80 



CASHNA CASSANDRA. 



CASHNA, or CASSINA, or KASSINA ; a city 

 in Africa, capital of a kingdom, between Bornou and 

 Timhuctoo; 220 miles W.N.W. Bornou, 690 E.S.E. 

 Timbuctoo; Ion. 11" 34' E. ; lat. 1(3" 30* N. A large 

 proportion of tiie country of Cashna consists of land 

 of great fertility, inters j>ersed witli arid wastes. 

 Casfina is level, and said to contain 1000 towns ;unl 

 villages. The monarch is called sultan of all Soudan, 

 i. e. Aegroland. The principal articles of traffic are 

 senna, gold dust, slaves, cotton cloths, goat skins, ox 

 and buffalo hides, and civet. Cashna lias no salt 

 lakes or mines, but is supplied with salt from Bornou. 



CASUOO ; the common name of the anacardium 

 occidtntalt of Lin. ; a native of Haliar. The fruit of 

 the tree is called cashoo-nttt. The expressed juice 

 makes a pleasant wine ; and an aromatic and medi- 

 cinal drug is prepared by a decoction and maceration 

 of several parts of the tree, afterwards consolid; itei 1 

 by evaporation. The Indians chew it. The Euro- 

 peans employ it as a digestive, and a soother of 

 couglis. 



CASIMIR III. the Great, king of Poland, son of 

 Uladislaus Loketek, distinguished himself by his 

 valour, under the reign of his father, who had com- 

 missioned him to take revenge on the knights of the 

 Teutonic order ; and, that he might learn the art of 

 governing, made him regent of Great Poland. In 

 1333 he ascended the throne, and liad many contests 

 with the Teutonic knights, made himself master of 

 Little Russia, which had formerly belonged to Po- 

 land, conquered Silesia, repelled the Tartars, who had 

 advanced to Poland, and the Bohemians, who at- 

 tempted to gain possession of Silesia, as a fief of Bo- 

 hemia. He died in 1370, without children, having 

 named a son of the king of Hungary his successor, 

 in 1339. He caused a new code of laws to be com- 

 piled, and protected the peasants with much energy, 

 on which account he was called the peasants' king. 

 He had a great number of mistresses, among whom 

 was a Jewess, named Esther, who procured for her 

 nation those liberties which they enjoy in Poland to 

 the present day. With Casimir, the line of the Piasti, 

 which had ruled in Poland for 523 years, became 

 extinct. From that time, the Poles chose foreign- 

 ers for their kings, and thus laid the foundation of 

 the troubles which distracted the kingdom till its 

 final ruin. 



CASINO, in Germany, is used to signify a club- 

 house. They are now to be found in almost every 

 place of middling population. 



C ASIRI, MICHAEL, a learned Orientalist and Syro- 

 Maronite clergyman, was born at Tripoli, in Syria, 

 1710, came to Rome, where he studied in the col- 

 lege of St Peter and St Marcellino, and, in 1734, 

 entered the clerical profession. The following year, 

 he accompanied the learned Assemanni to Syria, 

 where he was going, at the command of the pope, to 

 attend the synod of the Maronites, and, in 1738, 

 gave, at Rome, an exact account of the religious 

 tenets of the Maronites. He afterwards taught, in 

 his monastery, the Arabic, Syrian, and Chaldee lan- 

 guages, theology and philosophy ; and, in the year 

 1748, was invited to Madrid, where he was appoint- 

 ed to an office in the royal library. In 1749, he de- 

 voted his attention, by the king's orders, to the lib- 

 rary of the Escurial, of which he subsequently l>e- 

 came the superintendent. Here he collected the 

 materials for his celebrated work, Bibliothcca Arabi- 

 co-Hispana (Madrid, 176070, 2 vols., folio), which 

 enumerates, in 1851 articles, the manuscripts of the 

 Escurial library, perhaps the richest in Europe in 

 Arabic manuscripts. This work, though not entire- 

 ly free from errors, contains very important informa- 

 tion and valuable extracts, and is indispensable to 

 Orientalist. Casiri died at Madrid in 1791. 



CASPIAN SEA ; a large lake or inland sea, in 

 Asia; bounded N. by Russia, E. by Tartary and 

 Persia, S. by Persia, and W. by I Yr>ia. < 'ircassia, and 

 Russia ; 646 miles in length from N. to S. , and from 

 100 to 265 in breadth ; supposed to be the largest 

 lake in the eastern part of the glol>e. The water is 

 less salt than that of the ocean, of a bitter taste, and 

 of an ocher colour, without ebb or flow. In some 

 places it is exceedingly deep, yet it abounds in slial- . 

 low*, so as to prevent the navigation of ships which 

 draw more than nine or ten feet of water. Among the 

 rivers which flow into it are the Volga, Ural, and Kur. 

 It lias no outlet. The fisheries here, wliich are very 

 valuable, occupy and train many seamen. The coasts 

 are divided among the Russians, Persians, and Tartars. 

 The Caspian sea was, by the ancients,called the Hyrca- 

 nian sea ; the Tartars call it Akdingis, i. e. the White 

 sea i the Georgians call it the Kurtshensian sea ; and 

 by the Persians it is styled Gursen. The level of the 

 Caspian sea is 375 feet lower tlian that of the ocean. 

 The Truclimenes, on the shores of the Caspian sea, 

 assert, that the lake Kuli-Daria, which is connected 

 with the gulf of Karabogaskoi, a part of the Caspian 

 sea, contains a whirlpool, which takes in the water 

 of the latter. In fact, the current from the Caspian 

 sea into the gulf of Karabogaskoi is very great. The 

 most recent information respecting the shores of the 

 Caspian sea is that given by Murawiew in his Jour- 

 ney to Khiwa, in the year 1819, in Russian. 



CASSANDER, GEORGE, born in 1515, in the island 

 of Cadsand, or Cassand, near Bruges, in the Nether- 

 lands, from which he received his name, is celebrat- 

 ed for his endeavours to settle the differences be- 

 tween religious parties. At Bruges, Ghent, and 

 Cologne, he studied, and afterwards taught philology, 

 the canon law, and Catholic theology, but accepted 

 no public office, on account of his ill health. 

 In 1561 he published a work designed to allay 

 religious disputes, in which his censure of Cal- 

 vin for violence and intolerance, drew upon him 

 the attacks both of Calvin and Beza. In 1564, he 

 was employed by the duke of Cleves to convert the 

 Anabaptists. The emperor Ferdinand I. invited him 

 to Vienna, to compose articles of union between the 

 Catholics and Protestants. These he published, 

 under Maximilian II., the successor of Ferdinand 

 De Articulis Religionis inter Catholicos et Protestantes 

 Controversis ad Impp. Ferd. I., et Max. II., Consul- 

 tatio, ed. Hug. Grot. (1642.) Though a sincere 

 Catholic, he founded liis opinions on the doctrines of 

 the old Christian fathers, and showed his concurrence 

 with the Protestants, in regard to fundamental doc- 

 trines, by proposing communion under both forms, 

 the marriage of priests, the abolition of image-wor- 

 sliip, the reform of many abuses, and a modification 

 of the Catholic system. But he asserted the supre- 

 macy of the pope, supported the doctrine of transub- 

 stantiation, and the importance of the sacrament, ex 

 opere operate. His proposals were not relished by 

 the zealots of either party. He died at Cologne, in 

 1566, with the reputation of a learned and liberal 

 theologian. 



CASSANDRA, also ALEXANDRA ; daughter 

 of Priam and Hecuba, and twin-sister of Helenus. 

 Both cliildren, according to tradition, were playing 

 in the vestibule of the temple of the Thymbrzean 

 Apollo, not far from Ilium ; and, having staid there 

 too late to be carried home, a couch of laurel twigs 

 was prepared for them, for the night, in the temple. 

 When the nurses went to them the next morning, 

 they found two serpents at the side of the children, 

 wliich, instead of injuring them, harmlessly licked 

 their ears. This miracle produced a still greater 

 one; the hearing of the children was rendered so 

 acute, that they could distinguish the voices of the 



