Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/500

476 on the Niger, were more or less thoroughly subjugated. Timbuctoo finally fell into the hands of the Berbers about 1433; but Mali remained a leading state and its capital a great commercial centre till the beginning of the 16th century, when Omar Askia, prince of Songhai, captured the city. The Mali dynasty was a Mohammedan one ; and, though some sections of the Mandingo race are still pagans, the greater number are ardent supporters of Islam. Of the present grouping and relations of the states in which they are the dominant element detailed information does not exist ; but such accounts as those of Benjamin Anderson (Journey to Musardu, the capital of the Western Mandingoes, New York, 1870) show that some of them aro possessed of a considerable share of barbaric civilization. According to Dr Quintin, the leading areas of Mandingo occupation are the country watered by the great head- streams of the Senegal (the Faleme, the Bafing, &c.), the district to the south of the lower course of the Gambia, and the coast region of Susu to the north of Sierra Leone. The Mandingoes are generally tall and strongly built ; black in complexion, and harsh and ugly in features, but with a spirited and intellectual expression. They are great traders, work in iron and gold, weave cotton cloth, tan excellent leather, and regularly cultivate a considerable variety of crops rice, cotton, tobacco, kola, potatoes. Their clay-built walled towns often contain 8000 to 10,000 inhabitants, and villages and hamlets are thickly scattered over the country.

Besides Park s Travels (in which the Mandingoes play a promin ent part) see Earth, Travels in Central Africa, and Dr L. Quintin, &quot; Etude ethnogr. snr les pays entre le Senegal et le Niger,&quot; BulL de la Soc. dc Geogr., Paris, 1881. MANDLA, a district in the chief cornmissionership of the Central Provinces, India, lying between 22 14 and 23 22 N. lat, and between 80 and 81 48 E. long., is bounded on the N.E. by Ilewah state, on the S.E. by Bilaspur, on the S.W. by Balaghat, and on the W. by Ssoni and Jabalpur. It has an area of 4719 square miles, and the headquarters are at Mandla town. The district consists of a wild highland region, broken up by the valleys of numerous rivers and streams. In the lower valleys there is abundance of rich black cotton soil, while in the less favoured valleys a light friable soil is found. The Nerbudda river flows through the centre of the district, receiving several tributaries which take their rise in the Maikal Hills, a range densely clothed with sal forest, and forming part of the great watershed between eastern and western India. The loftiest mountain is Chauradadar, about 3400 feet high. Tigers and wild beasts abound, and the proportion of deaths caused by wild animals is greater in Mandla than in any other district of the Central Provinces. The census of 1872 disclosed a population of 213,018 (males, 110,473 ; females, 102,545). The aboriginal or hill tribes num ber more strongly in Mandla than in any other district of the Central Provinces, the Gonas being alone returned at 113,300. Mandla town, with a population of 4936, is the only place in the district with upwards of 2000 inhabitants. Of the total area of 4719 square miles, 556 were returned in 1881 as culti vated, and 2530 as cultivable. In the same year 54,431 acres were devoted to the production of rice, and 75, 196&quot; to wheat, while other food grains occupied 199,062 acres. Fibres and sugar-cane are pro duced in considerable quantities. The magnificent sal forests which formerly clothed the highlands of the district have suffered greatly from the nomadic system of cultivation practised by the hill tribes, who cut down and burn the wood on the hill-sides, and sow their crops in the ashes. Of late years, however, measures have been taken to prevent further damage to the forests. The only local manufacture consists in the weaving of coarse cotton cloth. The total gross revenue of the district in 1881 was returned at 21,398, of which 8999 was derived from the laud. There are 46 Govern ment and aided schools. The cost of officials and police was 6396. The district has a bad reputation for fever. MANDOLINE. See LUTE. MANDRAKE, Mandragora officinarum, L., of the potato family, order Solanacese, is a native of Spain, Sicily, Crete, Cilicia, Syria, &c., and North Africa (Benth, et Hook., Gen. PL, ii. p. 900; and DC., Prod., xiii. p. 4GG). It has a short stem bearing a tuft of ovate leaves, with a thick fleshy and often forked root. The flowers are soli tary, with a purple bell-shaped corolla. The fruit is a fleshy orange-coloured berry. The mandrake has been long known for its poisonous properties and supposed virtues. It acts as an emetic, purgative, and narcotic, and was much esteemed in old times; but, except in Africa and the East, where it is used as a narcotic and antispasmodic, it has fallen into disrepute (Pickering s Chron, Hist, of Plants, p. 247). In ancient times, according to Isidorus and Serapion, it was used as a narcotic to diminish sensibility under surgical operations, and the same use is mentioned by Kazwini, i. 297, s.v. &quot; Luffah.&quot; Shakespeare more than once alludes to this plant, as when Banquo in Macbeth says &quot;Or have we eaten of the insane root that takes the reason prisoner] &quot; and again in Antony and Cleopatra &quot;Give me to drink mandragora.&quot; The notion that the plant shrieked when touched, so that those who desired to pluck it up had to stop their ears with pitch, is alluded to in Romeo and Juliet &quot; And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, that living mortals, hearing them, run mad.&quot; The mandrake, often growing like the lower limbs of a man, was supposed to have other virtues, and was much used for love philtres (Diosc., iv. 7G), while the fruit was supposed, and in the East is still supposed, to facilitate pregnancy (Aug., C. Faust., xxii. 56; compare Gen. xxx. 14, where the Hebrew D^l-n i s undoubtedly the mandrake). Like the mallow, the mandrake was potent in all kinds of enchantment (see Maimonides in Chwolson, Ssabicr, ii. 459, and the notes). Dioscorides identifies it with the /ap/co/a,. the root named after the enchantress Circe. To it appears to apply the fable of the magical herb Baaras, which cured demoniacs, and was procured at great risk or by the death of a dog employed to drag it up, in Josephus (B. J., vii. G, 3). The German name of the plant (Alraune ; 0. II. G. Alruna) indicates the prophetic power supposed to be in little images (homunculi, Goldmannchen, Galgenmannchen) made of this root which were cherished as oracles. The possession of such roots was thought to ensure prosperity. (See Ducange, s.v. &quot;Mandragora,&quot; and Littre) Gerard in 1597 (Hcrlall, p. 280) described the male and female mandrakes. Dioscorides also recognizes two such plants apparently corresponding to the spring and autumn species (M. vcrnalis, Bert., and M. officinarum, L., respectively), differing as he says in the: colour of the foliage and shape of fruit. He alludes to the &quot;ridicu lous tales&quot; and &quot;doltish dreames&quot; about it merely to scout them. He notes that the root is often single, or with two to many branches. Even in his day, as now, the root of the wild bryony was trimmed to represent the human form, miscalled mandrake, and then sold as such to the ignorant. MANDPJLL, the name of one of the most remark able, at all events in outward appearance, of the Baboons, Cynocephalus maimon or mormon. The general characters of the genus to which it belongs are given in the article APE, vol. ii. p. 152. The word appears to have been first introduced into our literature in a work published in 1744 called A New Voyage to Guinea, by William Smith, who in an account of the animals of Sierra Leone describes one &quot; called by the white men in this country Mandrill,&quot; but adds, &quot; why it is so called I know not.&quot; l Smith gives sufficiently accurate details to show that his animal is not 1 &quot; Mandrill seems to signify a man-like ape, the word Drill or Dril having been anciently employed in England to denote an Ape or Baboon. Thus in the fifth edition of Blount s Glossographia, or a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue. . . very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read, published in 1681, I find Dril, a stonecutter s tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble,