Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/854

 818 S Y R S Y R Since that date the mainland portion of the city has never been rebuilt. Syracuse is the seat of an archbishop, and since 1865 has been the capital of a province, which takes its name from the town. The inhabitants manufacture drugs and other chemical articles, earthenware, &c., and carry on a considerable trade, principally in wine. In 1885 785 vessels of 21,818 tons entered the port and 778 vessels of 21,480 tons cleared. At Syracuse Admiral de Ruyter died in 1676 after his defeat by the French at Agosta. The popu- lation in 1881 was 21,157. See Hare, Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily (London, 1883). SYRACUSE, a city of the United States, the county seat of Onondaga county, New York, 148 miles west of Albany, midway between that city and Buffalo. Syracuse is situated near the southern end of Onondaga Lake (5 miles long by 1 broad), whose waters flow northwards through Seneca and Oswego rivers into Lake Ontario at Oswego. The Erie Canal, flowing east and west, joins the Oswego Canal within the city. Syracuse contains several handsome public buildings, the county court- house, the United States Government building, the city- hall, the State asylum for idiots, the Onondaga peni- tentiary, the county orphan asylum, the asylum of St Vincent de Paul, the high school (containing the central library of 15,000 volumes), a State armoury, &c. Syra- cuse is the seat of a (Methodist) university, founded in 1870 and consisting of a college of the liberal arts, a college of the fine arts, and a college of physicians and surgeons. The salt industry, to which Syracuse owed much of its early prosperity, is still the staple; the springs situated near the southern end of Lake Onondaga, which appears to be the remains of a once very extensive basin, have been under State control since 1797. Previous to the opening of the Michigan springs they were the largest in the United States, and they still yield on an average from 7,000,000 to 8,000,000 bushels of salt per annum. Rolling-mills, furnaces, steel-works, glass-works, breweries, and manufactories of barrels, agricultural machinery, and clothing are among the secondary industrial establishments. At the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 Syracuse had only 300 inhabitants; by 1855 they were 25,107, and in 1860, 1870, and 1880 respectively they numbered 28,119, 43,051, and 51,792; in 1886 the number had risen to 81,000, including some adjacent villages recently annexed. By some investigators it is believed that Lake Onondaga was De Soto's "silver-bottomed" lake. The great tribal fortress of the Onondagas on the east side of the lake near the spot now occupied by Liverpool was attacked without success by Champlain in 1615. The first house on the site of Syracuse was built in 1805. The village, to which the name of Syracuse had been given in 1824, was incorporated in 1825, and the city in 1847. SYR-DARIA (Gr. and Lat. Jaxartes ; Arab. Shash or Sihun), a river flowing into the Sea of Aral, and having a length of 1500 miles and a drainage area of about 320,000 square miles. Incertitude as to its source prevailed until the recent occupation of Turkestan by the Russians. It has now been traced to the Naryn, which has its sources in the heart of the Tian-Shan complex, some 30 miles south of Lake Issik-kul, in the elevated valleys or syrts (12,000 feet) on the southern slope of the Terskei Ala-tau. Here under the name of Jaak-tash the river takes its rise amid mountain scenery of the wildest description, partly from the marshy mountain plateaus by which the "Warm Lake " is also fed, and partly from the immense glaciers of the dark and barren Ak-shiriyak Mountains (Petroff and Sir-tash glaciers). After its union with another mountain stream, the Barskaun, it is called the Taragai, and flows west-south-west at from 11, 000 to 10,000 feet above the sea, in a barren longitudinal valley between the Terskei Ala-tau and the foothills of the lofty Kokshat-tau. On entering a wild narrow gorge driven from west to east through the south-west continuation of the Terskei Mountains (Samatyn-tau) it receives the name of Naryn. Through this gorge it descends by a series of rapids from the heights of the mountain massif to a deep valley of the alpine region, its level at its issue from the gorge being reduced by fully 4000 feet : Fort Narynsk, 20 miles below the junction of the Great and the Little Naryn, is only Map l of Syr-Daria. 6800 feet above the sea. Here the river enters a broad valley formerly the bottom of an alpine lake and flows past the ruins of Fort Kurtka, for 90 miles westward, as a stream some 50 yards wide and from 3 to 11 feet deep. Its waters are utilized for irrigating Kirghiz corn- fields, which contrast strangely with the barren aspect of the lofty treeless mountains. The Atpasha a large mountain stream joins the Naryn at the head of this valley and the Atabuga at its lower end, both from the left. Before reaching the lowlands, the Naryn crosses three ridges separating the valley of Kurtka from that of Ferghana, by a series of wild gorges and broad valleys (170 miles), representing the bottoms of old lakes; the Togus-torgau, 2000 feet lower than Kurtka, and the Ketmen-tube are both covered with Kirghiz corn-fields. Taking a wide sweep towards the north, the river enters Ferghana also the bottom of an immense lake where, after joining the Kara-Daria (Black river) near Namangan, it receives the name of Syr-Daria. 2 The Kara-Daria is a mighty stream rising in the north-eastern spurs of the Atai Mountains. As it deflects the Naryn towards the west again, the natives consider it the chief branch of the Syr-Daria, but its volume is much smaller. At the con- fluence the Syr is 1440 feet above sea-level. The waters of the Syr-Daria and its tributaries are in this part of its course largely absorbed by numberless canals for irrigation. It is to the Syr that Ferghana is indebted for its high, if somewhat exaggerated, repute in Central Asia as a rich garden and granary; cities like Khokand, Marghilan, and Namangan, and more than 800,000 inhabitants of the former khanate of Khokand, live by its waters. Notwithstanding this drain upon it, the Syr could be easily navigated, were it not for the Bigovat rapids at Irdjar, at the lower end of the valley, where the river finds its way to the Aral-Caspian deserts by piercing a depression of the Mogol-tau. On issuing from this gorge the Syr enters the Aral de- pression, and flows for 850 miles in a north-westerly and northerly direction before reaching the Sea of Aral. On this section it is navigated by steamers. Between the Ird- jar rapids and Baitdyr-turgai (where it bends north) the Syr flows along the base of the mountain ridges which girdle the Tchotkat Mountains (see below) on the north-west, and receives from the longitudinal valleys of these alpine tracts a series of tributaries (the Angren, the Tchirtchik, the Keles), which in their lower courses fertilize the wide plains of loess extending from the right bank of the Syr. These plains and their rich supply of water have been the 1 Reduced from Mushketott's "Geological Map of the Turkestan Basin," in- his Turkestan (Russian), 1886, vol. i. 2 Syr and daria both signify " river," in two different dialects.