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TRANENT—TRANSBAIKALIA
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(London, 1906). See also various articles in Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens, edited by L. Loewenfeld and H. Kurella (Wiesbaden, 1900), especially the article “Somnambulismus und Spiritismus”; also articles in Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, especially pts. liii., lv. and lvii., and in the Journ. of Abnormal Psychology, edited by Morton Prince (Boston, 1906–1909); also literature cited under Automatism; Hypnotism; Medium; Telepathy and Possession.  (W. Mc.D.) 

TRANENT, a police burgh of Haddingtonshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 2584. It lies 91/2 m. E. of Edinburgh by road and 1 m. S.E. of Prestonpans station on the North British railway. The town possesses the oldest coal-mining charter (1202–1218) in Great Britain, and the mines and quarries in the neighbourhood provide the staple industry. A fragment of a parish church, said to have been built in the 11th century, still stands. Of the palace of the Setons which stood in the parish there are no remains. It was demolished towards the close of the 18th century and a modern mansion was erected on its site.

In the neighbouring village of Ormiston, in 1885, a granite obelisk was erected in memory of Robert Moffat (1795–1883), a native, the South African missionary and father-in-law of Livingstone. At Ormiston Hall, a seat of the marquess of Linlithgow, there is a yew tree, beneath which the reformer George Wishart (1513–1546) used to preach. Hard by is the village of Pencaitland, divided into an eastern and a western portion by the Tyne. The parish church in Easter Pencaitland probably dates from the 13th century. The aisle may belong to the original building, but the rest is of the 16th century, excepting the small belfry of the 17th century. The old house of Pencaitland stands in the grounds of Winton Castle, which was erected by the 3rd earl of Winton in 1620 but forfeited by the 5th earl, who was involved in the Jacobite rising of 1715. Five miles south-east of Tranent is the village of Salton (or Saltown), where Gilbert Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, had his first charge (1665). At his death he bequeathed the parish 20,000 marks for the clothing and educating of poor children. He was tutor to Andrew Fletcher, who was born at Salton in 1655 and buried there in 1716. At Fletcher’s instigation James Meikle, a neighbouring millwright, went to Holland to learn the construction of the iron-work of barley mills, and the mill which he erected at Salton after his return not only gave Salton barley a strong hold on the market, but was also for forty years the only mill of its kind in the British Isles. Meikle’s son Andrew (1719–1811), inventor of the threshing machine, carried on his trade of millwright at Houston Mill near Dunbar. Andrew Fletcher, also of Salton (1692–1766), nephew of the elder Andrew, became lord justice clerk in 1735 under the style of Lord Milton. By his mother’s energy the art of weaving and dressing holland linen was introduced into the village. She travelled in Holland with two skilled mechanics who contrived to learn the secrets of the craft. The British Linen Company laid down their first bleach field at Salton under Lord Milton’s patronage. Salton also lays claim to having been the birthplace of the poet William Dunbar.

TRANI, a seaport and episcopal see of Apulia, Italy, on the Adriatic, in the province of Bari, and 26 m. by rail W.N.W. of that town, 23 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901), 34,688 Trani has lost its old walls and bastions, but the 13th-century Gothic citadel is used as a prison. Some of the streets remain much as they were in the medieval period, and many of the houses display more or less of Norman decoration. The cathedral (dedicated to St Nicholas the Pilgrim, a Greek assassinated at Trani in 1094 and canonized by Urban II.), on a raised open site near the sea, was consecrated, before its completion, in 1143; it is a basilica with three apses; a large crypt and a lofty tower, the latter erected in 1230–1239 by the architect whose name appears on the ambo in the cathedral of Bitonto, Nicolaus Sacerdos. It has an arch under it, being supported partly on the side wall of the church, and partly on a massive pillar. The arches of the Romanesque portal are beautifully ornamented, in a manner suggestive of Arab influence; the bronze doors, executed by Barisanus of Trani in 1175, rank among the best of their period in southern Italy. The capitals of the pillars in the crypt are fine examples of the Romanesque. The interior of the cathedral has been barbarously modernized, but the crypt is fine. Near the harbour is the Gothic palace of the doges of Venice, which is now used as a seminary. The church of the Ognissanti has a Romanesque relief of the Annunciation over the door. S. Giacomo and S. Francesco also have Romanesque façades and the latter and S. Andrea have “Byzantine” domes. The vicinity of Trani produces an excellent wine (Moscato di Trani); and its figs, oil, almonds and grain are also profitable articles of trade.

Trani is the Turenum of the itineraries. It first became a flourishing place under the Normans and during the crusades, but attained the acme of its prosperity as a seat of trade with the East under the Angevin princes. The harbour, however, has lost its importance.

TRANQUEBAR, a town of British India, in the Tanjore district of Madras, on the sea-coast, 18 m. N. of Negapatam. Pop. (1901), 13,142. A Danish factory was opened here as early as 1620. It was taken by the British in 1801, but restored in 1814, and finally purchased, with the other Danish settlements in India, in 1845. In Danish times Tranquebar was a busy port, but it lost its importance when the railway was opened to Negapatam. It was the first settlement of Protestant missionaries in India, founded by Ziegenbalg and Plutschau (Lutherans) in 1706; and there is still a Lutheran mission high school and mission press.

TRANSBAIKALIA (sometimes also known as Dauria), a province of Eastern Siberia, lying E. of Lake Baikal, with the government of Irkutsk on the N.W. and N., the provinces of Amur and Manchuria on the E. and Mongolia on the S. Its area (232,846 sq. m.) is nearly as large as that of Austria-Hungary, but its population does not much exceed half a million.

Transbaikalia forms an intermediate link between Siberia, Mongolia and the northern Pacific littoral. The Yablonoi Mountains, which run north-east from the sources of the Kerulefi to the bend of the Olekma in 56° N., divide the province into two quite distinct parts; to the west, the upper terrace of the high east Asian plateau, continued from the upper Selenga and the Yenisei (4000 to 5000 ft. high) towards the plateau of the Vitim (3500 to 4000 ft.); and to the east the lower terrace of the same plateau (2800 ft.), forming a continuation of the eastern Gobi. Beginning at Lake Baikal, a valley, deep and broad, penetrates the north-western border-ridge of the plateau, and runs eastward up the river Uda, with an imperceptible gradient, like a gigantic railway cutting enclosed between two steep slopes, and it sends another branch south towards Kiakhta. After having served, through a succession of geological periods, as an outlet for the water and ice which accumulated on the plateau, it is now utilized for the two highways which lead from Lake Baikal across the plateau (3500-4000 ft.) to the Amur on the east and the Chinese depression on the south. Elsewhere the high and massive border-ridge on the north-western edge of the plateau can be crossed only by difficult footpaths. The border-ridge just mentioned, gapped by the wide opening of the Selenga, runs from south-west to north-east under different names, being known as Khamar-daban (6900 ft.) south of Lake Baikal, and as the Barguzin Mountains (7000 to 8000 ft.) along the east bank of the Barguzin river, while farther north-east it has been described under the names of the South Muya and the Chara Mountains (6000 to 7000 ft.). Resting its south-east base on the plateau, it descends steeply on the north-west to the lake and to the broad picturesque valleys of the Barguzin, Muya and Chara. Thick forests of larch, fir and cedar clothe the ridge, whose dome-shaped rounded summits (goltsy) rise above the limits of tree vegetation, but do not reach the snow-line (here above 10,000 ft.). The high plateau itself has the aspect of an undulating table-land, intersected by ranges, which rise some 1500 or 2000 ft. above its surface, and are separated by broad, flat, marshy valleys, traversed by sluggish meandering streams. The better drained valleys have fine meadow lands, while the hills are clothed with forests (almost exclusively of larch and birch). Numberless lakes and ponds occur along the river courses. Tunguses hunt in the forests and meadows, but permanent agricultural settlements are impossible, corn seldom ripening on account of the early frost. The lower parts of the broad, flat valley of the Jida have, however, a few Cossack settlements, and Mongolian shepherds inhabit the elevated grassy valleys about Lake Kosso-gol (5300 ft. above the sea). Quite different is the lower terrace of the plateau, occupied by the eastern Gobi and the Nerchinsk region, and separated from the upper terrace by the Yablonoi range. This last is the south-eastern border-ridge of the higher terrace. It rises to 8035 ft. in the Sokhondo peak, but elsewhere its dome-shaped summits do not exceed 5000 or 6000 ft. Numberless lakes, with flat undefined margins, feed streams which join the great north-going rivers or the Amur and the Pacific. Low hills rise above the edge of the plateau, but the slope is abrupt towards the south-east, where the foot-hills of the Yablonoi are nearly 1500 and 2000 ft. lower than on the north-west. Climate, flora and fauna change suddenly as soon as the Yablonoi has been crossed. The Siberian flora gives way to the Daurian flora, and this is in turn exchanged for the Pacific littoral flora on the Manchurian plains and lowlands.