SIMONIDES 



5388 



SIMPSON 



South Carolina and several biographies of well- 

 known Southern men are included in the list 

 of his prose writings. As a war poet Simms is 

 still held in affectionate remembrance by his 

 countrymen in the South, and he has written 

 several poems of enduring value. Among the 

 best known of these are Atalant-is, a Story of 

 the Sea, The Swamp Fox and The Lost, Pleiad. 

 The latter is probably his finest achievement 

 in verse, and its closing lines are often quoted: 



The hope most precious is the soonest lost, 

 The flower most sweet is first to feel the frost. 

 Are not all short-lived things the loveliest? 

 And, like the pale star, shooting down the sky, 

 Look they not ever brightest, as they fly 

 From the lone sphere they blest? 



Simms was born in Charleston, S. C., also the 

 birthplace of a contemporary poet, Henry Tim- 

 rod. He was educated for the profession of 

 law, and was admitted to the bar in 1827, but 

 never practiced to any extent. His first vol- 

 umes of poems were published the same year, 

 and the following year he became owner and 

 editor of the Charleston City Gazette. There- 

 after he devoted himself entirely to journal- 

 ism and literature. He supported the cause of 

 the South earnestly and lost the greater part of 

 his fortune during the war. An excellent biog- 

 raphy of Simms, by W. P. Trent, has been in- 

 cluded in the American Men of Letters Series. 



SIMONIDES, simon'idcez (556-468 B.C.), a 

 celebrated Greek lyric poet and one of the 

 most accomplished men of antiquity. He ex- 

 celled in his triumphal odes and elegies. These 

 are characterized by a sweetness, simplicity, 

 pathos and power of expression which rank him 

 with Pindar, his contemporary and great rival, 

 whom Simonides scandalized because he ac- 

 cepted pay for his writings. See PINDAR. 



The young poet was treated 'with great con- 

 sideration by Hipparchus. Later he enjoyed 

 the patronage of powerful families of Thessaly. 

 After the invasion of Greece by the Persians 

 he wrote a number of elegies, dirges and epi- 

 grams celebrating the heroes and the battles 

 of that struggle; for his elegy on the soldiers 

 who fell at Marathon he won the prize over 

 Aeschylus. He won fifty-five other prizes in 

 similar poetical contests. His last years were 

 spent at the court of Hiero of Syracuse. 



SIMOOM ' , a hot, dry, destructive wind com- 

 mon to the Sahara and Arabian deserts, which 

 carries with it great clouds of dust, so that the 

 whole sky becomes hazy. It is one of the ter- 

 rors of the desert, arriving suddenly and suf- 

 focating men and beasts. Travelers have to 



lie down close to the ground with their heads 

 covered, and the camels burrow their noses into 

 the sand. The simoom may pass in ten min- 

 utes or it may last for hours, even for days, 

 leaving the sand drifted like snow after a bliz- 

 zard. In March, 1901, there was a great Afri- 

 can simoom which scattered red and yellow sand 

 and dust over all of Southern Europe, and it was 

 even reported that sand fell in England. This 

 wind is caused by the overheating of the soil 

 and layers of air next to it. The burning hot 

 air ascends and cooler currents from all sides 

 flow in, producing a desert whirlwind. 



Related Subjects. The reader is referred to 

 the article WIND and to the titles there listed. 



SIM'PLON, a pass in the Swiss Alps over 

 which Napoleon built a magnificent road in 

 1800-1806. The construction of this highway 

 is considered one of the great feats of modern 

 engineering; it is forty-two miles long and be- 

 tween twenty and thirty feet wide, and is car- 

 ried over 611 bridges. In other -places it runs 

 through huge tunnels. The pass lies near the 

 frontier of Piedmont, Italy, in the eastern part 

 of the canton of Valais. The name is also 

 applied to the largest railway tunnel in the 

 world, built through the Alps at this point 

 between Brieg and Isella. It consists of two 

 single-track bores nearly twelve and one-half 

 miles in length, and was completed in 1906, 

 eight years after work was begun. The pass is 

 6,592 feet above sea level; the highest point 

 of the railway tunnel, about 2,300 feet. 



SIMP 'SON, SIR GEORGE (1792-1860), a Cana- 

 dian explorer and administrator, for thirty- 

 five years governor of Rupert's Land and gen- 

 eral superintendent in America for the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company. Simpson was a native of 

 Ross-shire, Scotland, and was sent to America 

 in 1820 by the Earl of Selkirk, then the guid- 

 ing spirit of the Hudson's Bay Company. After 

 the union of the Northwest and Hudson's Bay 

 companies, in 1821, Simpson was appointed gov- 

 ernor of the northern department and in the 

 same year governor of all Rupert's Land. Phys- 

 ically a small man, Simpson yet had boundless 

 energy, and he had, in the words of a contem- 

 porary, "the self-possession of an emperor."' 

 Every year he made the overland journey from 

 Montreal to the far West, on several of his 

 investigation trips crossing the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. 



Under his aggressive administration the coun- 

 try between the Pacific Ocean and the Rockies 

 was occupied, and to his enterprise Canada is 

 chiefly indebted for its control of the Pacific 



