in the beds of the streams; and extensive turf moors occupy many of the mountain slopes and valleys. The lower parts of the Riesengebirge are clad with forests of oak, beech, pine and fir; above 1600 ft. only the last two kinds of trees are Found, and beyond about 3950 ft. only the dwarf pine (Pinus Pumilio). Various alpine plants are found on the Riesengebirge, some of them having been artificially introduced on the Schneekoppe. Wheat is grown at an elevation of 1600 ft. above the sea-level, and oats as high as 2700 ft. The inhabitants of this mountain region, who are tolerably numerous, especially on the Bohemian side, live for the most part, not in villages, but in scattered huts called “Bauden.” They support themselves by the rearing of cattle, tillage, glass-making and linen-weaving. Mining is carried on only to a small extent for arsenic, although there are traces of former more extensive workings for other metals.
The Riesengebirge has of late years been made easily accessible by railway, several branches from the main lines, both on the Silesian and Bohemian side, penetrating the valleys, and thus many spots in the Riesengebirge are a good deal frequented in the summer. The Schneekoppe and other summits are annually visited by a considerable number of travellers, notably the spas of Warmbrunn (near Hirschberg) and Flinsberg on the Gneis, and Görbersdorf, known as a climate health resort for consumptives. The Riesengebirge is the legendary home of Number Nip (Rübezahl), a half mischievous, half-friendly goblin of German folklore, and various localities in the group are more or less directly associated with his name.
See Beemann’s Oratio de monte Giganteo (Frankfort a. O. 1679); Daniel, Deutschland, vol. i. pp. 277–78; and Gebauer, Länder- und Völkerkunde, vol. i.
RIETI (anc. Reate), a city and episcopal see of Italy, in the province of Perugia, 2512 m. by rail and 15 m. direct S.S.E. of Terni, which is 70 m. by rail from Rome. Pop. (1901) 14,145 (town), 17,716 (commune). It occupies a fine position 1318 ft. above sea-level on the right bank of the Velino (a torrent sub-tributary to the Tiber), which at this point issues from the limestone plateau; the old town occupies the declivity and the new town spreads out on the level. While with its quaint red roofed houses, its old town walls (restored about 1250), its castle, its cathedral (13th and 15th centuries), its episcopal palace (1283), and its various churches and convents Rieti has no small amount of medieval picturesqueness; it also displays a good deal of modern activity in vine and olive growing and cattle-breeding. The fertility of the neighbourhood is celebrated both by Virgil and by Cicero. A Roman bridge over the Turano, and the Palazzo Vincentini by Vignola deserve to be mentioned.
Reate was reached from Rome by the Via Salaria (q.v.), which may originally have ended there, and a branch road ran from it to Interamna. While hardly mentioned in connexion with the Punic or Civil Wars, Reate is described by Strabo as exhausted by these long contests. Its inhabitants received the Roman franchise at the same time with the rest of the Sabines (290 B.C.), but it appears as a praefectura and not as a municipium down to the beginning of the empire. It was never made a colonia, though veterans of the Praetorian guard and of the eighth (Augusta) and ninth legions were settled there by Vespasian, who belonged to a Reatine family and was born in the neighbourhood. For the contests of the Reatines with the people of Interamna see Terni. In 1148 the town was besieged and captured by Roger I. of Sicily. In the struggle between church and empire it always held with the former; and it defied the forces of Frederick II. and Otho IV. Pope Nicholas IV. long resided at Rieti, and it was there he crowned) Charles II. of Anjou king of the Two Sicilies. In the 14th century Robert, and afterwards Joanna, of Naples managed to keep possession of Rieti for many years, but it returned to the States of the Church under Gregory IX. About the year 1500, the liberties of the town, long defended against the encroachments of the popes, were entirely abolished. An earthquake in 1785 was in 1799 followed by the much more disastrous pillage of Rieti by the papal troops for a space of fourteen days.
RIETSCHEL, ERNST FRIEDRICH AUGUST (1804–1861), German sculptor, was born at Pulsnitz in Saxony. At an early age he became an art student at Dresden, and subsequently a pupil of Rauch in Berlin. He there gained an art studentship, and studied in Rome in 1827–28. After returning to Saxony he soon brought himself into notice by a colossal statue of Frederick Augustus, king of Saxony; was elected a member of the academy of Dresden, and, thenceforth became one of the chief sculptors of his country. In 1832 he was elected to the Dresden professorship of sculpture, and had many foreign orders of merit conferred on him by the governments of different countries. He died at Dresden in 1861.
Rietschel’s style was very varied; he produced works imbued with much religious feeling, and to some extent he occupied the same place as a sculptor that Overbeck did in painting. Other important works by him were purely classical in style. He was specially famed for his portrait figures of eminent men, treated with much idealism and dramatic vigour; among the latter class his chief works were colossal statues of Goethe and Schiller for the town of Weimar, of Weber for Dresden and of Lessing for Brunswick. He also designed the memorial statue of Luther for Worms, but died before he could carry it out. The principal among Rietschel’s religious pieces of sculpture are the well-known Christ-Angel, and a life-sized Pietà, executed for the king of Prussia. He also worked a great deal in rilievo, and produced many graceful pieces, especially a fine series of bas-reliefs representing Night and Morning, Noon and Twilight, designed with much poetical feeling and imagination.
For a good biography of Rietschel and account of his works see Appermann, Ernst Rietschel (Leipzig, 1863). (J. H. M.)
RIEU, CHARLES PIERRE HENRI (1820–1902), Swiss Orientalist, was born at Geneva in 1820. He studied at Bonn University, where he received his doctor’s degree in 1843. He entered the British Museum in 1847, and after twenty years of service, a new post, that of keeper of Oriental manuscripts, was created for him. He completed in 1871 the second part, dealing with Arabian MSS., of the Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium, which had been begun by William Cureton, and her issued a supplementary volume in 1894. He also drew up a Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts (1888) and a Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts (4 vols., 1879–95), the latter being a storehouse of information on the books and their authors. In 1895 he was made professor of Arabic in the university of Cambridge in succession to Robertson Smith. He died in London on the 19th of March 1902.
RIEVAULX, a village in the North Riding of Yorkshire,
England, 3 m. W. by N. of the small town of Helmsley, which
is served by a branch of the North-Eastern railway. Here,
exquisitely situated in a deep wooded valley, are the ruins of
Rievaulx Abbey, a foundation by Walter l’Espec in 1131 for
Cistercians. The principal remains are those of the cruciform
church, mainly Early English in date, and of the finest workmanship.
There are considerable fragments of the refectory, and
all the important domestic buildings may be traced. A beautiful
prospect over the ruins and the valley is seen from the terrace
on the eastern flanking hill.
RIFFIANS, the name given to the Berbers of the Rîf district of Morocco, the mountain region bordering the north coast from Ceuta eastward nearly to the borders of Algeria and forming part of the Atlas range. The name, it has been suggested, is identical with Libyan or Lîbi. A peculiarity of the Rîf dialect is the change of the Arabic “l” to “r,” and this would seem to support this derivation, “b” and “f” being interchangeable through “v.” The Riffians are only nominally subject to the sultan of Morocco, against whose authority they are in constant revolt. They are typical Berbers in physique, tall, well made and muscular, with European features and fair skins bronzed by the sun. In morality they are singularly superior to their neighbours. In order to prevent youthful unchastity, marriages are contracted between children of eight years old, the girl being brought home to live with the lad at his parents’ home till a child is born, when a separate dwelling is provided for the
youthful couple. The women are noted for their beauty. The Riffians understand and speak Arabic very little. They were among the fiercest and most cruel of the pirates of the north coast of Africa. Even now they are entirely untrustworthy in this respect. See further Berbers, Morocco, Moors, Kabyles, Mzabites.
RIFLE, a firearm which may be shortly defined as a musket in which, by grooves (cf. Ger. riffeln, to groove) in the bore or otherwise, the projectile is forced to rotate before leaving the barrel. This rotatory motion, maintained during flight, equalizes any irregularities in the form or weight of the bullet, and so lessens the tendency to depart from a straight line, and also in a measure overcomes atmospheric resistance. Rifling was invented about 1520, by Gaspard Koller or Kollner, a gunmaker of Vienna, according to some authorities; by August Kotter of Nuremberg, according to others. It has been said
