Part 238 (1/2)

HEIR PRESUMPTIVE, one whose right of succession is sure if not barred by the birth of one nearer.

HEJAZ, EL, the holy land of the Moslems, a district of Arabia Felix, and so called by containing the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina.

HEJIRA or HEJRA (Arabic, ”going away”), a word applied to Mahomet's flight from Mecca to Medina in A.D. 622; Calif Omar, 17 years later, adopted this date as the starting-point of a new Mohammedan calendar.

HEL or HELA, in Scandinavian mythology an inexorable divinity, the death-G.o.ddess who presides over the icy realm of the dead; her maw was insatiable and her heart pitiless.

HELDENBUCH, a collection of German heroic poems relating heroic deeds and events connected with the inroads of the barbarians on the empire.

HELDER, THE (25), a strongly fortified and flouris.h.i.+ng seaport in North Holland, on the Marsdiep, at the N. end of the North Holland Ca.n.a.l, 51 m. NW. of Amsterdam; is an important naval centre, and has an excellent harbour.

HELEN, the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta; the most beautiful of women, who was carried off to Troy by Paris, to revenge whose abduction the princes of Greece, who had pledged themselves to protect her, made war on Troy, a war which lasted ten years.

HELENA, ST., the mother of Constantine the Great; is said to have visited Jerusalem and discovered the Holy Sepulchre and the cross on which Christ was crucified; _d_. 328, at the age of 80. Festival, Aug.

18. There are several other saints of the same name.

HELENSBURGH (8), a pleasantly situated watering-place in Dumbarton, on the Firth of Clyde, at the entrance of the Gareloch, 4 m. N. of Greenock.

HELENUS, a son of Priam and Hecuba, celebrated for his prophetic foresight; is said to have deserted his countrymen and joined the Greeks.

HELIAND, an old Saxon poem of the 9th century, of great philological value, but of no great literary merit; deals with the life and work of Christ; of the two extant MSS. one is in the British Museum.

HELICON, a mountain in Boeotia, Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses; famous for the fountains on its slopes dedicated to the latter.

HELIGOLAND (2, but rising to 14 in summer), an islet of the North Sea, 35 m. from the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser; German since 1890; consists of the _Oberland_, a plateau, with some 400 houses, and the _Unterland_ on the sh.o.r.e, 206 ft. beneath, with a group of 70 dwellings.

In the summer it is crowded with visitors, bathing being the chief attraction; fis.h.i.+ng is the staple industry of the native Frisians.

HELIODORUS, the most noted and earliest of the Greek romancists, born at Emesa, Syria; flourished in the second half of the 3rd century A.D.; his romance ”aethiopica” is a love tale of great beauty and told with nave simplicity; has had considerable influence over subsequent romance writers, e. g. Ta.s.so.

HELIOGA'BALUS, a Roman emperor; invested, while yet a youth, with the Imperial purple by the army in 218; ruled with a show of moderation at first, but soon gave way to every manner of excess; was after four years put to death by the Praetorian Guard, and his body thrown into the Tiber.

HELIOGRAPHY, a method of signalling from distant points by means of the sun's rays flashed from mirrors; messages can in this manner be transmitted a distance of 190 m.; it has been found of great practical value in military operations.