HAIFA, a town of Palestine at the foot of Mt. Carmel, on the south of the Bay of Acre. It represents the classical Sycaminum, but the present town is entirely modern. It has developed since about 1890 into an important port, and is connected by railway with Damascus. The population is estimated at 12,000 (Moslems 6000, Christians 4000, Jews 1500, Germans 500; the last belong for the greater part to the Unitarian sect of the “Templars,” who have colonies also at Jaffa and Jerusalem). The exports (grain and oil) were valued at £178,738 in 1900. Much of the trade that formerly went to Acre has been attracted to Haifa. This port is the best natural harbour on the Palestine coast.
HAIK (an Arabic word, from hak, to weave), a piece of cloth, usually of coarse hand-woven wool, worn by Arabs, Moors and other Mahommedan peoples. It is generally 6 to 6½ yds. long, and about 2 broad. It is either striped or plain, and is worn equally by both sexes, usually as an outer covering; but it is often the only garment of the poorer classes. By women the “haik” is arranged to cover the head and, in the presence of men, is held so as to conceal the face. A thin “haik” of silk, like a veil, is used by brides at their marriage.
HAIL (O. Eng. hægl and hagol,[1] cf. the cognate Teutonic hagel, as in German, Dutch, Swedish, &c.; the Gr. κάχληξ, pebble, is probably allied), the name for rounded masses or single pellets of ice falling from the clouds in a shower. True hail has a concentric structure caused by the frozen particles of moisture first descending into a warm cloud, whence they are carried upwards on an ascending current of heated air into a cold stratum where the fresh coating of water vapour deposited in the cloud is frozen. The hailstone descends again, receives a fresh coating, is carried up once more, refrozen, and again descends. Thus the hailstone grows until the current is no longer strong enough to support it when it falls to the ground. At times masses of hail are frozen together, and a very sudden cooling will sometimes result in the formation of ragged masses of ice that fall with disastrous results. Hail must be distinguished from the frozen snow, “soft-hail” or “graupel,” that often falls at the rear of a spring cyclone, since true hail is almost entirely a summer phenomenon, and falls most frequently in thunderstorms which are produced under the conditions that are favourable to the formation of hail, i.e. great heat, a still atmosphere, the production of strong local convection currents in consequence, and the passage of a cold upper drift.
[1] “Hail,” a call of greeting or salutation, a shout to attract attention, must, of course, be distinguished. This word represents the Old Norwegian heill, prosperity, cognate with O. Eng. hāl, whence “hale,” “whole,” and hæl, whence “health,” “heal.”
HAILES, DAVID DALRYMPLE, Lord (1726-1792), Scottish lawyer and historian, was born at Edinburgh on the 28th of October 1726. His father, Sir James Dalrymple, Bart., of Hailes, in the county of Haddington, auditor-general of the exchequer of Scotland, was a grandson of James, first Viscount Stair; and his mother, Lady Christian Hamilton, was a daughter of Thomas, 6th earl of Haddington. David was the eldest of sixteen children. He was educated at Eton, and studied law at Utrecht, being intended for the Scottish bar, to which he was admitted shortly after his return to Scotland in 1748. As a pleader he attained neither high distinction nor very extensive practice, but he rapidly established a well-deserved reputation for sound knowledge, unwearied application and strict probity; and in 1766 he was elevated to the bench, when he assumed the title of Lord Hailes. Ten years later he was appointed a lord of justiciary. He died on the 29th of November 1792. He was twice married, and had a daughter by each wife. The baronetcy to which he had succeeded passed to the son of his brother John, provost of Edinburgh. Another brother was Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808), the first admiralty hydrographer, who distinguished himself in the East India Company’s service and as a geographer. Lord Hailes’s younger daughter married Sir James Fergusson; and their grandson, Sir Charles Dalrymple, 1st Bart. (cr. 1887), M.P. for Bute from 1868 to 1885, afterwards came into Lord Hailes’s estate and took his family name.
Lord Hailes’s most important contribution to literature was the Annals of Scotland, of which the first volume, “From the accession of Malcolm III., surnamed Canmore, to the accession of Robert I.,” appeared in 1776, and the second, “From the accession of Robert I., surnamed Bruce, to the accession of the house of Stewart,” in 1779. It is, as Dr Johnson justly described this work at the time of its appearance, a “Dictionary” of carefully sifted facts, which tells all that is wanted and all that is known, but without any laboured splendour of language or affected subtlety of conjecture. The other works of Lord Hailes include Historical Memoirs concerning the Provincial Councils of the Scottish Clergy (1769); An Examination of some of the Arguments for the High Antiquity of Regiam Majestatem (1769); three volumes entitled Remains of Christian Antiquity (“Account of the Martyrs of Smyrna and Lyons in the Second Century,” 1776; “The Trials of Justin Martyr, Cyprian, &c.,” 1778; “The History of the Martyrs of Palestine, translated from Eusebius,” 1780); Disquisitions concerning the Antiquities of the Christian Church (1783); and editions or translations of portions of Lactantius, Tertullian and Minucius Felix. In 1786 he published An Inquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr Gibbon has assigned for the Rapid Growth of Christianity (Dutch translation, Utrecht, 1793), one of the most respectable of the very many replies which were made to the famous 15th and 16th chapters of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.