COMANA (mod. Gumenek), an ancient city of Pontus, said to have been colonized from Comana in Cappadocia. It stood on the river Iris (Tozanli Su or Yeshil Irmak), and from its central position was a favourite emporium of Armenian and other merchants. The moon-goddess was worshipped in the city with a pomp and ceremony in all respects analogous to those employed in the Cappadocian city. The slaves attached to the temple alone numbered not less than 6000. St John Chrysostom died there on the way to Constantinople from his exile at Cocysus in the Anti-Taurus. Remains of Comana are still to be seen near a village called Gumenek on the Tozanli Su, 7 m. from Tokat, but they are of the slightest description. There is a mound; and a few inscriptions are built into a bridge, which here spans the river, carrying the road from Niksar to Tokat.
(D. G. H.)
COMANCHES, a tribe of North American Indians of Shoshonean stock, so called by the Spaniards, but known to the French as Padoucas, an adaptation of their Sioux name, and among themselves nimenim (people). They number some 1400, attached to the Kiowa agency, Oklahoma. When first met by Europeans, they occupied the regions between the upper waters of the Brazos and Colorado on the one hand, and the Arkansas and Missouri on the other. Until their final surrender in 1875 the Comanches were the terror of the Mexican and Texan frontiers, and were always famed for their bravery. They were brought to nominal submission in 1783 by the Spanish general Anza, who killed thirty of their chiefs. During the 19th century they were always raiding and fighting, but in 1867, to the number of 2500, they agreed to go on a reservation. In 1872 a portion of the tribe, the Quanhada or Staked Plain Comanches, had again to be reduced by military measures.
COMAYAGUA, the capital of the department of Comayagua in central Honduras, on the right bank of the river Ulua, and on the interoceanic railway from Puerto Cortes to Fonseca Bay. Pop. (1900) about 8000. Comayagua occupies part of a fertile valley, enclosed by mountain ranges. Under Spanish rule it was a city of considerable size and beauty, and in 1827 its inhabitants numbered more than 18,000. A fine cathedral, dating from 1715, is the chief monument of its former prosperity, for most of the handsome public buildings erected in the colonial period have fallen into disrepair. The present city chiefly consists of low adobe houses and cane huts, tenanted by Indians. The university founded in 1678 has ceased to exist, but there is a school of jurisprudence. In the neighbourhood are many ancient Indian ruins (see [Central America]: Archaeology).
Founded in 1540 by Alonzo Caceres, who had been instructed by the Spanish government to find a site for a city midway between the two oceans, Valladolid la Nueva, as the town was first named, soon became the capital of Honduras. It received the privileges of a city in 1557, and was made an episcopal see in 1561. Its decline dates from 1827, when it was burned by revolutionaries; and in 1854 its population had dwindled to 2000. It afterwards suffered through war and rebellion, notably in 1872 and 1873, when it was besieged by the Guatemalans. In 1880 Tegucigalpa (q.v.), a city 37 m. east-south-east, superseded it as the capital of Honduras.
COMB (a word common in various forms to Teut. languages, cf. Ger. Kamm, the Indo-Europ. origin of which is seen in γόμφος, a peg or pin, and Sanskrit, gambhas, a tooth), a toothed article of the toilet used for cleaning and arranging the hair, and also for holding it in place after it has been arranged; the word is also applied, from resemblance in form or in use, to various appliances employed for dressing wool and other fibrous substances, to the indented fleshy crest of a cock, and to the ridged series of cells of wax filled with honey in a beehive. Hair combs are of great antiquity, and specimens made of wood, bone and horn have been found in Swiss lake-dwellings. Among the Greeks and Romans they were made of boxwood, and in Egypt also of ivory. For modern combs the same materials are used, together with others such as tortoise-shell, metal, india-rubber and celluloid. There are two chief methods of manufacture. A plate of the selected material is taken of the size and thickness required for the comb, and on one side of it, occasionally on both sides, a series of fine slits are cut with a circular saw. This method involves the loss of the material cut out between the teeth. The second method, known as “twinning” or “parting,” avoids this loss and is also more rapid. The plate of material is rather wider than before, and is formed into two combs simultaneously, by the aid of a twinning machine. Two pairs of chisels, the cutting edges of which are as long as the teeth are required to be and are set at an angle converging towards the sides of the plate, are brought down alternately in such a way that the wedges removed from one comb form the teeth of the other, and that when the cutting is complete the plate presents the appearance of two combs with their teeth exactly inosculating or dovetailing into each other. In india-rubber combs the teeth are moulded to shape and the whole hardened by vulcanization.