SHIKARPUR 



SHIPBUILDING 



399 



Mohammed, their twelfth im&m, in 879, but shall 

 be revived in him when he, the Hidden Imam, re- 

 appears as the Malidi. Shtism, the ancient protest 

 of Persian patriotism against Arabian ascendency, 

 has spread through Afghanistan into India, but 

 toward the west lias made no way. The Shlites, 

 divided and subdivided into sects, number 10 

 millions, most of whom are Aryans. Toleration 

 and free thought are common in towns and among 

 the more cultivated Persians, especially toward the 

 north. In 1736 Nadir Shah tried but failed to 

 restore the Shiites to orthodoxy. 



Sllikarplir, an important trading-town and 

 capital of a district in the north of Sind, stands 18 

 miles \\ . of the Indus, on the railway leading to 

 Quetta and Pishin. Before the opening of this 

 railway it was a place of very considerable com- 

 mercial importance, owing to its situation on one 

 of the principal routes between India and Khor- 

 assan viz. that by the Bolan Pass. It occupies 

 a very low site, the adjacent country being often 

 inundated, but the soil is extremely fertile, and 

 yields heavy crops of grain and fruits. Carpets, 

 coarse cottons, furniture, baskets, &c. are made 

 in the town. Pop. 42,496. The district has an 

 area of 10,001 sq. in. and a pop. of 852,986. 



Sliikarry. See SHEKARRY. 



Sliilka. See AMUR. 



Shillelagh, the cudgel carried by the conven- 

 tional Irishman, with which he is supposed to 

 delight to play upon the heads of his friends on 

 occasion. The name is borrowed from the once 

 famous oak-forest of Shillelagh in the south-west 

 corner of County Wicklow, which in Rufus' day 

 furnished ' cobwebless beams ' for the roof of West- 

 minster Hall. The railway station of Shillelagh, 

 16J miles SW. of Aughrim, is the terminus of a 

 branch-line. 



Shillfto, RICHARD, the greatest Greek scholar 

 of his day in England, was born in 1810, educated 

 at Shrewsbury and Trinity College, Cambridge, and 

 took the second place in the classical tripos in 1832. 

 Shortly after graduating he married, and thus made 

 himself ineligible for an ordinary fellowship. For 

 some five anil thirty years his beat energies were 

 given to ' coaching or private tuition, and it was 

 only in 1867 that he was elected Fellow of St Peter's 

 College, and so obtained leisure to realise the great 

 ambition of his life. This was an edition of Thucy- 

 dides, of which he only lived to publish the first 

 book, dying on 24th September 1876. He edited 

 I ii-uiosthenes' De Falsa Legations ( 1844). 



Shillibeer, GEORGE (.1797-1896). See OMNI- 



BOBB. 



Shilling (A.S. scylling), a coin whose name is 

 most proliably derived from a root skil, ' to divide,' 

 apparently because it was deeply marked with an 

 indented cross, so as to allow of its being easily 

 broken in four. The old Saxon coin of this name 

 was worth about "><1. The shilling in our sense was 

 first coined by Henry VII. in 1504 ; milled shillings 

 were first coined by Charles II. in 1662. The silver 

 shilling is nominally worth the twentieth part of 

 a pound sterling. But the silver of which shillings 

 are made contains 11 oz. 2 dwt. pure silver to 18 

 dwt. alloy ; and a pound by weight of this com- 

 pound is coined into 66 shillings ; so that each 

 shilling contains 80'727 grains tine silver, and its 

 value as bullion is very much less than its nominal 

 value. The shillings in the old coinages of various 

 north European countries had usually a much 

 smaller value e.g. the Danish copper shilling and 

 the .silver schilling of Hamburg were each worth 

 less than Id. 



Slilloh, a town of the tribe of Ephraim, the 

 first permanent resting-place of the Tabernacle 



(q.v.), the home of Eli and Samuel, and long the 

 religious centre of Israel. The site is well ascer- 

 tained a ruinous village hidden among the hills 

 20 miles north of Jerusalem. 



Sli i loll, one of the most desperate battles of the 

 American civil war, takes its name from a log 

 meeting-house, 2 miles from Pittsburg Landing, 

 which is on the Tennessee River, 8 miles above 

 Savannah. Here, on Sunday 6th April 1862, the 

 Confederates (40,000) under General A. S. Johnston 

 attacked and surprised the Union army (33,000) 

 under General Grant. The battle raged from dawn 

 to sunset, the Federal troops being steadily driven 

 back ; but the effort to utterly crush Grant failed , 

 and the next day he won back all the ground he 

 had lost, and the Confederates retreated. On the 

 6th Johnston was killed while heading the charge 

 of a brigade. The Southerners had 1728 killed, 

 8012 wounded, and 957 missing ; the Northerners, 

 1754 killed, 8408 wounded, and 2885 missing. 



ShiinoMoM'ki. a town of Japan, at the south- 

 west extremity of the main island and the western 

 entrance to the Inland Sea, was declared a seaport 

 open to foreign traders in 1890. The batteries and 

 a part of the town itself were destroyed during a 

 bombardment by a combined English, French, 

 Dutch, and American fleet in 1864. In 1895 a 

 treaty of peace was concluded here between China 

 and Japan. Pop. 30,8-25. 



Shin, LOCH. See SUTHERLAND. 



Shingles (probably derived from Lat. cinqulum, 

 'a belt^ is the popular name for the variety of 

 Herpes (q.v.) which is known as H. zoster. 



Shingles, flat pieces of wood used in roofing 

 like slates or tiles. Such roofs are much used in 

 newly-settled countries where timber is plentiful. 

 The wood is chosen from among the kinds which 

 split readily and straightly, and is usually some 

 kind of fir. It is cut into blocks, the longitudinal 

 faces of which are of the size intended for the 

 shingles, which are then, in Germany, for instance, 

 regularly split off in thicknesses of about a quarter 

 of an inch, but in America are sawn out, somewhat 

 thicker at one end than the other. In the United 

 States shingles, usually some 6 inches wide by 

 18 long, are in common use, and their manufac- 

 ture, especially in the Pacific states, has reached 

 enormous proportions. Shaved i.e. hand-made 

 shingles of Washington cedar fetch a somewhat 

 better price than the sawn ones, which cost about 

 $2 per 1000. Shingles are laid with one-third of 

 their length ( the thick end ) to the weather. 



Mi hit OIMII. See JAPAN, VoL VL p. 287. 



Shipbuilding. From crossing a stream of 

 water on a floating log, or on two or more logs 

 fastened together raft-wise, the 

 first steps towards shipbuilding 

 were probably the Canoe (Q-v.) 

 and Coracle ( q. v. ). The earliest Egyptian drawings 

 show boats constructed of sawn planks, and having 

 sails as well as numerous oars. So far as can be 

 learned from ancient sculptures, the ships of 

 ancient Greeks and Romans appear to have been 

 open, at least in the middle portion ; to have 

 been built with keel, ribs, and planking ; and 

 to have been strengthened crosswise oy the 

 numerous benches on which the rowers sat. 

 Ships continued, however, to be generally of small 

 draught, for they were beached every winter. The 

 Romans built their vessels of pine, cedar, and other 

 light woods ; but their ships of war were of oak 

 at the bows, clamped strongly with iron or brass, 

 and having rostra or beaks, for use as rams (see 

 TRIUKMES). 



With Rome's decline arose a new era for ship- 

 building. The hardy Norsemen had chopping seas 



Copyright 1892, 1897, and 

 1900 In the C. 8. hy J. B. 

 Llppincott Company. 



