a naked sword suspended by a single hair (Cicero, Tusc. v. 21; Horace, Odes, iii. 1, 17; Persius iii. 40).
DAMOH, a town and district of British India, in the Jubbulpore
division of the Central Provinces. The town has a railway
station, 48 m. E. of Saugor. Pop. (1901) 13,355. It has a considerable
cattle-market, and a number of small industries, such
as weaving, dyeing and pottery-making.
The District of Damoh has an area of 2816 sq. m. Except on the south and east, where the offshoots from the surrounding hills and patches of jungle break up the country, the district consists of open plains of varying degrees of fertility, interspersed with low ranges and isolated heights. The richest tracts lie in the centre. The gentle declivity of the surface and the porous character of the prevailing sandstone formation render the drainage excellent. All the streams flow from south to north. The Sunar and the Bairma, the two principal rivers, traverse the entire length of the district. Little use has been made of any of the rivers for irrigation, though in many places they offer great facilities for the purpose. Damoh was first formed into a separate district in 1861. In 1901 the population was 285,326, showing a decrease of 12% in one decade due to famine. Damoh suffered severely from the famine of 1896–1897. Fortunately the famine of 1900 was little felt. A branch of the Indian Midland railway was opened throughout from Saugor to Katni in January 1899.
DAMON, of Syracuse, a Pythagorean, celebrated for his
disinterested affection for Phintias (not, as commonly given,
Pythias), a member of the same sect. Condemned to death by
Dionysius the Elder (or Younger) of Syracuse, Phintias begged
to be set at liberty for a short time that he might arrange his
affairs. Damon pledged his life for the return of his friend;
and Phintias faithfully returned before the appointed day of
execution. The tyrant, to express his admiration of their
fidelity, released both the friends and begged to be admitted
to their friendship (Diod. Sic. x. 4; Cicero, De Off. iii. 10).
Hyginus (Fab. 257, who is followed by Schiller in his ballad,
Die Bürgschaft) tells a similar story, in which the two friends
are named Moerus and Selinuntius.
DAMOPHON, a Greek sculptor of Messene, who executed
many statues for the people of Messene, Megalopolis, Aegium and
other cities of Peloponnesus. Considerable fragments, including
three colossal heads from a group by him representing Demeter,
Persephone, Artemis and the giant Anytus, have been discovered
on the site of Lycosura in Arcadia, where was a temple of the
goddess called “The Mistress.” They are preserved in part in
the museum at Athens and partly on the spot. Hence there
has arisen a great controversy as to the date of the artist, who
has been assigned to various periods, from the 4th century B.C.
to the 2nd A.D. A good account of the whole matter will be
found in Frazer’s Pausanias, iv. 372-379. Frazer wisely inclines
to an early date; it is in fact difficult to find any period,
when the cities mentioned were in a position to found temples,
later than the time of Alexander.
DAMP, a common Teutonic word, meaning vapour or mist
(cf. Ger. Dampf, steam), and hence moisture. In its primitive
sense the word persists in the vocabulary of coal-miners. Their
“firedamp” (formerly fulminating damp) is marsh gas, which,
when mixed with air and exploded, produced “choke damp,”
“after damp,” or “suffocating damp” (carbon dioxide).
“Black damp” consists of accumulations of irrespirable gases,
mostly nitrogen, which cause the lights to burn dimly, and
the term “white damp” is sometimes applied to carbon monoxide.
As a verb, the word means to stifle or check; hence
damped vibrations or oscillations are those which have been
reduced or stopped, instead of being allowed to die out naturally;
the “dampers” of the piano are small pieces of felt-covered
wood which fall upon the strings and stop their vibrations
as the keys are allowed to rise; and the “damper” of a
chimney or flue, by restricting the draught, lessens the rate of
combustion.
DAMPIER, WILLIAM (1652–1715), English buccaneer, navigator
and hydrographer, was born at East Coker, Somersetshire,
in 1652 (baptized 8th of June). Having early become an orphan,
he was placed with the master of a ship at Weymouth, in which
he made a voyage to Newfoundland. On his return he sailed to
Bantam in the East Indies. He served in 1673 in the Dutch
War under Sir Edward Sprague, and was present at two engagements
(28th of May; 4th of June); but then fell sick and was
put ashore. In 1674 he became an under-manager of a Jamaica
estate, but continued only a short time in this situation. He
afterwards engaged in the coasting trade, and thus acquired an
accurate knowledge of all the ports and bays of the island. He
made two voyages to the Bay of Campeachy (1675–1676), and
remained for some time with the logwood-cutters, varying this
occupation with buccaneering. In 1678 he returned to England,
again visiting Jamaica in 1679 and joining a party of buccaneers,
with whom he crossed the Isthmus of Darien, spent the year
1680 on the Peruvian coast, and sacking, plundering and burning,
made his way down to Juan Fernandez Island. After serving
with another privateering expedition in the Spanish Main, he
went to Virginia and engaged with a captain named Cook for a
privateering voyage against the Spaniards in the South Seas.
They sailed in August 1683, touched at the Guinea coast, and
then proceeded round Cape Horn into the Pacific. Having
touched at Juan Fernandez, they made the coast of South
America, cruising along Chile and Peru. They took some prizes,
and with these they proceeded to the Galapagos Islands and
to Mexico, which last they fell in with near Cape Blanco.
While they lay here Captain Cook died, and the command
devolved on Captain Davis, who, with several other pirate
vessels, English and French, raided the west American shores
for the next year, attacking Guayaquil, Puebla Nova, &c. At
last Dampier, leaving Davis, went on board Swan’s ship, and
proceeded with him along the northern parts of Mexico as far as
southern California. Swan then proposed, as the expedition met
with “bad success” on the Mexican coast, to run across the
Pacific and return by the East Indies. They started from Cape
Corrientes on the 31st of March 1686, and reached Guam in the
Ladrones on the 20th of May; the men, having almost come to
an end of their rations, had decided to kill and eat their leaders
next, beginning with the “lusty and fleshy” Swan. After six
months’ drunkenness and debauchery in the Philippines, the
majority of the crew, including Dampier, left Swan and thirty-six
others behind in Mindanao, cruised (1687–1688) from Manila
to Pulo Condore, from the latter to China, and from China to
the Spice Islands and New Holland (the Australian mainland).
In March 1688 they were off Sumatra, and in May off the Nicobars,
where Dampier was marooned (at his own request, as he
declares, for the purpose of establishing a trade in ambergris)
with two other Englishmen, a Portuguese and some Malays.
He and his companions contrived to navigate a canoe to Achin
in Sumatra; but the fatigues and distress of the voyage proved
fatal to several and nearly carried off Dampier himself. After
making several voyages to different places of the East Indies
(Tongking, Madras, &c.), he acted for some time, and apparently
somewhat unwillingly, as gunner to the English fort of Benkulen.
Thence he ultimately contrived to return to England in 1691.
In 1699 he was sent out by the English admiralty in command of the “Roebuck,” especially designed for discovery in and around Australia. He sailed from the Downs, the 14th of January, with twenty months’ provisions, touched at the Canaries, Cape Verdes and Bahia, and ran from Brazil round the Cape of Good Hope direct to Australia, whose west coast he reached on the 26th of July, in about 26° S. lat. Anchoring in Shark’s Bay, he began a careful exploration of the neighbouring shore-lands, but found no good harbour or estuary, no fresh water or provisions. In September, accordingly, he left Australia, recruited and refitted at Timor, and thence made for New Guinea, where he arrived on the 3rd of December. By sailing along to its easternmost extremity, he discovered that it was terminated by an island, which he named New Britain (now Neu Pommern), whose north, south and east coasts he surveyed. That St George’s Bay was really St George’s Channel, dividing the island into two, was not perceived by Dampier; it was the discovery