Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/496

 464 ANCAOH Alexander's reign, and that of his father Philip, and also a history of Greece. MCACH, a N. W. department of Peru, be- tween the Andes and the Pacific, bounded N. E. by the Marafion ; area, about 18,000 sq. m. ; pop. 317,000. It is one of the most fertile por- tions of Peru, producing heavy crops of cereals and a large quantity of sugar, and in some parts cotton. The elevated table lands are made very fertile by irrigation. Excellent marble is quarried and valuable minerals abound. The capital is Huaras, in an extensive, beautiful, and populous valley of the same name. Wood here is scarce, and its place is supplied with champa, a black vegetable matter resembling lignite. The other chief cities are Huaylas, Santa, Hua- ri, Cajatambo, Pomabamba, and Pallasca, each the capital of a province or district of the same name. It was through the passes of this department that the Colombian army, in the war of independence, made its astonish- ing march into Peru to attack the Spanish forces at Junin. ANCELOT. I. Jaeqnes Arsene Francois Polyrarpf, a French dramatist, born in Havre, Feb. 9, 1794, died in Paris, Sept. 7, 1854. He held an office in the ministry of the marine, which he lost after the revolution of 1830, as well as a pension granted him by Louis XVIII. In 1841 he was received a member of the French academy. His first tragedy, Louis IX, (1819), had great success from its adoption by the royalists as an offset against Casimir Dela- vigne's Vepres siciliennes. After retiring from office he devoted himself chiefly to the rapid production of vaudevilles and light pieces for the minor theatres. He also published Six mois en Russie, in prose and verse (1826) ; Marie de Brabant, a poem in six cantos ; and L'Homme du monde, a melodramatic romance, afterward dramatized. II. Marguerite Louise Virglnle Chardon, a dramatist and novelist, wife of the preceding, born in Dijon, March. 15, 1792. She collaborated largely in her hus- band's lighter works, and produced several successful comedies, the most popular of which -was Marie, ou trois epoquet (1836). j Her Theatre complet (4vols., 1848) comprises 20 plays. Her most popular novels have passed through many editions. She also cultivated painting, and in 1828 exhibited Une lecture de M. Ancelot, a picture which excited much at- tention from its portraits of nearly all the Parisian litterateurs. ANCHISES, a legendary Trojan prince, the father of ^Eneas. He was related to the fam- ily of Priam, and was king of Dardanus in Troas. Venus was enamored of him, and, visiting him in the disguise of a Phrygian prin- cess, became the mother of. Knra-. Accord- ing to Virgil, Anchises survived the capture of Troy, being borne from the burning city on the shoulders of his son, and died in Sicily shortly after the arriva) of ^Eneae in that island. The people of Ege'sta, a town situated near the place where he is said to have b'een ANCHOR buried, erected a sanctuary and celebrated funeral games in his honor. ANCHOR (Gr. &ym>pa, Lat. anchora, Ger. AnTcer), a metal hook of suitable form and of sufficient weight and strength to enable a ship, by means of a chain or cable attachment, to lay hold of the bottom, and thus remain fixed in any desired position. The form of the an- chor has undergone but slight modification since the time of Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher, about 594 B. C. Before him an- chors with one arm or tooth had been a short time in use, but he first added the second. The later Greek anchors were of iron, but origi- nally they consisted of large wooden pipes filled with melted lead. In the heroic times of Greece, large stones were sunk into the water by ropes to hold the ship ; and a little later bags of sand and baskets filled with rocks were used. Every ship was supplied with from four to eight anchors. The largest of them was termed the sacra, 'and was only used in times of great danger ; hence the proverb, sacram anchoram solvere, to fly to the last refuge. The Chinese anchors, now as in ancient times, are only crooked pieces of heavy wood. With the exception of Spain and certain of the South sea islands, where copper is occasionally employed, the metal used in the construction of anchors is the best of wrought iron. The form of the common wrought-iron anchor, with the manner in which it " lays hold " of the sea bottom, may be best understood by a refer- Fio. 1. Common Anchor. ence to fig. 1. It is evident from the direc- tion of the strain that any forward movement will cause the lower fluke and arm to be buried still deeper in the earth. Anchors are called solid or ordinary when the shank and arms are wrought into a body ; they are called portable when they can be taken to pieces. Each part of an anchor has a distinct name. The shank or the central part of the instru- ment is a round or octagonal bar of iron taper- ing toward one end, where it becomes square ; the arms are two curved pieces projecting from the heavy end of the shank at right angles with it, and in opposite directions; the stock is a transverse beam, of wood or of iron, fastened to the square end of the shank at right angles with it and with the arms, and serves to cant the anchor when the arms fall on the bottom in