Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/1086

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1060
STYX—SUARDI

Styrolene gives origin to three series of derivatives, two of which contain the substituents in the side chain, e.g. CGHS-CCl:CHg or a-compounds, and CGH5-CH:CHCl, or w-compounds, whilst in the third the benzene nucleus is substituted. The a.-halo en compounds are obtained by heating styrolene chloride (or Inromide) with lime or alcoholic potash; they are liquids which have a penetrating odour, and yield ace top hen one when heated with water to 180°. The w-chlor compound results when B-phenyl-a.-chlorlactic acid (from hypochlorous acid and cinnamic acid) is heated with water; it has a hyacinthine odour and yields phenylacetaldehyde when heated with water. N itrostyrolene results when styrolene is treated with fuming nitric acid.

Related to styrolene is phenylacetylene, CGHS-CQCH, which results when a-bromstyrolene or ace top hen one chloride are heated to 130° with alcoholic potash, or phenylpropiolic acid with water to 120°. It is a liquid, boiling at 139° and having a pleasant odour. It resembles acetylene in yielding metallic derivatives with ammonia cal copper and silver solutions. On solution in sulphuric acid, followed by dilution with water, it yields ace top hen one. Stilbene or toluylene, CGHVCH: CH~C6H5, is symmetrical diphenylethylene. It may be obtained by distilling benzyl sulphide or disulphide, by the action of sodium on benzaldehyde or benzal chloride, by distilling fumaric and cinnamic ghenyl esters: C5H5O'OC'CHICH'CO'OC5H5 >CO2+C5H5'CHICH'C

+C5H5-CH:CH-CGH5 (Ben, 18, p. 1945), and from chlorasymmetrical diphenylethane derivatives which undergo a rearrangement when heated (Ben, 7. p. 1409). Stilbene (from Gr. arlN3e1v, to glisten) crystallizes in large, colourless, glistening mono clinic plates, which melt at 124° and boil at 3o6°. On passing the vapour through red-hot tubes it yields anthracene and toluene. Reduction with hydriodic acid gives dibenzyl, and heating with sulphur gives tetraphenylthiop ene or thionessal. Many derivatives are known, some of which exist in two structural forms, exhibiting geometrical isomerism after the mode of fumaric and maleic aci s. Those substituted in the benzene nucleus are obtained by condensing two molecules of a substituted benzyl and benzal chlorides. The diortho and dipara dinitro compounds result from the action of alcoholic potash on ortho- and para-nitrobenzyl chlorides. The latter on reduction yields a diamino compound, the disulphonic acid of which on diaz0tization and coupling with a phenol, &c., gives valuable substantive cotton dyes after the type yielded b Benzidine. Stilbene bromide when treated with alcoholic potash] gives diphenyl acetylene or tOl3.]1€, C5H5'C C'C5H5.


STYX, in Greek mythology, a river which flowed seven times round the world of the dead. In the Iliad it is the only river of the underworld; in the Odyssey it is coupled with Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon, which flow into the chief river Acheron. Hesiod says that Styx was a daughter of Ocean, and that, when Zeus summoned the gods to Olympus to help him to fight the Titans, Styx was the first to come and her children with her; hence as a reward Zeus ordained that the most solemn oath of the gods should be by her and that her children (Emulation, Victory, Power and Force) should always live with him. Again, Hesiod tells us that if any god, after pouring a libation of the water of Styx, forswore himself, he had to lie in a trance for a year without speaking or breathing, and that for nine years afterwards he was excluded from the society of the gods. In historical times the Styx was identified with a lofty waterfall near Nonacris in Arcadia. Pausanias (viii. 17, 6) describes the cliff over which the water falls as the highest he had ever seen, and indeed the fall is the highest in Greece. The ancients regarded the water as poisonous, and thought that it possessed the power of breaking or dissolving vessels of every material, with the exception of the hoof of a horse or a mule. Considering the undoubted importance attached by the ancients to an oath by the water of the Styx (cf. Herodotus vi. 74), and the supposed fatal result of breaking it, it is probable that drinking the water originally formed a necessary part of the oath, and that we have to do with the tradition of an ancient poison ordeal, common amongst barbarous peoples (for the geography and similar ceremonies see Frazer's Pausanias, iv. pp. 250-255). The people in the neighbourhood, who call it Mavo Neró (the Black Water), still think that it is unwholesome, and that no vessel will hold it.


SUAKIN, or Sawakin, a seaport of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan on the west side of the Red Sea in 19° 7′ N., 37° 20′ E. Pop. (1905), 10,500. Suakin stands on a coralline islet connected with the suburb of El-Kef on the mainland by a causeway and a viaduct. Access is gained to the harbour through a winding and dangerous passage over 2 m. long, terminating in at deep oval shaped basin several acres in extent, and completely sheltered from all winds. For centuries the chief port of the eastern Sudan, Suakin has been since 1906 to some extent superseded by Port Sudan (q.v.), a harbour 36 m. to the north. The customhouse and government offices present an imposing frontage to the sea, and the principal houses are of white coral stone three storeys high. The mosques are not remarkable. The mainland part of the town is surrounded by a high coral wall, built in 1884 to resist dervish attacks. About a mile beyond is a line of outer forts. The climate is very hot, damp and unhealthy, and in the summer months the government headquarters are removed to Erkowit 35 m. west of Suakin, on a plateau 3000 ft. above the sea.

Suakin is less conveniently situated than some neighbouring points (e.g. Port Sudan) for the trade with the Nile Valley. The island is without water and the harbour indifferent; yet the settlement is ancient. Here, as at Massawa, traders were presumably attracted by the advantages of an island site which protected them from the raids of the nomad Arabs of the mainland. The country inland belonged in the middle ages to the Beja (q.v.), but the trading places seem to have been always in the hands of foreigners since Ptolemais Theron was established by Ptolemy Philadelphus for intercourse with the elephant hunters. After the rise of Mahommedanism many Arabs settled on the coast and mixed with the heathen Beja, whose rule of kinship and succession in the female line helped to give the children of mixed marriages a leading position (Makrizi, Khilat, i. 194 seq., translated in Burckhardt's Travels in Nubia, app. iii). Thus in 1330 Ibn Batuta found a son of the amir of Mecca reigning in Suakin over the Beja, who were his mother's kin. Makrizi says that the chief inhabitants were nominal Moslems and were called Hadarib. The amir of the Hadarib was still sovereign of the mainland at the time of J. L. Burckhardt's visit (1814), though the island had an aga appointed by the Turkish pasha of Jidda. The place was seized in 1517 by the Turks under Selim the Great, but Turkish control did not extend inland. Mehemet Ali after the conquest of the Sudan leased Suakin from Turkey. This lease lapsed with the pasha's death, but in 1865 Ismail Pasha reacquired the port for Egypt. Till the suppression of the slave trade Suakin was an important slave port and it has always been the place of embarkation for Sudan pilgrims to Mecca. Legitimate commerce, rapidly growing before the revolt of the mahdi (1881), was greatly crippled during the continuance of the dervish power, though the town itself never fell into their hands. After the fall of the khalifa trade revived, the imports in 1899 being valued at £180,000, as against £170,000 in 1880. In 1906 the figures were: imports, £324,000; exports, £113,000. Pearl fishing is an important industry and cotton is cultivated in the neighbourhood.

Suakin was the headquarters of the Egyptian and British troops operating in the eastern Sudan against the dervishes under Osman Digna (see Egypt, Military Operations, 1884, seq.). When these operations were begun a project for linking Suakin to Berber by railway, first proposed during Ismail's viceroyalty, was revived and a few miles of rails were laid in 1884. Then the Sudan was abandoned and the railway remained in abeyance until 1905–1906, when the line was at length built. The railway has a terminus at Suakin, but Port Sudan was chosen as the principal entrepôt of the commerce carried by the railway. Notwithstanding the rivalry of its newly created neighbour, the trade of Suakin continued to develop. The port is connected by submarine cables with Suez and Aden and with Jidda, which lies 200 m. north-east on the opposite coast of the Red Sea (see Sudan § Anglo-Egyptian).


SUARDI, BARTOLOMMEO (c. 1455-c. 1536), Italian painter and architect, frequently called Bramantino, was born in Milan, the son of Alberto Suardi. He executed a number of paintings containing portraits of celebrated personages for the Vatican. In 1508 he was engaged in Rome. Bramante d'Urbino taught Bramantino architecture, and the pupil assisted the master in the execution of the interior of the church of San Satiro, Milan. In 1525 Bramantino was appointed architect to the court by Duke Francis (II.) Sforza, and his aid as an engineer in the

defence of Milan brought him a. multitude of rewards.