sanatorium, maintained by the Sisters of Charity, La Salle institute, conducted by the Christian Brothers, a Presbyterian mission school and a Methodist manual training and commercial school. There are railway machine-shops, and various manufactories. Las Vegas lies in the centre of an extensive grazing region, has large stockyards and annually ships great quantities of wool. Three of the local newspapers are published in Spanish. Las Vegas was founded in 1835, under the government of the Mexican Republic. On the 15th of August 1846, during the war between Mexico and the United States, Gen. Stephen W. Kearny entered the town, and its alcalde took the oath of allegiance to the United States. There was but little progress or development until the arrival of the railway in 1879. In 1888 the part east of the river was incorporated as a town under the name of East Las Vegas, and in 1896 it was chartered as the city of Las Vegas. The old Las Vegas, west of the river, was incorporated as a town in 1903.
LASWARI, one of the decisive battles of India. It was fought on the 1st of November 1803 between the British under General Lake, and the Mahratta troops of Sindia, consisting of the remnant of Perron’s battalions. Laswari is a village in the state of Alwar some 80 m. S. of Delhi, and here Lake overtook the enemy and attacked them with his cavalry before the infantry arrived. The result was indecisive, but when the infantry came up there ensued one of the most evenly contested battles ever fought between the British and the natives of India, which ended in a complete victory for the British.
LATACUNGA (Llactacunga, or, in local parlance, Tacunga), a plateau town of Ecuador, capital of the province of Léon, 46 m. S. of Quito, near the confluence of the Alagues and Cutuchi to form the Patate, the headstream of the Pastaza. Pop. (1900, estimate) 12,000, largely Indian. Latacunga stands on the old road between Guayaquil and Quito and has a station on the railway between those cities. It is 9141 ft. above sea-level; and its climate is cold and unpleasant, owing to the winds from the neighbouring snowclad heights, and the barren, pumice-covered table-land on which it stands. Cotopaxi is only 25 m. distant, and the town has suffered repeatedly from eruptions. Founded in 1534, it was four times destroyed by earthquakes between 1698 and 1798. The neighbouring ruins of an older native town are said to date from the Incas.
LA TAILLE, JEAN DE (c. 1540–1608), French poet and dramatist, was born at Bondaroy. He studied the humanities in Paris under Muret, and law at Orleans under Anne de Bourg. He began his career as a Huguenot, but afterwards adopted a mild Catholicism. He was wounded at the battle of Arnay-le Duc in 1570, and retired to his estate at Bondaroy, where he wrote a political pamphlet entitled Histoire abrégée des singeries de la ligue, often published with the Satire Ménippée. His chief poem is a satire on the follies of court life, Le Courtisan retiré; he also wrote a political poem, Le Prince nécessaire. But his fame rests on his achievements in drama. In 1572 appeared the tragedy of Saül le furieux, with a preface on L’ Art de la tragédie. Like Jodelle, Grévin, La Péruse and their followers, he wrote, not for the general public to which the mysteries and farces had addressed themselves, but for the limited audience of a lettered aristocracy. He therefore depreciated the native drama and insisted on the Senecan model. In his preface La Taille enunciates the unities of place, time and action; he maintains that each act should have a unity of its own and that the scenes composing it should be continuous; he objects to deaths on the stage on the ground that the representation is unconvincing, and he requires as subject of the tragedy an incident really terrible, developed, if possible, by elaborate intrigue. He criticizes e.g. the subject of the sacrifice of Abraham, chosen by Théodore de Bèze for his tragedy (1551), as unsuitable because “pity and terror” are evoked from the spectators without real cause. If in Saül le furieux he did not completely carry out his own convictions he developed his principal character with great ability. A second tragedy, La Famine ou les Gabéonites (1573), is inferior in construction, but is redeemed by the character of Rizpah. He was also the author of two comedies, Le Négromant and Les Corrivaux, both written apparently by 1562 but not published until 1573. Les Corrivaux is remarkable for its colloquial prose dialogue, which foreshadows the excellence of later French comedy.
His brother, Jacques de la Taille (1542–1562), composed a number of tragedies, of which La Mort de Daire and La Mort d’Alexandre (both published in 1573) are the chief. He is best known by his Manière de faire des vers en français comme en grec et en latin, an attempt to regulate French verse by quantity. He died of plague at the age of 20. His Poésies diverses were published in 1572.
The works of Jean de la Taille were edited by René de Maulde (4 vols., 1878–1882). See also É. Faguet, La Tragédie française au XVI e siècle (1883).
LATAKIA (anc. Laodicea), the chief town of a sanjak in the Beirut vilayet of Syria, situated on the coast, opposite the island of Cyprus. The oldest name of the town, according to Philo Herennius, was Ράμιθα or Λευκὴ ἀκτή it received that of Laodicea (ad mare) from Seleucus Nicator, who refounded it in honour of his mother as one of the four “sister” cities of the Syrian Tetrapolis (Antioch, Seleucia, Apamea, Laodicea). In the Roman period it was favoured by Caesar, and took the name of Julia; and, though it suffered severely when the fugitive Dolabella stood his last siege within its walls (43 B.C.), Strabo describes it as a flourishing port, which supplied, from the vineyards on the mountains, the greater part of the wine imported to Alexandria. The town received the privileges of an Italian colony from Severus, for taking his part against Antioch in the struggle with Niger. Laodicea was the seat of an ancient bishopric, and even had some claim to metropolitan rights. At the time of the crusades, “Liche,” as Jacques de Vitry says it was popularly called, was a wealthy city. It fell to Tancred with Antioch in 1102, and was recovered by Saladin in 1188. A Christian settlement was afterwards permitted to establish itself in the town, and to protect itself by fortifications; but it was expelled by Sultan Kalaʽūn and the defences destroyed. By the 16th century Laodicea had sunk very low; the revival in the beginning of the 17th was due to the new trade in tobacco. The town has several times been almost destroyed by earthquakes—in 1170, 1287 and 1822.
The people are chiefly employed in tobacco cultivation, silk and oil culture, poultry rearing and the sponge fishery. There is a large export of eggs to Alexandria; but the wealth of the place depends most on the famous “Latakia” tobacco, grown in the plain behind the town and on the Ansarieh hills. There are three main varieties, of which the worst is dark in colour and strong in flavour; the best, grown in the districts of Diryus and Amamareh, is light and aromatic, and is exported mainly to Alexandria; but much goes also to Constantinople, Cyprus and direct to Europe. After the construction of a road through Jebel Ansarieh to Hamah, Latakia drew a good deal of traffic from upper Syria; but the Hamah-Homs railway has now diverted much of this again. The products of the surrounding district, however, cause the town to increase steadily, and it is a regular port of call for the main Levantine lines of steamers. The only notable object of antiquity is a triumphal arch, probably of the early 3rd century, in the S.E. quarter of the modern town. Latakia and its neighbourhood formerly produced a very beautiful type of rug, examples of which are highly prized. (D. G. H.)
LATEEN (the Anglicized form of Fr. latine, i.e. voile latine, Latin sail, so-called as the chief form of rig in the Mediterranean), a certain kind of triangular sail, having a long yard by which it is suspended to the mast. A “lateener” is a vessel rigged with a lateen sail and yard. This rig was formerly much used, and is still the typical sail of the felucca of the Mediterranean, and dhow of the Arabian Sea.
LA TÈNE (Lat. tenuis, shallow), the site of a lake-dwelling at the north end of Lake Neuchâtel, between Marin and Préfargier. According to some, it was originally a Helvetic oppidum; according to others, a Gallic commercial settlement. R. Forrer distinguishes an older semi-military, and a younger
