Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/662

 632 TELL TELLURIUM and sentenced to death. But Gessler, hearing that he was a skilful marksman, told him his life would be spared on condition of his shoot- ing an apple from his child's head. Tell ven- tured the shot, and succeeded without injuring the child. Gessler perceived that he had put a second arrow in his quiver just before shoot- ing, and asked the object. Tell replied: "To kill you if I had harmed my son." For this he was again put in chains. Gessler then em- barked for Kiissnacht, taking Tell with him. On the way the boat was overtaken by a storm. The crew, fearing for their lives, begged Gess- ler to release Tell, that he might steer the boat. He complied, and as they neared the point now known as "Toll's Rock" or "Leap," Tell sprang ashore; but the most dangerous part of the coast had been passed, and the crew brought the boat safely to Brunnen. Mean- while Tell went around by land, and, lying in ambush between Brunnen and Kussnacht, wounded Gessler mortally with an arrow. Gessler' s death was the signal for a general uprising; the Austrian bailiffs were driven from the several cantons, and their castles de- stroyed. In 1315 Tell took part in the battle of Morgarten, and in 1354 was drowned in the Schachen while trying to save a boy's life. Such is the story in its main features, as Schil- ler has embodied it in his drama. But recent historical investigations put it in a very dif- ferent light. Schwytz, Uri, and Unterwalden struggled for autonomy against the Hapsburgs from 1240 to 1315, and later. The conflict seldom took the shape of armed hostilities; it was rather the gradual growth of local in- dependence. We do not know the names of the leaders of the Swiss movement, but we do know that there was no conspiracy of the Grutli, that no such bailiffs as Gessler, Wolfen- schiessen, and Landberg existed by those names, and no such men as Tell, Stauffacher, or Melch- thal. A league was formed by Schwytz, Uri, and Unterwalden, but it was not a secret con- spiracy, and it was formed in 1291 and not in 1307; and there was no uprising in 1308. Kopp ( Urkunden der Oeschichte der eidgends- sischen B'Ande, 1835), Huber (Die Waldstadte bis zur Begrundung ihrer Eidgenossenchaft, 1861), W. Vischer (Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstadte, 1867), Rilliet (Les origines de la confederation suisse, 1869), and others, have shown how patriotic imagination in Switzer- land, having lost the remembrance of the pre- cise steps by which independence was obtained, has actually created the tradition in its pres- ent shape. The beginning was made by Das weisse Buch, a chronicle composed about 1470, in which first occur most of the names with which we are familiar. Then comes the Tel- lenlied, composed about the same time ; then, in 1540, the Hiibsch Spyl of Uri. But these and similar productions were all outdone by -fflgidins Tschudi (1505-'72), in his Chroni- con Jlcheticum. Tschudi seems to have gath- ered scraps of tradition wherever ho could find them, to have expanded them and put them into the most plausible shape, and to have invented names, surnames, and even dates. Johannes von Muller and Schiller followed Tschudi. The popular version of the Swiss uprising, then, is to be regarded as a distor- tion of the facts, and its prominent persons and striking incidents are imaginative decora- tions added by generation after generation from the 15th to the 17th century. But Tell is the embodiment of a wide-spread Aryan myth. The Persian poet Ferid ed-Din Attar (about 1175) sings of a king who shoots an apple from the head of his favorite. Saxo Gram- maticus, in his "Danish Chronicle" (about 1170), tells how Toko shoots an apple from the head of his Son, by order of King Harold Bluetooth ; here the incident with the second arrow is mentioned. In the Edda, Eigil the marksman is made by King Nidung to shoot an apple from the head of his son, and the in- cident with the second arrow again occurs. The'name " Tell " has been variously explained. Grimm connects it with the Latin telum, an arrow; others with the German word tall, meaning half-witted. In Das weisse Buch Tell seeks to excuse his disrespect to the hat on the ground that he is dull of wit, saying, "Otherwise I should not be called the tall.' 1 ' 1 According to Carriere, the Tell saga is neither history nor pure invention, but the reminis- cence of ancient mythological poetry, recast and coupled with historical events. For a brief account of the Tell saga, see Carriere's edition of Schiller's Tell (Leipsic, 1871), and Buch- heim's edition (London, 1871). TELL-TALE, a bird. See TATTLER. TELLURIUM (Lat. tellus, the earth), an ele- mentary substance, discovered by Muller von Reichenstein in 1782, but first investigated and named by Klaproth in 1798; symbol, Te; chemical equivalent, 129 ; specific gravity, 6-65 ; hardness, 2 to 2'5. Though commonly classed among the metals, it has much analogy in its properties to sulphur and selenium. It fuses between 800 and 900 F., and can be distilled in a current of hydrogen. It is a bad con- ductor of heat and electricity. It occurs in a native state associated with iron pyrites and various metals, as gold, silver, bismuth, cop- per, or lead. The native metal is of a brilliant metallic lustre, of a tin-gray or lead-gray color, passing to steel-gray. It is very fusible before the blowpipe, and burns with a bluish flame, green on the edges; it volatilizes in white fumes, leaving no residue; and it is wholly soluble in nitric acid. The substance occurs in small masses, irregularly lamellar, and crystal- lized in six-sided prisms, at the mine of Maria Loretto near Zalatna in Transylvania. Its mQjSt common ore is the black, foliated mineral of X:iiry;'ig, which contains about 13 per cent, of tellurium in the form of tellurides of gold, lead, and silver, mixed with sulphides of anti- mony and lead. Tellurium is almost always combined with small portions of iron or gold