Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/529

Rh upon the conductors and passing through a narrow slit in the channel. The return current passes through the rails. The cars carry as many as 56 passengers on a level line. Tramways have also been worked by accumulators at Antwerp and Brussels, but the weight of them appears to be at present prohibitory to this method of applying electricity, except for short trips. See.

For fuller information, see D. K. Clark, Tramways, their Construction and Maintenance; F. Sérafon, Les Tramways et les Chemins de Per sur Routes; "Street Tramways," ''Proc. Inst. C. E''., vol. l.-vol. Ixvii.; "The Working of Tramways by Steam," Ibid., vol. Ixxix.; and F. B. Smith, Cable Tramways.

 TRANCE.See ; also.  TRANI, a seaport of Italy, on the Adriatic, in the province of Bari, and 26 miles by rail west-north-west of that town, still retains its old walls and bastions, with the citadel, now used as a prison. Some of the streets remain much as they were in the mediaeval period, and many of the houses display more or less of Norman decoration. The cathedral, on a raised open site near the sea, dating from about the year 1100, is a basilica with three apses, a large crypt, and a lofty tower. The arches of the Romanesque portal are beautifully ornamented, in a manner suggestive of Arab influence; the bronze doors, executed by Barisanus of Trani in 1175, rank among the best of their period in southern Italy. The capitals of the pillars in the crypt are fine examples of the Romanesque. The interior of the cathedral has been barbarously modernized. The vicinity of Trani produces an excellent wine (Moscado di Trani); and its figs, oil, almonds, and corn are also profitable articles of trade. The harbour was once deep and good, but latterly has got silted up. The population of the town in 1881 was 25,173 (commune 25,647).

Trani is the Turenum of the itineraries. It first became a flourishing place under the Normans and during the crusades, but attained the acme of its prosperity as a seat of trade with the East under the Angevine princes. Several synagogues continue to afford an indication of its former commercial prosperity.

 TRANQUEBAR, a seaport town in the Tanjore district of Madras presidency, India, in 11° 1′ 37″ N. lat. and 79° 55′ E. long. In the 17th century it belonged to the Danes; it was taken by the British with other Danish settlements in 1807, but restored in 1814, and finally purchased in 1845 for a sum of 20,000. In Danish times Tranquebar was a busy port, but its prosperity has fluctuated considerably of late years, and is now at a very low ebb. It was the first settlement of Protestant, missionaries in India, founded by Ziegenbalg and Plutschau (Lutherans) in 1706; and as a mission station it still retains its importance.  TRANSBAIKALIA (Zabaikahkaya Oblast), a province of Eastern Siberia, to the east of Lake Baikal, has Irkutsk on the west, Yakutsk on the north, the province of Amur on the east, and Mongolia on the south. Its area (240,780 square miles) is about as great as that of Austria-Hungary, but its population is under half a million. With regions of a purely Siberian character on the one hand, and including on the other the outer borders of the Mongolian steppes and the upper basin of the Amur, Transbaikalia forms an intermediate link between Siberia, Mongolia, and the northern Pacific littoral. The mountains of the Yablonovoi Khrebet, which run in a north-easterly direction from the sources of the Kerulen to the bend of the Olekma in 56 N. lat., divide the province into two quite distinct parts: to the west the upper terrace of the high East Asian plateau continued from the upper Selenga and Yenisei (from 4000 to 5000 feet high) towards the plateau of the Vitim (3500 to 4000 feet); and to the east the lower terrace of the same plateau (about 2800 feet high), which appears as a. continuation of the eastern Gobi. The continuity of the high plateau extending from the upper Selenga to the upper Vitim was for a long time overlooked in consequence of a broad and deep valley by which it is intersected. Beginning at Lake Baikal, it pierces the huge north-western border-ridge of the plateau, and runs eastward up the Uda, with an imperceptible gradient, like a gigantic railway cutting enclosed between two steep slopes, sending another branch south towards Kiakhta. After having served, through a succession of geological periods, as an outlet for the water and ice which accumulated on the plateau, it is now utilized for the two highways which lead from Lake Baikal over the plateau (3500-4000 feet) to the Amur in the east and the Chinese depression in the south. Elsewhere, the high and massive border-ridge on the north-western edge of the plateau can be crossed only by difficult footpaths. The border-ridge just mentioned, pierced by the wide opening of the Selenga, runs from south-west to north-east under different names, being known as Khamar-daban to the south of Lake Baikal (the Khamar-daban peak raising its bald summit to a height of 6900 feet above the sea), and as the Barguzin Mountains (7000 to 8000 feet) along the eastern bank of the Barguzin river, while farther to the north-east it has been described by the present writer under the names of the South Muya and Tchara Mountains (6000 to 7000 feet). Resting its south-east base on the plateau, it descends steeply on the north-west to the lake, or to the broad picturesque valleys of the Barguzin, the Muya, and the Tchara. Larch, fir, and cedar forests thickly clothe the ridge, whose dome-shaped rounded summits (goltsy) rise above the limits of tree vegetation, but do not reach the snow-line (here above 10,000 feet). The high plateau itself has the aspect of an undulating table-land, intersected by low ranges, which rise some 1500 or 2000 feet above its surface, and are separated by broad, flat, and marshy valleys, which the rivers languidly traverse till they find their way across the border-ridges. Those of the valleys which are better drained have fine meadow lands, but as a whole the plateau has the appearance, especially in the north, of a wet or marshy prairie in the hollows, while the hills are thickly clothed with forests (almost exclusively of larch and birch). Numberless lakes and ponds occur along the river courses. Tungus hunters find a livelihood in the forests and on the meadows, but permanent agricultural settlements are impossible, corn seldom ripening on account of the early frosts. The lower parts of the broad and flat valley of the Djida have, however, a few Cossack settlements, and on the upper Selenga and Yenisei Mongolian shepherds (tlryankhes and Darkhates) inhabit the high grassy valleys about Lake Kossogol (5560 feet above the sea). Quite different is the lower terrace of the plateau, occupied by the eastern Gobi and the Nertchinsk region of Transbaikalia, and separated from the above by the Yablonovoi ridge. This last is the south-eastern border ridge of the higher terrace. It rises to 8250 feet in the Sokhondo peak, but elsewhere its dome-shaped summits do not exceed 5000 or 6000 feet. When crossing it from the north-west, about Tchita, the traveller hardly perceives that he is approaching the great water-parting between the Arctic and the Pacific oceans. Numberless lakes, with flat undefined borders, feed streams which flow lazily amidst marshes, some of them to join the great northward rivers, others to find their way to the Amur and the Pacific. Low hills rise gently above the edge of the plateau, but an abrupt slope descends towards the south-east, where the hill- foots of the Yablonovoi are nearly 1500 and 2000 feet lower than on the north-west. Climate, flora, and fauna suddenly change as soon as the Yablonovoi has been crossed; the steppes of Dauria (continuations of those of the Gobi), covered with a bright luxuriant vegetation, meet the view of the spectator. The Siberian flora gives way to the much richer Daurian flora, which in turn is exchanged for the Pacific littoral flora as soon as the traveller descends from the lower terrace of the plateau towards the Manchurian plains and lowlands.