except in a few instances in which Acts of Congress have dealt with tolls in rivers and harbours (see Revised Statutes, tit. IxiiL). The question of tolls was at one time an important one in international law. Tolls were exacted on certain straits and tidal rivers by virtue of the sovereignty of a particular state. Such tolls have mostly ceased or been redeemed. Notable instances were the Scheldt tolls and the Sound dues levied by Denmark. See Navigation Laws.
TOLUCA, or Toloccan, a city of Mexico, the capital of the state of Mexico, on the Mexican National Railway, 45 miles south-west from the federal capital. It lies on the west side of the Anahuac tableland, at the foot of Mount San Miguel de Tutucuitlalpillo, at an elevation of 8653 feet above the sea, being the highest town in the republic next to the mining station of Ameca-meca (which is 8800 feet). Toluca had in 1886 a population of about 12,000, and is usually described as a well-built flourishing town, with fine buildings and clean well-drained streets. But T. M. Brocklehurst, who visited it in 1880, gives an un favourable impression of the place, which presented nothing attractive beyond the Portales, a fine arcade running round a large block of central buildings, with a number of good shops under the arches (Mexico To-day, p. 222). There is also a good theatre, and in the Plaza de los Martires a well-executed white marble monument to the patriot Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. But the Carmen, Vera Cruz, and one or two other churches are dirty and tawdry, with out presenting any striking architectural features. The city is traversed by a foul stream flowing at the bottom of a barranca or deep ravine, along whose banks are herded numerous swine in a half-wild state, which supply the hams and sausages for which the place is noted. Here also soap and wax candles are manufactured and supplied to the surrounding districts. In the south-west the Nevado de Toluca, an extinct snow-clad volcano with a flooded crater, rises to a height of 15,156 feet above sea-level.
Although Toluca appears to have been one of the earliest Toltec settlements in Anahuac, its foundation dating probably from the 6th century, it has preserved no remains of its ancient grandeur, nor have any monuments been discovered in the district in any way comparable to those of Cholula, Tula, Teotihuacan, and other ancient centres of Toltec culture. According to M. Charnay, Toluca formed one of the chief starting points of the great migrations which, after the overthrow of the Toltec empire by the Chichimec irruption in the llth century, moved in two parallel streams south wards, converging at Copan and spreading their arts and industries over Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala (Ancient Cities of the New World, 1887, p. 125).
TOMATO.Horticulture, vol. xii. p. 288.
TOMPA, Mihály ( = MICHAEL) (1817-1868), one of the best and tenderest Hungarian lyric poets, was born in 1817 at Rima-Szombat, in the county of Gomor, of very humble parentage, his father being village bootmaker. He studied law and theology in Saros-Patak, and subse quently at Budapest; but, feeling little inclination for the first-mentioned career, after many vicissitudes he, at the age of thirty, accepted the post of Protestant minister in Beje, a small village in his native county, whence, in two years, he removed to Kelemer, and four years later to Hanva, in the county of Borsod, where he remained till his death in 1868.
At the age of four-and-twenty Tompa published his first poems in the Athenaeum, which soon procured for him a high reputation. His first volume, Nepregek es Nepmvnddk ("Folk-Legends and Folk-Tales"), in 1846, met with great success, and the same may be said of the first volume of his "Poems" in 1847. In 1848 he took part in the war of independence, acting as field chaplain to the volunteers of his county and seeing several battles; but the unfortunate close of that heroic struggle silenced his poetic vein for a considerable time, and, when in 1852 and 1853 he gave vent to his patriotic grief in some masterly allegories on the state of oppressed Hungary, he was twice arrested by the Austrian authori ties. After being released he published his Virdgregek ("Legends of Flowers"), a collection of poems of the highest order, showing great imagination and love of nature, and displaying the loftiest humanity and great meditative power. Soon after this he became oppressed with melancholy and abandoned this branch of poetry. Indeed from this time he produced comparatively little. He pub lished three volumes of sermons, "which," says his biographer, Charles Szasz, Protestant bishop of Budapest, "are among the best in Hungarian literature, and will favourably compare with those of Robertson, llonod, or Parker." His collected poetical works, in six volumes, were published at Budapest in 1870, and again, in four volumes, in 1885.
TOMSK, a government of Western Siberia, extending from the Chinese frontier to 60° N. lat., is bounded by Tobolsk on the N.W., by Yeniseisk on the N.E., by the Chinese province of Khobdo on the S.E., and by Semipalatinsk on the S.W. Its area, 329,040 square miles, is fully one and a half times that of France. The surface is most varied, including in the south-east the high alpine tracts of the Altai Mountains, with an elevated steppe which skirts these, and in the north-west and west the lowlands of the Irtish and the marshy tracts of the Ob.
The Altai Mountains, which cover within the limits of the Russian empire an area of 53,000 square miles, or three times that of the whole of Switzerland, although visited by many geologists, still remain very imperfectly known, even as regards their orography. The country has been mapped only along the rivers and the course of a few footpaths, and great confusion still prevails with reference to the directions of the different chains of the Altai and their mutual relations (compare Siberia). The best descrip tions, however (including the most recent by M. Potanin),[1] indicate in that part of Asia the very same leading orographical features that are seen in the Tian-Shan Mountains farther south, and in the West Sayan range farther north. A plateau with an average altitude of more than 4000 feet, watered by the tributaries of the upper Yenisei, all flowing in open valleys 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea, is known to rise in that part of north-western Mongolia which is drained by the upper Yenisei and Selenga. The surface of this plateau is diversified by ridges, and by depressions like that of the Ubsa-nor a relic of what was formerly a much larger lake. A lofty mountain chain, which has its south-east foot on the plateau and its north-west foot in the valley of the Us, fringes the plateau, and has all the characters of a border-ridge. The present writer has proposed to call this Erghik-shan. It runs from north-east to south-west along the RussoChinese frontier, and is pierced by a deep gorge through which flows the Yenisei. A belt, some 200 miles in width, of alpine tracts, made up of three or four chains parallel to the border ridge, fringes the outer border of the plateau, and fills up the Minusinsk region. The structure of the hilly tracts (watered by the Kemtchik) between the Yenisei and the Altai remains quite unknown, no scien tific man or topographer having ever visited it. But the very same orographical features as those already described reappear in the Altai region. There is now no doubt that the backbone of the Altai is a huge and lofty border-ridge, the Sailughem, which includes the small alpine plateaus of Ukek, the upper Tchuya, and Juvlu-kul, and runs from south-west to north-east, being a continuation of the border-ridge of the West Sayan. Its flat dome-shaped summits rise to about 10,000 feet, and the small alpine plateaus just named range from 7800 to 8200 feet in elevation. It has a very steep slope towards the north west, i.e., towards the broad valleys of the upper Bukhtarma and Tchuya, and a very gentle slope towards the south-east, and its south-eastern hillfoots are on the level of the plateau of Khobdo (from 4500 to 5000 feet). A broad alpine region spreads to the north-west of the borderridge, but in the imperfect state of our knowledge it is
- ↑ Jivopisnaya Rossiya, vol. xi.; Sketches of N. W. Mongolia, vols. i. and iii.; Addenda to Ritter's Asia.
