty from the encroachments of the military authorities. In the case of ex parte John Merryman (1861, Campbell's Reports, 646), he protested against the assumption of power by the President to suspend the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus or to confer that power upon a military officer without the authorization of Congress. The delivering of this opinion, on circuit, in Baltimore, in May 1861, was one of the judge's last public acts. He died on the 12th of October 1864.

TANGA (&ldquo;the sail&rdquo;), a seaport of German East Africa, lying opposite the island of Pemba in 5º 6' S., 39º 7' E. The town is regularly laid out on elevated ground on the southern shore of Tanga Bay, and has a population of about 6000. Among the public buildings are the administrator's residence, the hospital, the boma (barracks), Protestant and Catholic churches and the

government and mission schools. Tanga is the port of the Usambara district, where are many thriving plantations. The harbour is entered by a broad channel five to eight fathoms deep. It is a port of call for the German mail steamers, and the starting-point of a railway to the Usambara highlands.

TANGANYIKA (a name said by V. L. Cameron to signify a &ldquo;mixing-place&rdquo;), a vast lake in East-Central Africa, the longest freshwater lake in the world, measuring just over 400 m., with a general breadth varying from 30 to 45 m., and an area of about 12,700 sq. m. It lies at an altitude of about 2600 ft. above the sea, and occupies the southern end of the great central rift-valley, which terminates suddenly at its southern point, the line of depression being represented farther south by the more easterly trough of Lakes Nyasa and Rukwa, from which Tanganyika is separated by the Fipa plateau, composed of old granitoid rocks; though even here traces of old valley-walls are said by Dr Kohlschütter to exist. North of Tanganyika the valley is suddenly interrupted by a line of ancient eruptive ridges, which dam back the waters of Lake ../Kivu/ (q.v.), but have been recently cut through by the outlet of that lake, the Rusizi, which enters Tanganyika by several mouths at its northern end. The flat plain traversed by the lower Rusizi was evidently once a portion of the lake floor. Tanganyika has been formed by the subsidence of a long narrow tract of country relatively to the surrounding plateaus, which fall to the lake in abrupt cliffs, some thousands of feet high in places. The geological formations thus exposed show that the plateaus are composed of a base of eruptive material, overlaid by enormous deposits of reddish sandstones, conglomerates and quartzites, exposed in parts to a depth of 2000 feet. Besides the plain to the north, a considerable area to the west, near the Lukuga outlet (see below), shows signs of having been once covered by the lake, and it is the opinion of Mr J. E. S. Moore that the sandstone ridges which here bound the trough have been recently elevated, and have been cut through by the Lukuga during the process.

The past history of the lake has long been a disputed question, and Mr Moore's view that it represents an old Jurassic arm of the sea is contested by other writers. This idea originated in the discovery of a jelly-fish, gasteropods, and other organisms of a more or less marine type, and presenting some affinity with forms of Jurassic age. This fauna, to which the term &ldquo;halolimnic&rdquo; has been applied, was known to exist from specimens obtained by Mr E. C. Hore and other early travellers, but has been more systematically studied by Mr Moore (during expeditions of 1896 and 1898-99) and Dr W. A. Cunnington (1904-5). Various considerations throw doubt on Mr Moore's theory, especially the almost entire absence of marine fossiliferous beds in the whole of equatorial Africa at a distance from the sea, of any remains of Jurassic faunas which might link the Tanganyika forms with those of undoubted Jurassic age in neighbouring regions. The formation of the existing rift-valley seems in any case to date from Tertiary times only.