194 



Si AM' I ICI.I.i. 



x AMUNAVIAN M VTIK >!.( ><; V 



Imrn in AlWnm about 1403, but hi* parent* were 

 llh of Sen-inn descent, Ity tin- Christians he 

 wan commonly called George Cant riot, though the 

 Servian family name wan Branilo. Young deorge 

 was carried away )>y tin- Turks when mily seven 

 veanof age, and was brought up in the rrec.1 nf 

 Islam. Hl personal prowess and skill a- a military 

 leader made him a favourite with Sultan Murad 

 (Amuralh) II.. who gave him the command of a 

 ilivinion in the Ottonmii armies, lint when al~>ut 

 forty yean of age he took a momentous stop, which 

 he had some time l*ecn mi'ditating : after the Turks 

 were repulsed by the Hungarian forces at Nitwa 

 Ni-eh) in 1443, Sconderbcg deserted with three 

 hundred Albanian followers, having lirst extorted 

 from the -HIUM'H secretary an onler to the governor 

 of the mountain fortress of Croya ( Ak-hissar) that 

 be was to hand over that stronghold to him 

 (Scanderbeg). From that time the Albanian chief, 

 who now leinmneed Islam for Christianity, the 

 creed of hU fathers and his countrymen, was an 

 unrelenting foe to the Turks ; they never beat 

 him hut mire, ami him name grew to be a 

 terror to their soldiery. In less than a month 

 after the capture of Croya the whole of Albania 

 was up in arms, and the Turkish garrisons had 

 been seized or compelled to retire out of the 

 country. Early in the following year the Albanian 

 chiefs unanimously elected Seamlei 'licg I heir leader. 

 He collected an army of 15,000 men, and with them 

 nearly annihilated in the defiles a Turkish force of 

 40,000 ; anil other columns shared the same fate in 

 the succeeding campaign. The years 1446-48 were 

 chiefly occupied with a fierce war against Venice. 

 At length Amurath II. himself took the field (1449) 

 with 150,000 men ; hut the little hill-fort of Sfeti- 

 grad succexsfiilly defied him until he h:nl lost 

 3O.OOO soldiers, and then it was only taken 

 through treachery. And being after that effectu- 

 ally foiled ln*fori* the walls of Crova, the sultan 

 withdrew in disgust. These splendid achievements 

 braogfat to Scanderheg congratulations, as well as 

 material assistance in stores and volunteers, from 

 the potentate* of Italy ami Hungary ; hut none 

 of them sent the brave leader an army, or took up 

 the war with him. The proud Albanian chiefs 

 too l*cgon to fall away, mainly liceausc of Seamier- 

 l*eg's manifest purpose of aggrandising his own 

 family ami enlarging its power; some of them 

 even went over to the enemy and led Turkish 

 armies against him. But he nevertheless con- 

 tinued to crush every force that the Turks ponied 

 into the mountain fastnesses of Albania, or 

 -t.iH.iricd near it frontiers. At length in 1461 

 a trace of ten yearn was concluded between the 

 combatant!. Two years later, however, at the 

 iiiNii-ati.in of I'opn Pins II., who tried in vain to 

 league the Christian princes together against the 

 all coiii|ui*riiig I M tomans, Scanderbcg renewed the 

 war, and again defeated every force that dared to 

 attack him. Even Mohammed II., comjueror of 

 CoiiMAiitinople, conducted two cani|>aigiis in person 

 the invincible chief, and retired baffled 

 l-oth time*, on the first after I. ...ing :Ci.<KH> men 

 l*efoic Croya. Hcandcrheg died at Alcxsio on l"th 

 January 1468, of malarial fever, doubtless also 

 ..rii nut liy a quarter of a century's fierce and in 

 eomant fighting, lie wan |*crxonal1y a man ..i tall 

 stature and commanding appearance, terrilile in 

 battle, inflexible in rofolutiun, of wonderful activity, 

 and full of mourn*, a man whom victory did not 

 dMontts*, n..r de.eMi.,*) dishearten; nor was 

 natural kimlline-. w holly dcstroyc<l by the savage 

 iintiir*. of the tiife ho was engage.! in. There 

 can bo no donht that for a time he broke the 

 foroe of Moslem irruption, ami bail he Ix-en ade- 

 quately ujip-irtml would have inflicted some *,c r 

 Tit injury ii|Hin the Turkish power. After his 



death the Albanian opposition speedily collapsed 

 an incontotihlc proof of Scanderl>eg's genin- 



iganel, llnlnirc 1/11 Snttulrrlxg ( 1855), and the 

 Edinburgh Rtvitw (October 1881 ). 



Sraiidcrooii. or ALEXANDRETTA (h/.ani/e- 

 iii a, 'Alexander's town'), the port of Alcp|>o, 

 stands on the east shore of the Gulf of Scande- 

 loon, in the extreme north-east of the Levant. 

 30 miles N. of Antioch, and 77 NW. of Alep|H>. 

 It is a poor and unhealthy place, of some 

 1500 inhabitants, with a large but neglected har- 

 bour. Nevertheless it Im.s a transit trade worth 

 --M>OI,600 a year 1,698,200 leing for imp.. it- 

 destined for Alep]H) and the towns of northern 

 Syria, and 903,400 for c\ports. chielly wisd. 

 cuecie, native manufactures, cereals, leather and 

 hides, cattle, butter, &c., galls and yellow lorries. 

 pistachio mil- and raisins, liquorice root, copper 

 ore, and silk cocoons. The imports condBl pnnci 

 pally of manufactured gotxls ( two-thirds of the 

 total), cloth, groceries, indigo, specie, metals, 

 leather and hides, silk, drugs, &c. Britain's 

 share of the whole is ;<l |, per cent. ; next comes 

 Turkey with 19 per cent. Alexandretta was 

 founded by Alexander the Great to commemorate 

 his victory of Issus (333 B.C.). Off here Sir 

 Kenelm Digby defeated a Franco- Venetian squad- 

 ron (1628); and close by the Egyptian Mehemet 

 Ali defeated the Turkish troops in 1832. 



Scandinavia, a large peninsula in the north 

 of Europe, branded on the N. by the Arctic Ocean, 

 on the \V. by that branch of" the Atlantic now 

 ea I led the Norwegian Sea, and on the S. and E. by 

 the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. The 

 character of the country, its physical features, 

 industries, &c., are given under" NORWAY and 

 SWEDEN. Historically, Scandinavia includes Den- 

 mark and Iceland, and in a literary sense also the 

 productions of the Swedish race in Finland. For 

 Scandinavian languages and literatures, see I. i 

 LAND, NORWAY, SWEDEN, DENMARK, and EDDA. 

 Scandinavian Mythology, NORSE or 

 NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY, or more properly TEU- 

 TONIC MVTIIOLOCY, since ite 

 chief deities were worshipped by 

 all brunches of the Teutonic 

 race. The sources to be examined in regard to 

 Scandinavian mythology are many and varied. 

 ' Runic monuments' of which George Stephens has 

 published three volumes, a work of great importance 

 to students of mythology, are found throughout 

 the Scandinavian countries. From heathen Ger- 

 many we have a few ancient laws, and a few 

 glossaries containing mythological words. The 

 Lex Xalira, of which we have a Latin translation, 

 was doubtless originally produced in the German 

 tongue. Then there are formuhe by which the 

 new converts to Christianity renounced the old 

 gods, and in which names of heathen divinities 

 therefore occur. But precious though it be, the 

 amount of mythological information to be gathered 

 from these and similar sources is very small. A 

 richer vein of information is the tolerably well- 

 represented collection of German heroic JMHMIIS, 

 among which the most important are the Niblung 

 story and Gudrun. The Heliand preserves a 

 nmiilier of heathen phrases and figures of speech. 

 The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf poem would be more 

 valuable had not the transcriber conceived it to be 

 his duty to omit the names of the heathen gods 

 occurring in the lay. Iceland is the Mecca to 

 which all must turn who would understand the 

 Minic religion: Iceland is the Patmos where 

 Scandinavian mythology was recorded. There we 

 find a large mytliologiciil literature put in writing 

 after the introduction of Christianity (1000 A.D. ), 

 and after the people had adopted the Roman 



C..|.Trlhl 18t 18>7. od 

 1900 In Ike U.S. bv J. B. 

 Llppluoott 



