SIENKIEWICZ 



5375 



SIERRA NEVADA 



1870-71 Paris, 135 days. Fell. 



1877 Plevna, 144 days. Fell, 



1899-1900 Ladysmith. 120 days. Kelieved. 



1905 Port Arthur, 241 days. Fell. 



1912-13 Adrianople, 155 days. Fell. 



1914-15 Przemysl, 185 days. Fell. F.ST.A. 



Related Subjects. The reader is referred to 

 the following: articles in these volumes : 

 Antwerp Port Arthur 



Franco-German War Russo-Japanese War 

 Lucknow War of Secession 



SIENKIEWICZ, shenkya'vich, HENRYK 

 (1842-1916), a Polish novelist, best known as 

 the author of Quo Vadis, a vivid story of an- 

 cient Rome in the days of Nero. It has been 

 dramatized both for the regular stage and for 

 the moving-picture theaters, and always with 

 telling effect. Sienkiewicz possessed in a re- 

 markable degree the power to visualize historic 

 scenes and characters, and his stories are in- 

 tensely interesting and powerfully emotional. 

 He was born in the province of Siedlce. After 

 his student days at the University of Warsaw 

 he visited California, writing an account of his 

 journey in a series of letters published in the 

 Polish Gazette. His first novel, The Tatar 

 Bondage, published in 1880, was a great suc- 

 cess, and was followed by a trilogy having as 

 a background the struggle between the Poles 

 and Cossacks. The three books of this series 

 are entitled With Fire and Sword, The Deluge 

 and Pan Michael. Among his other widely- 

 read novels are Children of the Soil, a story of 

 contemporary Polish life, and Knights of the 

 Cross, which deals with the conflict between 

 the Poles and the Teutonic Order of Knights. 

 The latter appeared in 1904, and the following 

 year the author received the Nobel prize for 

 literature. When the war in Europe broke out 

 Sienkiewicz devoted most of his time to Polish 

 relief work. He died in Switzerland, while on 

 a mission for his prostrate country. 



Consult Phelps's Essays on Modern Novelists. 



SIERRA LEONE, seer' a leo'ne, a British 

 colony on the west coast of Africa, founded in 

 1791 (after an unsuccessful first attempt in 

 1787) by a group of English philanthropists as 

 a refuge for fugitive negro slaves (see colored 

 map in the article AFRICA, opposite page 81). 

 It became a Crown colony in 1807. About 30,- 

 000 square miles of country east of the colony, 

 populated by pagan negro tribes to the number 

 of about 1,403,000, form a province that is un- 

 der the protection of- Great Britain and is 

 called Sierra Leone Protectorate. The coast 

 colony has an estimated area of 4,000 square 

 miles and a population of 75,572. 



The country is hilly, well wooded and well 

 watered, and the coast regions are very un- 

 healthful. There are valuable woods in the 

 forests, chiefly teak, ebony and rosewood, and 

 many wild animals, including elephants, leop- 

 ards, panthers, monkeys and buffalo; in the 

 rivers are crocodiles and hippopotamuses, and 

 serpents, especially boa constrictors, are numer- 

 ous. Freetown, the capital, has a population 

 of perhaps 500 Europeans and about 37,200 

 negroes; the latter represent all tribes and 

 they speak a universal language called "pidgin" 

 English. The principal exports include rubber, 

 palm nuts and oil, ginger and pepper. 



SIERRA MADRE, seer 'a mah'dra. The 

 name is given to a number of mountain ranges 

 in territory that was once Spanish, and also to 

 a range in Spain. The best known are in 

 Mexico and the Philippines. In Mexico there 

 are the Western (Occidental) Sierra Madre 

 and the Eastern (Oriental) Sierra Madre, the 

 two ranges which border the great plateau. 

 The Oriental range is a part of the Rocky 

 Mountains system; it is lower than the Occi- 

 dental, and less rugged. 



SIERRA NEVADA, seer 'a nevah'da, a 

 chain of mountains in Southern Spain, extend- 

 ing from the province of Granada into the 

 province of Almeria, a distance of about sixty 

 miles. They lie south of the Guadalquivir 

 valley, twenty-eight miles from the Mediter- 

 ranean. The Sierra Nevadas are so named be- 

 cause many of the peaks are over 10,000 feet 

 high, and are covered with perpetual snow; the 

 name is the Spanish for snowy range. Mul- 

 hacen, 11,420 feet high, is the loftiest peak in 

 Spain. The mountains rise abruptly from the 

 plain, and at their base are orchards of olives, 

 chestnuts and oranges, but the slopes are al- 

 most entirely bare rock. 



SIERRA NEVADA, the highest and steep- 

 est mountain range in the United States, ex- 

 tending north and south for more than 400 

 miles through Eastern California. To the west 

 of the range are the valleys of the Sacramento 

 and San Joaquin rivers, and to the east lies 

 the Great American Basin. The highest peak 

 in the United States proper, Mount Whitney 

 (14,448 feet), belongs to the Sierra Nevada 

 range, and there are many others more than 

 10,000 feet above the sea. Among the places 

 in the Sierra Nevada famous for beautiful 

 scenery is the Yosemite Valley (see YOSEMITE 

 NATIONAL PARK). A more extended description 

 of the mountains may be found in these vol- 

 umes in the article CALIFORNIA (see page 1057). 



