beds to be ripped, and all the feathers thrown into a great hall, whither the nuns and friars were thrust naked with their bodies oiled and pitched and to tumble among these feathers, which makes them here (Madrid) presage him an ill-death." In 1696 a London bailiff, who attempted to serve process on a debtor who had taken refuge within the precincts of the Savoy, was tarred and feathered and taken in a wheelbarrow to the Strand, where he was tied to the Maypole which stood by what is now Somerset House. It is probable that the punishment was never regarded as legalized, but was always a type of mob vengeance.
TARRYTOWN, a village of Westchester county, New York,
on the E. bank of the Hudson river, opposite Nyack, with
which it is connected by ferry, and about 25 m. N. of New York
City. Pop. (1890) 3562; (1900) 4770, of whom 984 were
foreign-born and 191 were negroes; (1910, U.S. census) 5600.
Tarrytown is served by the New York Central and Hudson
River railway, and by interurban electric lines connecting it,
via White Plains, with New York City. It is situated on a
sloping hill that rises to a considerable height above Tappan
Zee, a large expansion of the Hudson river, and is built
principally along either side of a broad and winding country highway
(laid out in 1723) from New York to Albany, called the
King's Highway until the War of Independence, then called
the Albany Post Road, and now known (in Tarrytown) as
Broadway. South of the village is "yndhurst," the estate
of Miss Helen Miller Gould, and to the N.E. is Kaakout
(originally "Kijkuit," that is, "lookout," the name of a high
promontory), the estate of John D. Rockefeller. In the village
are the Hackley School (1899), Irving School (1837), Repton
School and the "Castle" School for girls; a Young Men's
Lyceum (1899), with a public library (8000 volumes in 1910)
and the Tarrytown Hospital (1892). In the vicinity there are
large nurseries and market-gardens, and automobiles are
manufactured in the village. Tarrytown stands on the site of a
Wecquaesgeek Indian village, Alipconk (the place of elms),
burned by the Dutch in 1644. The first settlement of whites
was made about 1645. There were perhaps a dozen Dutch
families here in 1680, when Frederick Philipse (formerly known
as Vredryk Flypse) acquired title to several thousand acres
in Westchester county, called Philipse Manor. He built, partly
of brick brought from Holland, a manor-house (on a point of
land now known as Kingsland's Point, a short distance above
the present village), a mill and a church, at the mouth of
Sleepy Hollow, some three-quarters of a mile above the village;
Dr Hamilton Wright Mabie has written: "There is probably no
other locality in America, taking into account history, tradition,
the old church, the manor-house and the mill, which so entirely
conserves the form and spirit of Dutch civilization in the New
World." During the War of Independence Tarrytown was the
centre of the "Neutral Territory" between the lines of the British and Continental forces, and was the scene of numerous
conflicts between the "cowboys" and "skinners," bands of
unorganized partisans, the former acting in the name of the
colonies, and the latter in that of the king. On the post road,
on the 24th of September 1780, Major John Andre was captured
by three Continentals, John Paulding, David Williams and
Isaac Van Wert; to commemorate the capture a marble shaft
surmounted by a bronze statue of a Continental soldier has
been erected on the spot. Tarrytown is described in the Sketch
Book of Washington Irving, who lived and died at "Sunnyside,"
within the limits of Tarrytown, was long warden of old Christ
Church, and is buried in the Old Sleepy Hollow burying-ground,
which adjoins the Dutch Church, and in which Carl Schurz
also is buried. Tarrytown was incorporated as a village in
1870. Its name is probably a corrupt form of the Dutch
"Tarwen dorp" (wheat town).
See H. B. Dawson, Westchester County in the American Revolution (New York, 1886); and an article by H. W. Mabie in L. P. Powell's Historic Towns of the Middle States (New York, 1899).
TARSIER, the Anglicized form of the scientific name of
a small and aberrant lemur-like animal, Tarsius spectrum,
inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and islands, and typifying a
family. The name tarsicr refers to the great elongation of
two of the bones of the tarsus, or ankle, and spectrum to the
huge goggle-like eyes and attenuated form which constitute
two of the most distinctive features of this weird little creature.
In organization the tarsier departs markedly from other lemurs
as regards several particulars, and thereby approximates to
monkeys and apes. Rather smaller than a squirrel, with dusky
brown fur, the tarsier has immense eyes, large ears, a long thin
tail, tufted at the end, a greatly elongated tarsal portion of
the foot, and disk-like adhesive surfaces on the fingers, which
doubtless assist the animal in maintaining its position on the
boughs. Four species of the genus are now recognized, whose
range includes the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra, Borneo,
Celebes and some of the Philippines. The tarsier feeds chiefly
on insects and lizards, sleeps during the day, but is tolerably
active at night, moving chiefly by jumping from place to place;
an action for which the structure of its hind-legs seems par-
ticularly well adapted. It is rare, not more than two being
generally found together, and only brings forth one young at a
time. (See Primates.)
TARSUS (mod. Tersous), an ancient city in the fertile plain
of Cilicia. The small river Cydnus flowed through the centre of the town, and its cool swift waters were the boast of the city (though visitors like Dion Chrysostom thought it far inferior to the rivers of many Greek cities). The harbour, Rhegma, below the city, was originally a lagoon, though it is said also to be supplied by springs of its own. The Cydnus flowed into the lake (where were the arsenals) and thence into the sea, about 10 m. from Tarsus. The city is first mentioned on the Black Obelisk, as captured by the Assyrians along with the rest of Cilicia about 850 B.C. It was probably an old Ionian colony, settled (like Mallus) under the direction of Clarian Apollo. Its importance was due (1) to its excellent and safe harbour, (2) to its possession of a fertile territory, and (3) to its command of the first waggon-road made across Mount Taurus, which was cut through the Cilician Gates, a narrow gorge 100 yards in length, originally only wide enough to carry the waters of a small affluent of the Cydnus. The greatness of Tarsus rested therefore mainly on the two great engineering works, the harbour and the road. That the latter was due to Greek influence is shown by the village Mopsucrene on the southern approach to the Gates: Mopsus was the prophet of Clarian Apollo. Few mountain passes have been so important in history as this road (seventy miles in length) over Taurus. Many armies have marched over it; those of Cyrus the Younger, Alexander the Great, Cicero, Septimius Severus and the First Crusade may specially be mentioned.
Tarsus is most accessible from the sea or from the east. Even after the "Cilician Gates " were cut, the crossing of Taurus was a difficult operation for an invading army (as Xenophon and Arrian show). Hence Tarsian history (where not determined by Greek maritime relations) has been strongly affected by Semitic influence, and Dion Chrysostom, about A.D. 112, says it was more like a Phoenician than a Hellenic city (which it claimed to be). After the Assyrian power decayed, princes, several of whom bore the name or title Syennesis, ruled Tarsus before and under Persian power. Persian satraps governed it in the 4th century B.C.; and struck coins with Aramaic legends there. The Seleucid kings of Syria for a time kept it in a state of servitude; but it was made an autonomous city with additional citizens (probably Argive Greeks and Jews) by Antiochus IV. Epiphanes in 171 B.C.; and then it began to strike its own coins. It became one of the richest and greatest cities of the East under the Romans after 104 B.C., and was favoured by both Antony and Augustus: the reception there by the former of Cleopatra, who sailed up to the city in a magnificent vessel, was a striking historic event. In spite of its oriental character, it maintained a university where Greek philosophy was taught by a series of famous Tarsians, who influenced Roman history. Chief among them was Athenodorus Cananites (q.v.), teacher and friend of Augustus for many years, a man of courage and
