B A J 



199 



B A I 



Bijazet I. guinary conflict, in which 340,000 combatants are 

 /- ' said to ..have fallen, the Turks were defeated, and 

 Bajazet was taken in the pursuit> 



The conduct of Tamerlane towards his captive 

 rival has been variously described. The " iron cage," 

 in which Bajazet was confined, and against the bars of 

 which, he is said to have dashed out his brains in vexa- 

 tion and despair, has been rejected by some as a popular 

 tale. But though the Persian historians are altogether 

 silent upon this subject, we see no sufficient reason for 

 discrediting the testimony of Poggius, Phranza, and 

 their contemporaries, who assert, with confidence, the 

 imprisonment and harsh treatment of Bajazet. We 

 confess, however, that we cannot enter into all the 

 circumstances of the story ; but allowing for the ex- 

 aggeration of some, and the inaccuracy of others, a 

 fair and warrantable conclusion may be deduced, that 

 Bajazet owed his premature death to the severity of 

 Tamerlane. Taking even the relation of Tamerlane's 

 panegyrists as an authentic record, the generosity 

 of the Tartar towards his captive was at best but a 

 mockery. It was the generosity of a barbarian, who 

 sacrificed nothing to his humanity, and who wished 

 to attract the applause of his followers by his conde- 

 scension. At a splendid banquet, amidst a crowd c' 

 dependants, he invested Bajazet with the ensigns of 

 royalty, bestowed upon him the kingdom of Anato- 

 lia, and promised to restore him to the throne of his 

 fathers ; but he still kept him in confinement, and 

 exposed him as a trophy of his valour and good for- 

 tune. Bajazet died of an apoplexy at Akshehr, 

 about nine months after his defeat, A. D. 1403. 

 Tamerlane dropt a tear over his expiring victim ; re- 

 flecting upon the instability of fortune, which, by 

 the chance of war, might have rendered the fate of 

 Bajazet his own. His corpse was conveyed with 

 royal magnificence to Bursa, and there interred in 

 his own mausoleum. 



The ambition of Bajazet kept him almost conti- 

 nually in the field. After the battle of Nicopolis, 

 he proudly threatened to lay siege to the capital of 

 Hungary, to subdue the adjacent countries of Ger- 

 many and Italy, and to plant the crescent on the ca- 

 pital of the Romish Hierarch. The fiery energy of 

 his soul, the secrecy with which he concealed his de- 

 signs, and the rapidity of his march, procured him 

 the appellation of " Ilderim," or lightning ; and in 

 the pride of conquest he compared the march of the 

 Tartars to the creeping of a snail. His justice was 

 that of a despot, who disdains to balance the weight 

 of evidence, or to measure the degrees of guilt. He 

 ordered the belly of one of his chamberlains to be cut 

 open for drinking the goats-milk of a poor woman ; 

 and his clemency was an act of condescension rather 

 than of humanity. In the mid6t of war, he forgot 

 not the arts of peace. He was a great lover of ar- 

 chitecture ; and temples, academies, and hospitals, 

 were erected by him every year. He was the first 

 Othman sovereign who assumed the title of Sultan, 

 his predecessors having contented themselves with 

 that of Emir; and a fleet of gallics, stationed at 

 Gallipoli, to guard the passage of the Hellespont, 

 were built at his command, and was the first navy 

 <"ver possessed by the Othmans. See Mod. Un. 

 Hut. vol. xii. p. 6889. Memoires de Boucicault. 



D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Oriental?. Gibbon's Hist. 

 chap. 64, 65, 4to, vol. vi. p. 321357. (;>) 



BAIDARS, the name of a kind of canoe used 

 by the natives of the Kurilly Islands, and of the 

 north-west coast of America* See Sauer's Account 

 of Billing's Expedition to the Northern Parts of 

 Russia from 1785 to 1794; and Sarytschew's Ac- 

 count of the Voyage qf Discovery to the N. E. of Si- 

 beria, chap. vii. (j) 



BAIKAL, a lake situated in the government of 

 Irkutsk in Siberia,Tand, next to the Caspian Sea, the 

 largest expanse of water within the limits of the Rus- 

 sian empire. 



No where, perhaps, could a person, who should 

 traverse the globe, meet with an object more truly 

 interesting than the Baikal, whether we consider the 

 rude sublimity of its scenery, or the singular pheno- 

 mena which both the lake itself and the surrounding 

 country present to the observation of the naturalist. 

 Those who have visited this wonderful place, seem at 

 a loss for language adequate to the feelings which it 

 excites when first beheld. After travelling through 

 a vast extent of country, diversified by neither lake 

 nor sea, the traveller at length reaches a chain of 

 rugged mountains, which, forming an immense anir 

 phitheatre, enclose a lake that stretches far beyond 

 the reach of sight, and, by the violent agitation and 

 dreadful roaring of its billows, sometimes assumes all 

 the magnificence of a mighty ocean, while, at other 

 times, the clearness of its unruffled bosom emulates 

 the lustre of the finest mirror. 



The traces of those tremendous concussions, by 

 which our world, has once been agitated, are here 

 extremely discernible. The lake itself can only 

 be regarded as an enormous gulf, formed by the 

 rending of the mountains, and intended by nature as 

 a reservoir for her immense stores of water; while 

 its rocky shores bear in almost every spot the visible 

 marks of some terrible revolution, of which they in- 

 dicate, at the same time, the remote antiquity. Its 

 channel consists of the broken fragments of hills, the 

 largest of which still rise above the surface in the 

 form of islands. Its coast is one heap of broken 

 rocks piled above each other to the height of forty 

 fathoms. Cliffs, whose bases are sunk in unfathoma- 

 ble pits, lift, their shattered summits to the clouds ; 

 and on the pinnacles of the loftiest mountains are 

 found enormous stones in whimsical shapes, which 

 could only be projected thither by some violent con- 

 vulsion of the earth. 



Nature seems to have exhausted herself by one 

 great effort in forming the Baikal ; for, though 

 earthquakes are still frequent in the surrounding re- 

 gions, they are in general so slight, that their shock 

 is not felt at any considerable distance. The most 

 remarkable effect of these earthquakes is visible in 

 the lake itself, which even in the serenest weather, and 

 while its surface is smooth as glass, sometimes under- 

 goes the most violent internal agitations. At times , 

 too, in a particular part of the lake, a single wave 

 will suddenly rise, which is succeeded by several 

 others in the same spot. Most of the phenomena, 

 indeed, observable in the Baikal, seem to be peculiar 

 and anomalous. The state of its surface is almost 

 entirely independent of the violent storms to which 



Bautur, 

 Baikal. 



"ft 



