Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/644

 608 APUKE territory, by the name of Japygia, after Japyx, the son of Dffidalus. This district was inhab- ited by three tribes, the Messapians or Salentmi in Messapia, the Peucetii in the region near the Aufldus (Ofanto), and the Daunians further north'. The Romans, however, ignoring these divisions, called all the region, except Messapia, Apulia. The Apulians first appear in history as concluding in 326 B. C. a treaty of alliance with Rome against the Samnites, which they soon after repudiated, thus becoming involved in war with the Romans. In 317 all the Apu- lian cities submitted to Rome. It was the chief theatre of the most important part of the second Punic war, and the battle of Cannro was fought within its borders in 216. Many Apu- lian cities made common cause with Hannibal, but were severely punished on their recapture by Romans. A great portion of Apulia again turned against Rome in the social war, but was resubjugated and harshly punished by 0. Cosconius in 89. The province appears to have suffered so severely from the conflicts carried on within it, that from this time it de- clined in wealth and prosperity; and little is said of it until its union, under Augustus, with Calabria (in the ancient meaning of the term) and the territory of the Hirpini, the three form- ing the "second region " in that emperor's di- vision of Italy. The Hirpini were afterward transferred into the " first region," Calabria and Apulia forming one province, down to the fall of the western empire. The Byzantine em- perors regained control of it in the 10th cen- tury, after its possession had been long an object of contention between the Lombards, Saracens, and themselves, and held it under a viceroy called a catapan until it was conquered by the Normans in the llth century, who made it a duchy, Robert Guiscard, their lead- er, becoming its first duke. His son Roger united it, as well as Campania and modern Ca- labria, with his kingdom of Sicily. The modern name of part of the territory, Capitanata, is a corruption of Catapanata, from catapan. The principal cities of ancient Apulia were Teanum, Luceria, Arpi, Salapia, Canusium, Venusia, and Barium. The district is by the Italians called Puglia, but not officially. AIM RK, a river of Venezuela, has its sources in Colombia, in the eastern chain of the Andes, flows between the provinces of Varinas and Apure in an E. N. E. direction, receiving the waters of the Portuguesa, Guarico, and other affluents from the north, flow^ then E. S. E., and unites with the Orinoco, of which it is an impor- tant tributary, in lat. 7 40' N.,' Ion. 66 45' W. According to Humboldt, its mean descent is about 14 inches to the mile ; but the current in the lower part of its course is hardly percepti- ble, and any rise in the waters of the Orinoco causes it to overflow its banks. The lands thus overflowed yield, after the water hat retired, a rich and excellent pasturage. APITRIMAC, a river of Peru, which rises in lat. 15 21' S., Ion. 72 10' W., not far from AQUA .TOFANA the sources of the river Camana, in a lake sit- uated between spurs of the mountains of Cay- lloma. It flows N. for a short distance, then N. N. W. for about 165 m., receiving several other streams, to its junction with the Man- taro in lat. 12 S., and from that point is known as the Tambo as well as the Apurimac. Hence it flows first N. E., then N. N. W. for more than four degrees of latitude nearly parallel with the Urubamba, and they unite and form the Ucayale in lat. 8 30' S., Ion. 73 24' W. The Apurimac and the Urubamba collect the moist- ure of the high plateau of the interior of Peru, and are among the largest tributaries of the Amazon, the former being sometimes reckoned its source. AQUA (Lat. water), a favorite prefix of the old alchemists to various fluid mixtures, as aquafortis, now called nitric acid ; aqua regia, the mixture of nitric and muriatic acids, used to dissolve gold, the king of the metals, now called nitro-muriatic acid, or nitro-chlorhydric acid; aqua vita, now alcohol. Aquamarine is an old name given to a fine variety of beryls from the color resembling the green of sea water. The aquce of the pharmacopoeia con- sist of water holding volatile or gaseous sub- stances in solution. Those which receive a name from some volatile vegetable substance, as aqua cinnamomi or aqua camphorce, contain very much less of the active ingredient than the corresponding tinctures. AQUA TOFANA (Ital. acqua delta Toffanina}, a secret poison employed in Italy during the lat- ter part of the 17th century, and said to have been invented by a woman named Tofana, a native of Sicily, who lived for a time in Paler- mo, and subsequently in Naples, where she ex- ercised her criminal art on a large scale. Her customers are said to have been chiefly young wives who wished to be rid of their husbands ; and when the number of mysterious deaths about the year 1651) at last aroused suspicion, a secret society of young married women was discovered, presided over by a creature called La Spara, who had learned the art of poisoning from Tofana. La Spara and several others were executed. Tofana was thrown into prison, but the date and manner of her death are uncertain. According to Labat, a French traveller, about 1709 she was seized in a convent in which she had taken refuge, and having, on being tortured, confessed 600 poisonings, she was strangled in prison. On the other hand, Keysler, a German traveller, says he saw her in prison at Naples, a little old woman, in 1730. The poison was put up in small phials, labelled " Manna of St. Nicholas of Bari," with an image of the saint on one side. Incredi- ble and contradictory accounts are given of its nature and effects ; it is most probable that it I was essentially a strong watery solution of arsenic obtained by long boiling. The use of such an article, even in the dose of five or six drops, frequently repeated for a length of time, would cause death with many of the symptoms ascribed to the aqua Tofana.