Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

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for dairy purposes, especially for the manufacture of ghee. The
revenue of Sugar district in 1883-84 amounted to £68,376, of which
the land-tax contrihuted £44,429.
By a treaty concluded with Baji Rao in 1818, the greater part of
the present district was made over to the British. During the
mutiny of 1857 the whole district was in the possession of the
rebels excepting the town and fort, in which the Europeans were
shut up for eight months, till relieved early in the following year
by Sir Hugh Rose. The rebels were totally defeated and order was
Ain restored by March 1858. Sagar was formed into a separate
district of the Central Provinces in 1861.
SAGAR, principal town and headquarters of the above
district, situated in 23° 50' K lat. and 78° 49' E. long.,
is well built with wide streets and stands on the borders
of a small but beautiful lake, and has military canton¬
ments. Sdgar is the entrepot of the salt trade with
R&jput&na, and carries on a large trade with Mirz&pur
district in the North-Western Provinces, importing sugar
and other grocery, besides English cloth. The population
of the town in 1881 was 44,416 (males 22,556, females
21,860).
SAGE, Le. See Le Sage.
SAGHALIN, or Sakhalin, is the name improperly
given to a large elongated island in the North Pacific,
lying between 45° 57' and 54° 24' N. lat. and 141° 30' and
144° 50'E. long., off the coast of Russian Manchuria. Its
proper name is Karaftu, or Karafuto. It is separated
from the mainland by the narrow and shallow Strait of
Tartary, which often freezes in winter in its narrower
part, and from Yezo (Japan) by the Strait of La Perouse.
This island (670 miles long, 20 to 150 broad, with an
area of 24,560 square miles), about equal in size to Belgium
and Holland together, must be considered as a continua¬
tion of the mountains bordering the Manchurian littoral.
Its orography is still imperfectly known. The present
maps represent it as formed of two parallel ridges, running
north and south and reaching from 2000 to 4000 or 5000
feet (Mounts Berniget and Ktous-pal) high, with two or
more wide depressions, not exceeding 600 feet above the
sea. The general configuration of the littoral and the
island, however, renders it more probable that there are
three chains running south-west to north-east, forming
continuations of those of the mainland. The geological
structure of the island is also imperfectly known. A few
crystalline rocks are found at several capes; Cretaceous
limestones containing a rich and specific fauna of gigantic
ammonites occur at Dui • and Tertiary conglomerates,
sandstones, marls, and clays, folded by subsequent up¬
heavals, are widely spread. The clays, which contain
layers of good coal and a rich fossil vegetation, show that
during the Miocene period Saghalin was part of a continent
which comprised both north Asia, Alaska, and Japan, and
enjoyed a much warmer climate than now. The Pliocene
deposits contain a mollusc fauna more arctic than the
present, and probably indicating that the connexion be¬
tween the Pacific and Arctic Oceans was broader than
now. Only two rivers, the Tym and the Poronai, are worthy
of mention. The former, 250 miles long, and navigable
by rafts and light boats for 50 miles from its mouth,
flows north and north-east with numerous (about 100)
rapids and shallows, in a wild valley suitable only for
fishing or hunting settlements, and enters the Sea of
Okhotsk at the Bay of Nyi. The Poronai flows north and
then south to the Gulf of Patience, a wide bay on the
south-east coast. Three other small streams enter the
wide semicircular Gulf of Aniva at the southern extremity
of the island.
Owing to the cooling influence of the Sea of Okhotsk,
the climate is very cold. At Dui the average yearly tem¬
perature is only 33o-0 Fahr. (January, 3°-4; July, 61o,0),
35 -Q at^ Kusunai, and 37°‘6 at Aniva (January, 9°-5;
July, 60 -2). A dense covering of clouds for the most
-SAG 147
part shuts out the rays of the sun; while the cold current
issuing from the Sea of Okhotsk, aided by north-east
winds, in summer brings immense ice-floes to the east
coast. The whole of the island is covered with dense
forests (mostly coniferous). The Ayan fir (Abies ayanensis),
the Saghalin pichta, and the Daurian larch are the chief
trees; and the upper parts of the mountains have the
Siberian rampant cedar {Cembra pumila) and the Curilian
bamboo (Arundinaria Icurilense), 4 feet high and half an
inch thick. Birch, both European and Kamchatkan (B.
alba and B. Ermani), elder, poplar, elm, wild cherry (Primus
padus), Taxus baccata, and several willows are mixed with
the Conifers; while farther south the maple, the ash, and
the oak, as also the Japanese Panax ricinifolium and the
Amur cork (Philodendron amurense), make their appear¬
ance. The number of phanerogamous species known
reaches 590 and may reach 700, of which only 20 are
peculiar to Saghalin, the remainder belonging to the Amur
and partly to the Japanese flora. The fauna of Saghalin
closely resembles that of the Amur region, and in fact
the Siberian. Bears, foxes, and sables are still numerous,
as also the reindeer in the north and the antelope; and
tigers are occasionally met with in the south. The avi¬
fauna is the common Siberian; and the rivers are ex¬
ceedingly rich in fish, especially species of salmon (Onco-
rhynchus), which make their way up the rivers in vast
numbers to spawn. The lower marine fauna, explored by
Schrenck, is also rich, while numerous whales, not in high
esteem with whalers, are met with on the sea-coast. Otarias,
seals, and dolphins are a source of profit.
Saghalin has been inhabited since at least the Neolithic Stone
Age. Flint implements, exactly like those of Siberia and Russia,
have been found at Dui and Kusunai in great numbers, as well as
polished hatchets (of trap, diorite, and argillaceous schists)—also
like the European ones—primitive pottery with decorations like
those of Olonetz, and stone weights for nets. Afterwards came a
population to whom bronze was known ; they have left their traces
in earthen walls and kitchen-middens (in the Bay of Aniva). The
present inhabitants consist of some 2000 Gilyaks, 2500 Ainos, 500
Oroks, as many Japanese, and about 6000 Russians. The Gilyaks,
who do not differ from those of the Amur, inhabit the northern part
of the island. They support themselves by fishing and partly by
hunting, but suffer from competition with the Japanese, who take
possession of the best fishing-grounds. The Oroks, of Tungus origin,
resemble the Orotchons of the Amur ; they live by hunting. The
Ainos, who are still the subject of so much discussion among ethno¬
logists, are the aborigines of the island ; they are closely akin to the
Curilians, and, like these, differ from all other Mongolian races by
their luxuriance of hair and beard. They now inhabit only the
south part of the island, and have been brought into a condition of
slavery by the Japanese, by whom they have been driven out of
Yezo and Nippon, in both of which they were the aborigines. The
Japanese have several colonies on Saghalin and force the Ainos to
fish and to collect seaweed for exportation. They send their ships
to the south part of the island and have colonies there, and also
on the east coast, at the mouth of the Tym. The Russians began
to settle permanently on Saghalin in 1857 ; and, though next year
posts were established in the southern part of the island, it still
continued to belong to Japan, which definitely ceded it to Russia
in 1875. A scheme having been lately formed for colonizing the
island with convicts, several thousands have been transported
thither, especially to Dui (Alexandrovsk), where they are employed
in coal-mining (annual output from 3000 to 30,000 cwts.), or make
some attempt at agriculture ; they are either kept in the Alex¬
androvsk prison, or permitted to build houses and to settle with
their families. These efforts towards colonization, however, en¬
counter great difficulties from the quality of the soil, the cultivable
patches occurring here and there in the marshy valley of the Duika
river, on the upper course of the Tym, and in the bays of Patience
and Aniva. The only crops that thrive are various kinds of kitchen
produce. The Russian settlements are at Dui on the west coast,
Malo-Tymovsk and Rykovsk on the upper Tym, Korsakoff and
Muravieff on the Bay of Aniva.
History.—Saghalin, which was under Chinese dominion until the
present century, became known to Europeans from the travels of
Martin Gerrits in the 17th century, and still better from those of
La Perouse (1787) and Krusenstern (1805), who described large
parts of its coasts. Both, however, regarded it as a mere appendage
of the continent, and were unaware of the existence of the Strait of