starte of the Assyrian
mythology. The story goes that when a child she was deserted by her
mother and fed by doves.

SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH, a name given to Margaret, Queen of Denmark;
also to Catharine II. of Russia.

SEMIRETCHINSK (758), a mountainous province of Asiatic Russia,
stretches S. of Lake Balkash to East Turkestan and Ferghana on the S.; is
traversed E. and W. by the lofty ranges of the Alatau and Tian-Shan
Mountains; the vast bulk of the inhabitants are Kirghiz, and engaged in
raising horses, camels, and sheep.

SEMITIC RACES, races reputed descendants of Shem, including the
Jews, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Syrians, the Phoenicians, and the
Arabs, and are "all marked," as the editor has observed elsewhere, "by
common features; such appear in their language, their literature, their
modes of thinking, social organisation, and religious belief. Their
language is poor in inflection, has few or no compound verbs or
substantives, has next to no power of expressing abstract ideas, and is
of simple primitive structure or syntax. Their literature has neither the
breadth nor the flow of that of Greece or Rome, but it is instinct with a
passion which often holds of the very depths of being, and appeals to the
ends of the earth. In their modes of thinking they are taken up with
concrete realities instead of abstractions, and hence they have
contributed nothing to science or philosophy, much as they have to faith.
Their social order is patriarchal, with a leaning to a despotism, which
in certain of them, such as the Jews and Arabs, goes higher and higher
till it reaches God; called, therefore, by Jude 'the Only Despot.'"

SEMMERING, a mountain of Styria, Austria, 60 m. SW. of Vienna, 4577
ft. above sea-level; is crossed by the Vienna and Trieste railway, which
passes through 15 tunnels and over 16 viaducts.

SEMPACH (1), a small Swiss town, 9 m. NW. of Lucerne, on the Lake of
Sempach; here on the 9th of July 1386 a body of 1500 Swiss soldiers
completely routed the Austrians, 4000 strong, under Leopold, Duke of
Austria.

SEN, CHUNDER. See CHUNDER SEN.

SENANCOUR, ETIENNE PIVERT DE, French writer, born at Paris; delicate
in his youth; was driven by an unsympathetic father to quit his home at
19, and for some time lived at Geneva and Fribourg, where a brief period
of happy married life was closed by the death of his young wife; returned
to Paris in 1798; supported himself by writing, and latte