the two Greek churches, the Armenian church, the Capuchin monastery, the bazaars and the baths. There are also some beautiful Venetian fountains. The town is the seat of a Greek archbishop. A highly interesting museum has been formed here containing the antiquities found during the recent excavations. The chief trade is in oil and soap, both of which are of excellent quality. The coasting trade, which is of considerable importance, is mainly carried on in Turkish vessels. The manufacture of leather for home consumption is an extensive industry and wine of good quality is produced in the neighbourhood. The harbour, which had grown almost inaccessible, was deepened by Mustapha Pasha between 1820 and 1840. It is formed for the most part by the ancient moles, and was never deep enough to admit the larger vessels even of the Venetians, which were accustomed to anchor in the port of the neighbouring island of Standia. A short distance from St George’s Gate there was a small village exclusively inhabited by lepers, who numbered about seventy families, but they have now been transported to Spinalonga. The population of the town is estimated at from 15,000 to 18,000, about half being Mahommedan Greeks. The site of Candia, or, as it was till lately locally known, Megalo castro (the Great Fortress), has been supposed to correspond with that of the ancient Heracleion, the seaport of Cnossus, and this appellation has now been officially revived by its Greek inhabitants. The ruins of Cnossus are situated at the distance of about 3 m. to the south-east at the village of Makryteichos or Long Wall. Founded by the Saracens in the 9th century, Candia was fortified by the Genoese in the 12th, and was greatly extended and strengthened by the Venetians in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. It was besieged by the Turks under the vizier Achmet in 1667; and, in spite of a most heroic defence, in which the Venetians lost 30,000 in killed and wounded, it was forced to surrender in 1669. (See also Crete.)
CANDIDATE, one who offers himself or is selected by others for an office or place, particularly one who puts up for election to parliament or to any public body. The word is derived from the Latin candidatus, clad in white (candidus). In Rome, candidates for election to the higher magistracies appeared in the Campus Martius, the Forum and other public places, during their canvass, in togas with the white of the natural wool brightened by chalk.
CANDLE (Lat. candela, from candere, to glow), a cylindrical rod of solid fatty or waxy matter, enclosing a central fibrous wick, and designed to be burnt for giving light. The oldest materials employed for making candles are beeswax and tallow, while among those of more recent introduction are spermaceti, stearine and paraffin wax. Waxlights (cereus, sc. funis) were known to the Romans. In the midlde ages wax candles were little used, owing to their expense, except for the ceremonies of the church and other religious purposes (see Lights, Ceremonial Use of), but in the 15th century, with the cheapening of wax, they began to find wider employment. The tallow candle, mentioned by Apuleius as sebaceus, was long an article of domestic manufacture. The tallow was melted and strained, and then lengths of cotton or flax fibre, or rushes from which most of the external skin had been stripped, only sufficient being left to support the pith (“rushlights”), were dipped into it, the operation being repeated until the desired thickness had been attained. In Paris, in the 13th century, there was a gild of candlemakers who went from house to house to make tallow candles, the manufacture of wax candles being in the hands of another gild. This separation of the two branches of the trade is also exemplified by the existence of two distinct livery companies in the city of London—the Waxchandlers and the Tallowchandlers; the French chandelle properly means tallow candle, candles made of materials less fusible than tallow being called bougies, a term said to be derived from the town of Bougie in Algeria, either because wax was produced there or because the Venetians imported wax candles thence into Europe. The old tallow “dips” gave a poor light, and tallow itself is now used only to a limited extent, except as a source of “stearine.” This is the trade name for a mixture of solid fatty acids—mainly stearic and palmitic—manufactured not only from tallow and other animal fats, but also from such vegetable fats as palm-oil. Paraffin wax, a mixture of solid hydrocarbons obtained from crude North American and Rangoon petroleum, and also yielded in large quantities by the Scotch shale oil industry, is, at least in Great Britain, a still more important material of candle-manufacture, which came into use about 1854. Spermaceti, a crystalline fatty substance obtained from the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), was introduced as a material for candles about a century earlier. In practice the candlemaker mostly uses mixtures of these materials. For instance, 5-10% of stearine, which is used alone for candles that have to be burnt in hot climates, is mixed with paraffin wax, to counteract the tendency to bend with heat exhibited by the latter substance. Again, the brittleness of spermaceti is corrected by the addition of beeswax, stearine, paraffin wax or ceresin (obtained from the mineral wax ozocerite). In some “composite” candles stearine is mixed with the hard fat (“cocoa-nut stearine”) expressed from cocoa-nut oil by hydraulic pressure; and this cocoa-nut stearine is also used for night-lights, which are short thick candles with a thin wick, calculated to burn from six to ten hours.
The stearine or stearic acid industry originated in the discovery made by M. E. Chevreul about 1815, that fats are glycerides or compounds of glycerin with fatty acids, mostly palmitic, stearic and oleic. The object of the candlemaker is to remove this glycerin, not only because it is a valuable product in itself, but also because it is an objectionable constituent of a candle; the vapours of acrolein formed by its decomposition in the flame are the cause of the unpleasant odours produced by tallow “dips.” He also removes the oleic acid, which is liquid at ordinary temperatures, from the palmitic and stearic acids, mixtures of which solidify at temperatures varying from about 130° to 155° F., according to the percentage of each present. Several methods are in use for the decomposition of the fats. In the autoclave process the fat, whether tallow, palm-oil or a mixture of the two, mixed with 25 or 30% of water and about 3% of lime, is subjected in an autoclave to steam at a pressure of about 120 ℔ per square inch for eight or ten hours, when nearly all of it is saponified. On standing the product separates into two layers—“sweet water” containing glycerin below, and the fatty acids with a certain amount of lime soap above. The upper layer is then boiled and treated with enough sulphuric acid to decompose the lime soap, the calcium sulphate formed is allowed to subside, and the fatty acids are run off into shallow boxes to be crystallized or “seeded” prior to the separation of the oleic acid, which is effected by pressing the solid blocks from the boxes, first cold and then hot, by hydraulic machinery. In another process saponification is effected by means of concentrated sulphuric acid. The fat is mixed with 4–6% of the acid and treated with steam in boiling water till the hydrolysis is complete, when on standing the glycerin and sulphuric acid sink to the bottom and the fatty acids rise to the top. Owing to the darkness of their colour, when this process is employed, the latter usually have to be distilled before being crystallized. The autoclave process yields about 45% of stearine, one-third of which is recovered from the expressed oleic acid, but with sulphuric acid saponification the amount of stearine is higher— over 60%—and that of oleic acid less, part of it being converted into solid material by the action of the acid. The yield of glycerin is also less. In a combination of the two processes the fat may first be treated by the autoclave process, so as to obtain a full yield (about 10%) of glycerin, and the resulting fatty acids then subjected to acid saponification, so as to get the higher amount of stearine. At the best, however, some 30% of oleic acid remains, and though often sought, no satisfactory method of converting this residue into solid has been discovered. It constitutes “red oil,” and is used in soap-making and in woollen manufacture. In the process patented by Ernst Twitchell in 1898, decomposition is effected by boiling the fat with half its bulk of water in presence of a reagent obtained by the action of sulphuric acid on oleic acid and an aromatic hydrocarbon such as benzene.
