Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/604

 576 TARTARUS TARTRATES during the grazing season ; the Buddhist Cal- mucka of eastern Turkistan, extending into Dzungaria; the Kazaks, in the region of the Sir Darya; and many smaller tribes. The predatory Turkomans inhabiting the country E. of the Caspian, from the Oxus to the Per- sian frontier, are of Tartaric origin, although the pure Tartar features are preserved in but few of the tribes, owing to the large admixture of Aryan blood. The characteristic Tartar physiognomy appears most distinctively at the present day among the Kirghiz, who have high cheek bones, noses thick but depressed, nar- row eyes, and little or no beard. Almost every grade of variance from this type, however, is met with. In central Asia, the word Turk is used as synonymous with Tartar, merely to indicate Mongolians. According to Col. Yule, the two classes of people whom Marco Polo would identify with Gog and Magog represent the two genera of the Tartar race, namely, the White Tartars, or Turks, and the Black Tar- tars, or Mongols proper, who formed the bulk of the followers of Genghis Khan. Indeed, the name Mongol (bold), which he is said first to have given to the tribes who followed his standard, has been regarded as directly derived from Magog. The word Tartar or Tatar (also Ta-ta) appears to be of Chinese origin, and was applied to early invaders of China from the upper Amoor region. They were a war- like and savage race ; and possessing vast num- bers of horses, they often descended upon the peaceable Chinese, and plundered their vil- lages. Their predatory characteristics came to be so closely associated with their name as to lead to its eventual application to numerous other robber hordes. The Altai mountains appear to have been the centre of the great Mongolian migratory movement which began in the 4th century and lasted until the 10th, extending over the neighboring Asiatic coun- tries, and under Attila far into Europe, where its results may still be traced in the Tartar pop- ulation of eastern and southern Russia. The vast military expeditions of Genghis Khan and Timour were subsequent movements of a like character. Shamanism was the original faith of the Mongols. This was succeeded by Bud- dhism, which was abandoned for Lamaism about the end of the 16th century. Sunni Mohammedanism is now professed by the west- ern Tartars generally, both in Asia and Europe. TARTARUS, in the Grecian mythology, a son of ^Ether and Gaea, and the father of the giants Typhams and Echidna. In the Iliad Tarta- rus is a place as far below Hades as heaven is above the earth, and there by later writers the spirits of the wicked are said to be pun- ished. By the later poets also the name is often used synonymously with Hades. TARTARY, a geographical designation now usually limited to Turkistan and the adjoining regions, but formerly of much wider significa- tion, embracing a broad belt stretching across the centre of the Asiatic continent from the Japan and Okhotsk seas on the east to the Caspian on the west, and according to some geographers extending westward into Europe as far as the river Don. Tartary in its most extended sense therefore includes, in Asia, Mantchooria, Mongolia, Dzungaria, East Tur- kistan or High Tartary, Turkistan proper, in- cluding Khokan, Bokhara, and Khiva (for- merly known as Independent Tartary), and all the southern part of the Russian possessions in Asia; and in Europe, the greater part of the Russian governments of Orenburg, Astrakhan, and Yekaterinoslav, the Don Cossack territory, and the Crimea, the last of which was former- ly called Little Tartary, and also Crim Tar- tary, from the name of the horde which set- tled there in the 13th century. The name Tartary, however, is now seldom applied to any region outside of that bounded N. by Si- beria, E. by Mantchooria, S. by China proper, Thibet, India, Afghanistan, and Persia, and W. by the Caspian sea. TARTEVI, Giuseppe, an Italian violinist, born at Pirano, Istria, in 1692, died in Padua in 1770. He gave up law and theology, acquired unrivalled proficiency as a violinist, eloped with one of his pupils, and lived for two years concealed in the convent of Assisi. There he diligently studied music, and being at length forgiven, came out of the convent the best player in Europe. Among his celebrated pupils were Pagin, La Houssaye, and Pugnani. His most remarkable composition is his Sonate du didble, or " Tartini's Dream." TARTRATES, salts formed by the union of tartaric acid with bases. Tartaric acid is di- basic, and forms with monatomic metals acid salts, like bitartrate of potassium, KHC 4 H40e ; normal salts, like normal potassic tartrate (solu- ble tartar), KaC^^e ; and double salts, like sodic-potassic tartrate (Rochelle salt), NaKG- H 4 O 8. With diatomic metals it forms normal salts, like normal basic tartrate, BaCJ^Oe, and double salts consisting of a double mole- cule of the acid in which two atoms of hydro- gen are replaced by a diatomic and two atoms by a monatomic metal, like baric-potassic tar- trate, BaC4H 4 Oe,K 2 C4H4O6 + 2H 2 O. With tri- atomic metals it forms a peculiar class of salts, well illustrated in the case of the antimony salts, as normal antimonious tartrate, (SbO)a C4H 4 Ofl ; acid antimonious tartrate, SbO^Hs Oe ; and potassio-antimonious tartrate, tartar emetic, KSbOCiH^Oe. Many of the tartrates are used in medicine, and several are employed in calico printing and dyeing, as the tartrate of chromium and the tartrate of potassium and tin. The principal medicinal tartrates are the double salts, tartar emetic and Rochelle salt. (See ANTIMONY, and ROCHELLE SALT.) The tartrates of the alkalies are oxidized in the animal system to bicarbonates, so that the ad- ministration of tartrate of potassium renders the urine alkaline. The acid alone, on the other hand, is more efficient than the mineral acids in acidifying this excretion.