SUWANEE RIVER 



SWALLOW 



825 



face and a stooping attitude ; yet he was strong and 

 healthy, and mured to hardship he lived like a 

 common soldier, and slept by preference on a truss 

 of hay. Of great intelligence, lie was a constant 

 reader, even when on campaign, and a clever lin- 

 guist. The idol of his soldiers, who loved to call 

 him 'Father SuvorofF, ' he was never defeated, and 

 only once in his life acted on the defensive. He 

 had a superb faith in his own star, and trusted to 

 the inspiration of the moment, to rapidity of move- 

 ment, and to boldness and dash in making the 

 onset. Notwithstanding the terrible loss of life that 

 attended his storm of Ismail (26,000 Turks were 

 killed ) and of Praga at Warsaw ( where 15,000 Poles 

 were massacred ), he is stated to have been averse 

 to shed blood, and to have been even humane and 

 merciful. In his manners he was extravagantly 

 eccentric, brusque and curt in speech, laconic in 

 his despatches, and sarcastic to all who incurred 

 the contempt of the soldier and man of action. 

 Byron's description of him in Don Juan is as in- 

 accurate as the biographies written by his enemies, 

 the French. See Life by Lieut. -Col. Spalding 

 (Lond. 1890). The name of Suwarrow Islands 

 belongs to a part of the Manihiki (q.v. ) group. 



Suwanee River rises in southern Georgia, in 

 the Okefinokee Swamp, and flows in a winding, 

 generally south-south-west course through Florida 

 into the Gulf of Mexico. 



Suzdal, a small Russian town (7000), 12 miles 

 N. of Vladimir, once capital of an important 

 Russian principality. See RUSSIA, pp. 42, 43. 



Suzerain, a feudal lord. The term was applied 

 less to the king than to his vassals who had snb- 

 vassals holding of them. In modern times suze- 

 rainty indicates a degree of formal or real authority 

 varying from the relation of the Ottoman porte to 

 the tributary states, to that of the British crown to 

 the Transvaal or South African Republic. 



Svas'tika, a religious symbol used by early 

 races of Aryan stock from Scandinavia to Persia 

 and India. It consists of a Greek cross, either 

 enclosed in a circle the circumference of which 

 passes through its extremities , or with its arms 



bent back thus i [ I, and was intended to represent 



the sun, being found invariably associated with the 

 worshipof Aryan sun-gods (Apollo, Odin). Similar 

 devices occur on the monumental remains of the 

 ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, and on objects 

 exhumed from the prehistoric burial-mounds of 

 the United States. See CROSS. 



Sveabors, a fortress in Finland, sometimes 

 called ' the Gibraltar of the North,' protects the 

 harbour and town of Helsingfors (q.v.), from which 

 it is 3 miles distant. The present strong fortifica- 

 tions, which were planned by Count Ehrensvard in 

 1849, have been already described under Helsing- 

 fors. It only remains to add here that at Sveaborg 

 there are an arsenal, docks, slips, and a monument 

 to the ' father ' of the fortress. Pop. 1000, exclud- 

 ing the garrison. The fortifications were betrayed 

 into the hands of the Russians by the Swedish 

 commandant in 1808. 



gvendborg. See FUNEN. 



Svend.sen, JOHAN SEVERIN, composer, born at 

 Christiania, 30th September 1840. He studied at 

 Leipzig, Paris, and in Italy, conducted concerts in 

 his native town, and in 1883 became master of the 

 Chapel Royal at Copenhagen. His works comprise 

 symphonies, an overture, and quartetts, quintetts, 

 and concertos for strings. 



Svenigorodka, a town in the Russian province 

 of Kieff, 100 miles S. of Kieff. Pop. 11,562. 



Swabia (Ger. Schwabeni, or SUABIA, an 

 ancient duchy in the south-west of Germany, 



stretchin" from Franconia to Helvetia (Switzer- 

 land ) and from Burgundy and Lorraine to Bavaria. 

 It was so named from the Germanic Suevi, who 

 drove out the Celtic inhabitants of the region in 

 the 1st century B.C. With those conquerors the 

 Alemanni, who invaded that part of Europe in the 

 end of the 5th century, became amalgamated ; and 

 from that time there were dukes in Swabia, except 

 for the period 746-919. During the reigns of the 

 Hohenstaufen emperors, who were natives of 

 Swabia and almost invariably conferred the ducal 

 dignity on some relative of their own house, this 

 duchy was the most rich, most civilised, and most 

 powerful country of Germariy, and the ducal court 

 was the centre of art, literature, and learning. After 

 the extinction of the imperial Swabian ( Hohen- 

 staufen ) line the dignity of duke of Swabia remained 

 in al>evance ; the feudatories of the duchy asserted an 

 immediate dependence upon the empire, and waged 

 frequent wars one upon another. Of these minor 

 states the most important and most powerful were 

 the countships of Wiirtemberg and Baden. The 

 towns and cities, very many of which enjoyed the 

 freedom of the empire, preserved a strong feeling 

 for independence and a no less strong feeling of 

 opposition to the feudal lords. In 1.331 twenty-two 

 towns (Ulm, Reutlingen, Augsburg, Heilbronn, 

 &c.) united for purposes of mutual defence. Thirty 

 years later many of the minor feudal lords 

 formed a league to oppose the towns, and bloody 

 feuds arose between the parties. The league of 

 the feudal party was broken up by the Count of 

 Wiirtemberg, the ally of the Swabian league (of 

 towns), in the last years of the 14th century. 

 Nevertheless feuds and violent dissensions still 

 raged rampant, and even continued to do so after 

 the emperor summoned all the parties concerned 

 to a conference at Esslingen (1487), where the 

 Swabian League was formed ( 1488 ) for the main- 

 tenance of peace throughout the old Swabian 

 duchy. This unhappy region suffered terribly 

 during the Peasant War (q.v.) of 1525, in the 

 Thirty Years' War (1618-48), and during the wars 

 of the French Revolution. From the time of the 

 Reformation the rulers of Wiirtemberg contended 

 with the German emperore for preponderance of 

 power in what since the beginning of the 16th 

 century was called the Circle of Swabia (one of 

 the ten into which the empire was divided ). The 

 former proved the stronger in the long run, and in 

 1806 founded the modern kingdom of Wttrtemberg, 

 which embraces the greater part of the old duchy. 



The Swabian School, in German literature, in- 

 dicates a band of writers who were natives of 

 Swabia (as Uhland, Schwab, Kerner, Morike, 

 Hauff, and others). For the Swabian Alb, see 



WlJKTEMBEEG. 



Swaffham, a market-town of Norfolk, 15 miles 

 SE. of Lynn. It has a cruciform Perpendicular 

 church (1474) of great beauty, a corn-hall (1858), 

 and an ugly market-cross (1783). Pop. (1851) 

 3858 ; ( 1891 ) 3636. 



Swahili (Arab. WaswaMU, 'coast people '), the 

 name given to the people of Zanzibar and the 

 opposite coast belonging to the Bantu stock, with 

 an Arab infusion, and speaking a Bantu tongue 

 modified by Arabic. The Swahili are intelligent 

 and enterprising, and are in demand as porters by 

 travellers into Central Africa. There is a collec- 

 tion of Swahili Folk-tales (1869) and a handbook 

 by Bishop Steere (1871 ; new ed. 1875), and a dic- 

 tionary by Krapf ( 1882). 



Swale, a river in the North Riding of York- 

 shire, flowing 60 miles ESE., and near Aldborough 

 uniting with the lire to form the Ouse (q.v.). 



Swallow, a genus (Hirundo) an-1 family (Hir- 

 undinidae) of Passerine birds. The members of 



