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V—Vacarescu
V This letter was originally, like Y, only one of the earlier forms of the letter U. According to Florio (1611) V is “sometimes a vowel, and sometimes a consonant.” In modern times attempts have been made to assign to it the consonantal value of U, but in English another symbol W is used for this, while V has received the value of the voiced form of F, which itself had originally a sound resembling the English W (see under F). V is therefore a voiced labio-dental spirant, the breath escaping through a very narrow slit between the lower lip and the upper teeth. In German, however, V is used with the same value as F, while W takes the value that V has in English. Apart from some southern dialect forms which have found their way into the literary language, as vat (for fat or wine-fat which still survives in the English Bible) and vixen the feminine of fox, all the words in English which begin with V are of foreign, and most of Latin origin. In the middle of words between vowels f was originally regularly voiced: life, lives; wife wives, &c. The Latin V, however, was not a labio-dental spirant like the English v, but a bi-labial semivowel like the English w, as is clear from the testimony of Quintilian and of later grammarians. This quality has remained to it in southern Italy, in Spain and Gascony. In Northern French and in Italian it has become the labio-dental v, and from French English has adopted this value for it. Early borrowings like wine (Latin vinum), wall (Latin vallum), retain the w sound and are therefore spelt with w. In the English dialects of Kent, Essex and Norfolk there is a common change of v to w, but Ellis says (English Pronunciation, V, pp. 132, 229) that though he has made diligent search he has never been able to hear the v for w which is so characteristic of Sam and Tony Weller in the Pickwick Papers. It is, however, illustrated in Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language (1803) and confirmed by the editor of the 3rd edition (1844), pp. 65–66. The history of V as the Latin numeral for 5 is uncertain. An old theory is that it represents the hand, while X=10 is the two hands with the finger tips touching. This was adopted by Mommsen (Hermes, xxii. 598). The Etruscan used the same v-symbol inverted. V with a horizontal line above it was used for 5000. (P. Gi.)
Vaal, a river of South Africa, chief affluent of the Orange (q.v.). It rises at an elevation of over 5000 ft. above the sea on the slopes of the Klipstapel, in the Drakensberg mountains, Ermelo district of the Transvaal, and about 170 m. in a direct line west of Delagoa Bay. It flows in a general S.W. direction, with a markedly winding course, across the plateau of inner South Africa, joining the Orange in 29° 3′ S., 23° 56′ E. The river valley is about 500 m. long, the length of the river being some 750 m.
The first considerable tributary is the Klip (80 m. long), which rises in the Draken's Berg (the hill which gives its name to the range) and flows N.W., its junction with the Vaal being in 27° S., 29° 6′ E., 12 m. S.W. of Standerton. From this point to the eastern frontier of the Cape the Vaal forms the boundary between the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The river is usually shallow and is fordable at many places, known as drifts. But after the heavy summer rains the stream attains a depth of 30 or more feet. At such times the banks, which are lined with willows and in places very steep, are inundated. As a rule little water is added to the Vaal by its tributaries. Of these, the Wilge (190 m.), which also rises on the inner slopes of the Drakensberg, flows first S.W., then N .W. across the eastern part of Orange Free State and joins the Vaal 60 m. below the Klip confluence. Lower down the river receives from the south the Rhenoster, Valsch, Vet and other streams which drain the northern part of the Orange Free State. On the north the basin of the Vaal is contracted by the Witwatersrand and Magaliesberg range, and its tributaries are few and, save in the case of the Harts river, short. The Klip, not to be confounded with the southern Klip already described, rises on the south side of the Witwatersrand about 15 m. W. of Johannesburg, is joined by several small streams, and after a S.E. course of 70 m. reaches the Vaal 2 m. E. of Vereeniging. The Klip is of importance in the supply of water to many of the Black Reef gold mines. The Mooi rises in the Witwatersrand west of the Klip and, after running almost due S. 75 m., unites with the main stream about 90 m. below Vereeniging. It gets its name Mooi (Beautiful) on account of the picturesqueness of its banks. Some of its sources are at Wonderfontein, where the issue from stalactite caves. The Harts river (200 m.) rises on the S.W. slopes of the Witwatersrand and flowing S. by W. unites with the Vaal about 65 m. above the confidence of that stream with the Orange. The volume of water in the Harts is often very slight, but that part of the country, the eastern division of Griqualand West, in which the Vaal receives its last tributaries and itself joins the Orange, is the best watered of any of the inland districts of the Cape. The Vaal here flows in a wide rocky channel, with banks 30 ft. high, through an alluvial plain rendered famous in 1867–70 by the discovery of diamonds in the bed of the river and along its banks. The diamonds are washed out by the water and found amid debris of all kinds, frequently embedded in immense boulders. The last afiluent of the Vaal, the Riet river, rises in the Beyers Bergen S.E. of Reddersburg and flows N.W. 200 m. through Orange Free State, being joined, a mile or two within the Cape frontier, by the Modder river (175 m.), which rises in the same district as the Riet but takes a more northerly course. The united Riet-Modder joins the Vaal 18 m. above the Orange confluence.
The name Vaal is a partial translation by the Dutch settlers of the Hottentot name of the river—Kai Gariep, properly Garib (yellow water), in reference to the clayey colour of the stream. The Transvaal is so named because the first white immigrants reached the country from the south by crossing the Vaal.
Vaalpens (dusty-bellies), a little-known nomadic people of South Africa, who survive in small groups in the Zoutpansberg and Waterberg districts of the Transvaal, especially along the Magalakwane river. They are akin to the Bushmen (q.v.). In 1905 their total number was estimated by the Transvaal military authorities at “a few hundreds.” The Vaalpens were so called by the Boers from the dusty look of their bodies, due, it is said, to their habit of crawling along the ground when stalking game. But their true colour is black. In height the men average about 4 ft., i.e. somewhat less than the shortest Bushmen. Socially the Vaalpens occupy nearly as low a position as even the Fuegians or the extinct Tasmanians. They were nearly exterminated by the Aman'debele, a tribe of Zulu stock which entered the Transvaal about the beginning of the 19th century. The Vaalpens, who live entirely by hunting and trapping game, dwell in holes, caves or rock shelters. They wear capes of skins, and procure the few implements they need in exchange for skins, ivory or ostrich feathers. They form family groups of thirty or forty under a chief or patriarch, whose functions are purely domestic, as must be the case where there are no arts or industries, nothing but a knowledge of hunting and of fire with which to cook their meals. Their speech appears to be so full of clicks as to be incapable of expression by any clear phonetic system. Hence it is impossible to say whether the Vaalpens possess any folklore or other oral literature analogous to that of the Bushmen.
Vacarescu, the name, according to tradition, of one of the oldest noble families in Walachia. Its mythical founder is said to have been a certain Kukenus, of Spanish origin, settled in Transylvania as lord over Fogaras. Others connect the family with Ugrin, count of Fogaras. The first member of historical importance was Ianache (b. 1654), the grand treasurer of Walachia, who was killed with his master, Prince Brancovan, in Constantinople, 1714. His grandson through his son Stephan, also called Ianache (or “Enakitza the Ban,” 1730–1796), starts a line of Rumanian scholars and poets; he was the author of the first known Rumanian grammar in the vernacular, printed in 1787. While in exile in Nicopolis he wrote the contemporary history of the, Turkish empire in two volumes (1740–1799). He was also the first to attempt Rumanian versification. Greater as a poet is his son Alecu (Alexander), who died as a prisoner in Constantinople in 1798. In 1796 a collection of his poems appeared in Rumania. His brother Nikolaes (d. 1830) also wrote some poems, but they remained in MS. until 1861), when they were published. By
