ORGAN 12 

 KNOWLEDGE 



STORY 

 PICTURE 



Zz 



t 



Z is the twenty-sixth and last letter in the English 

 alphabet. Like most of the other English letters, it was 

 derived from the Phoenician, through the Greek and 

 Latin. The Phoenician name for the character, which 

 was the seventh in their alphabet, was zayin, meaning 

 dagger, and the symbol was a rough sketch of the handle 



and part of the blade of that weapon. The Greeks called the letter zeta, and changed it 

 to the form of the modern capital Z, and the Romans when they adopted it placed it at 

 the end of the alphabet. It was only in the fifteenth century that the zed, as it was called, 

 came to be used in English. Originally it was a compound sound, like ds, but has entirely 

 lost that character and taken on the soft "buzzing" sound. In this value it is often 

 replaced by s, as in rose, or by ss, as in dissolve. An old name for z is izzard, which is 

 still commonly used in the expression "from A to Izzard." 



ZACATECAS, sah kah ta'kahs, one of the 

 most important mining centers of Mexico, and 

 capital of the province of the same name, is 

 situated in the central part of the country, 439 

 miles northwest of Mexico City (see map, 

 Mexico, opposite page 3768). Zacatecas is 

 built over a vein of silver in a narrow valley. 

 It has various educational and religious edi- 

 fices, a library, a mint, a cathedral, good resi- 

 dences and hospitals. The principal industry 

 is the reduction of silver ore ; the manufacture 

 of pottery is also important. The city figured 

 in the revolutionary disturbances during the 

 years 1912 to 1916. Population in 1910, 25,900. 



ZAMBEZI, or ZAMBESI, zamba'.:-. the 

 fourth river of Africa in size, surpassed only 

 by the Nile, the Niger and the Congo. It rises 

 on the border between Belgian Congo and 

 Portuguese West Africa, and follows a winding 

 course through Rhodesia and Portuguese East 

 Africa, emptying into the Mozambique Chan- 

 nel, an arm of the Indian < )rr:m (see map, 

 Africa, opposite page 81). The total length of 

 the stream is about 1,650 miles; it has many 

 tributaries, and the area drained is about 500,- 

 000 square miles. The delta alone is several 

 thousand square miles in extent. 



The upper course of tli 

 land where the water supply is dependent on 



equatorial rains, which fall from October to 

 March. From the plateau it descends to a 

 lower level by plunging over Victoria Fall< 

 (which see), a mighty cataract of greater vol- 

 ume than Niagara. The gorge below the falls 

 is spanned by a magnificent bridge, the highest 

 in the world, which is crossed by the*Cape-to- 

 Cairo Railway (see page 1170). The lower part 

 of the river is navigable for about 400 miles 

 from the sea, and a few steamers ply its waters, 

 but as yet the river is of little commercial 

 value on account of sand bars, rapids and shal- 

 lows. It receives the drainage of Lake Nyassa, 

 through the Shire River. The first European 

 to visit the upper Zambezi, David Livingstone, 

 explored that portion of the river in 1854 and 

 1855, and the Livingstone was the first steamer 

 placed on the river above Victoria Falls; it 

 was launched in 1902. Coal is found below the 

 falls, and gold-bearing rocks occur in places 

 along the river banks. 



ZANESVILLE, zaynz'vU, OHIO, known lo- 

 cally as the Clay City, because of its exten 

 manufacture of pottery, is the county seat of 

 Muskingum County, and is situated southeast 

 of the geographical renter <>!' the state, on the 

 MuskinKum Hiver. at the point where it re- 

 r. Columbus, the state 

 capital, is fifty-nine miles west, and Cleveland 



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