as 1836 he complained of fiery heats in his brain, and in 1840, during a visit to Stockholm, he suddenly became insane. He was sent to an asylum in Schleswig, and early in 1841 he was cured, and able to return to Wexiö. It was during his convalescence in Schleswig that he wrote Kronbruden. He wrote no more of importance; in 1843 he had a stroke of apoplexy, and on the 2d of November 1846 he died in Wexiö. From 1819 he had been a member of the Swedish Academy, where he was succeeded by his biographer and best imitator Böttiger. In prose Tegnér wrote letters, which have been collected, and which are considered the best of their kind in the Swedish language. As a poet he will scarcely be preferred to Bellman or to Runeberg by Swedish verse amateurs, but he still exceeds these and all other writers in popularity.
See Böttiger, Teckning af Tegnérs Lefnad; Georg Brandes, Esaias Tegnér; Thomander, Tankar och Löjen.(E. W. G.)
TEHERAN, or, more properly, Tehran (lat. 35° 40' N., long. 51° 25' E.), for about a century the recognized capital of Persia, has little to distinguish it, in general outward appearance, from other large cities of the country, though in quite recent years Parisian streets or boulevards, and even Western architecture for single houses, in the midst of mud-brick palaces or plain mud hovels, have been incongruously introduced. Formerly a kind of polygon some 4 miles in circumference—with its mean ‘‘shahr panah” or wall, its clumsy and uneven ditch, and its six gates, two facing north, two south, one east, and one west,—Teheran has now been extended to an outer ditch and wall, thrown out on each side beyond the ancient limit. The bazaars are good, though hardly of the first class; the caravanserais deserve honourable mention; and the telegraph and arsenal are respectable institutions. The streets are for the most part narrow and wretchedly paved. The “Ark,” or citadel, contains the royal and better description of public buildings, and connecting its encircling wall with the city gates are four principal thoroughfares, of which the parallel avenues from the Násiriya and Daulat entrances are the more notable. Between these two gates, in a parallelogram extending from one to the other and including both, is the gas-lighted Tôp Maidan, or “Place des Canons,” in the centre of which is a large reservoir. European professors are to be found in the king’s college, where some 250 students, more or less, are taught mathematics, engineering, military tactics, music, telegraphy, painting, together with the Arabic, English, French, and Russian languages. Among the not very remarkable mosques—to some of which madrasahs, or colleges, are attached—may be specially mentioned the Masjid-i-Shah, or king’s mosque, with its handsome enamelled front, and the Masjid-i-Mádar-i-Shah, or mosque of the king’s mother. Water is freely supplied to the town by means of the underground canals, or kanáts, from the near mountain ranges. Public baths abound, but the Europeans use those of the Armenian and not of the Mohammedan community. The British legation stands in a handsome garden of great size, in which are placed the houses of the secretaries, which resemble English villas. In the summer season the representatives of Western powers and other Europeans move out to the slope of the mountain range north of Teheran,—the British residents to Gulhak, a village about 7 miles from the city. A prominent feature in the landscape at Gulhak and the neighbouring summer quarters, as at Teheran itself, is Demavend, the noblest and most graceful of Persian mountains.
The present population of Teheran may be taken at 160,000 at most. According to a late authority (Bassett, 1887) the European inhabitants are reckoned at about 100 only; the Jews number some 2500; and there are 150 Gabrs or Parsis, a sorry remnant of the old fire-worshippers. In 1872 there were said to be 1000 Armenians, mainly traders and artisans. In 1872 there were but four legations in Teheran—those of England, France, Russia, and Turkey. Since that year representatives have been added from Holland, Austria, Germany, and the United States. The French have summer quarters at Tejrísh and the Russians at Zargandah, at no great distance from the English Gulhak.
Morier supposes Teheran to be the Tahors of the Theodosian Tables, and recognizes it also in the account of the journey of the Castilian ambassadors to Timur, Porter, too, relates that in 1637 the secretary of the Holstein ambassadors mentions Teheran as “one of the towns which enjoy the privilege of maintaining no soldiers.” Again, in the 17th century, it was visited by Pietro della Valle and by Sir Thomas Herbert,—the latter spelling it “Tyroan.” Most writers affirm that Teheran, though not of recent origin, can barely be held of repute till Agha Muhammad made it his residence in about 1788, taking to himself the title of shah, as first of the Kajar kings, in 1796. Yet there is evidence that in the previous century it was a royal resort, if nothing more, in Herbert’s statement that “the Toune is most beautified by a vast garden of the kings, succinct with a great towered mud-wall larger than the circuit of the city.” Du Pré (who visited it in 1808) states that it had been pillaged and nearly destroyed by the Afghans,—evidently at their invasion of Persia in 1728. Since Agha Muhammad’s time Teheran has been the usual seat of the Kajar dynasty, a circumstance to be attributed to the political advantages of its geographical position.
See, besides the authorities cited, Telegraph and Travel (1874); Dr Wills's Land of the Lion and Sun (1883); and Mr Bassett’s Land of the Imáms (1887).
TEHUANTEPEC, an isthmus in Mexico, comprising the western extremities of the states of Vera Cruz and Oajaca, and limited eastwards by the states of Tabasco and Chiapas, thus lying between 16° and 18° N. lat. and 94° and 95° W. long. Between the Bay of Campeche on the north or Atlantic side and that of Tehuantepec on the south or Pacific side the distance in a bee line is only 125 miles. Here also the Sierra Madre falls rapidly from over 5000 feet in Chiapas to about 730 feet in the ridge skirting the Pacific coast, and leaving the rest of this district somewhat level, with a rise from the Atlantic of not more than 60 feet in the mile except at the Chivela Pass, where for 8 miles the gradients are about 116 feet per mile.
This favourable condition of the relief, combined with a relatively healthy climate subject only to dangerous insect pests in summer, has naturally attracted attention to the Tehuantepec isthmus, as offering peculiar advantages for interoceanic communication either by a navigable canal, a railway, or a ship railway. A first concession was made in 1841 by the Mexican Government to Don José de Garay, who had the land surveyed with a view to a canal, but who, after the war with the United States, surrendered his rights to Mr P. A. Hargous of New York. The company then organized to give effect to the Garay grant caused a fresh survey for a railway to be made in 1851, under the direction of the late General J. G. Barnard, But nothing came of this or of another railway project in 1857, when a third survey was executed, under the direction of Col. W. H. Sidell. Then the “Tehuantepec Railway Company,” formed in 1870 in New York, and reorganized in 1879, obtained a concession from the Mexican Government to construct the “Tehuantepec Railway”; but, after a few miles were made, the work was suspended, and in 1882 the Government contracted with private individuals for the completion of the line, which was to be 190 miles long, and to run from the mouth of the Goatzacoalcos (Coatzacoalcos) river on the Atlantic to the port of Salina Cruz on the Pacific. The work was carried to Minatitlan, a distance of 25 miles, in 1884, and was to have been completed in 1885; but since then operations appear to have been suspended for want of means. A Tehuantepec ship railway is also projected, as it is expected that most of the trade between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States will be attracted to this route, which shortens the distance between New York and San Francisco by 1477 miles, and between New Orleans and the same place by 2334 miles, as compared with that by the Panama railway and future canal.}}|1}} Tehuantepec, the town which gives its name to the isthmus, bay, and neighbouring lagoon, stands on the river Tehuantepec, 16 miles above its mouth on the Pacific, where it develops a shallow and somewhat exposed harbour. Of the population, estimated at 14,000, a large number are civilized and industrious Indians engaged in cotton-weaving and on the salt-works. Indigo is grown in the district, and there are productive pearl-fisheries in the bay. Amongst the exports are cochineal and a purple dye extracted from a shellfish abounding on the coast.
