HUNZA (also known as Kanjut) and NAGAR, two small states on the North-west frontier of Kashmir, formerly under the administration of the Gilgit agency. The two states, which are divided by a river which runs in a bed 600 ft. wide between cliffs 300 ft. high, are inhabited generally by people of the same stock, speaking the same language, professing the same form of the Mahommedan religion, and ruled by princes sprung from the same family. Nevertheless they have been for centuries persistent rivals, and frequently at war with each other. Formerly Hunza was the more prominent of the two, because it held possession of the passes leading to the Pamirs, and could plunder the caravans on their way between Turkestan and India. But they are both shut up in a recess of the mountains, and were of no importance until about 1889, when the advance of Russia up to the frontiers of Afghanistan, and the great development of her military sources in Asia, increased the necessity for strengthening the British line of defence. This led to the establishment of the Gilgit agency, the occupation of Chitral, and the Hunza expedition of 1891, which asserted British authority over Hunza and Nagar. The country is inhabited by a Dard race of the Yeshkun caste speaking Burishki. For a description of the people see GILGIT. The Hunza-Nagar Expedition of 1891, under Colonel A. Durand, was due to the defiant attitude of the Hunza and Nagar chiefs towards the British agent at Gilgit. The fort at Nilt was stormed, and after a fortnight’s delay the cliffs (1000 ft. high) beyond it were also carried by assault. Hunza and Nagar were occupied, the chief of Nagar was reinstated on making his submission, and the half-brother of the raja of Hunza was installed as chief in the place of his brother.
HUON OF BORDEAUX, hero of romance. The French chanson de geste of Huon de Bordeaux dates from the first half of the 13th century, and marks the transition between the epic chanson founded on national history and the roman d’aventures. Huon, son of Seguin of Bordeaux, kills Charlot, the emperor’s son, who had laid an ambush for him, without being aware of the rank of his assailant. He is condemned to be hanged by Charlemagne, but reprieved on condition that he visits the court of Gaudisse, the amir of Babylon, and brings back a handful of hair from the amir’s beard and four of his back teeth, after having slain the greatest of his knights and three times kissed his daughter Esclarmonde. By the help of the fairy dwarf Oberon, Huon succeeds in this errand, in the course of which he meets with further adventures. The Charlot of the story has been identified by A. Longnon (Romania viii. 1-11) with Charles l’Enfant, one of the sons of Charles the Bald and Irmintrude, who died in 866 in consequence of wounds inflicted by a certain Aubouin in precisely similar circumstances to those related in the romance. The epic father of Huon may safely be identified with Seguin, who was count of Bordeaux under Louis the Pious in 839, and died fighting against the Normans six years later. A Turin manuscript of the romance contains a prologue in the shape of a separate romance of Auberon, and four sequels, the Chanson d’Esclarmonde, the Chanson de Clarisse et Florent, the Chanson d’Ide et d’Olive and the Chanson de Godin. The same MS. contains in the romance of Les Lorrains a summary in seventeen lines of another version of the story, according to which Huon’s exile is due to his having slain a count in the emperor’s palace. The poem exists in a later version in alexandrines, and, with its continuations, was put into prose in 1454 and printed by Michel le Noir in 1516, since when it has appeared in many forms, notably in a beautifully printed and illustrated adaptation (1898) in modern French by Gaston Paris. The romance had a great vogue in England through the translation (c. 1540) of John Bourchier, Lord Berners, as Huon of Burdeuxe. The tale was dramatized and produced in Paris by the Confrérie de la Passion in 1557, and in Philip Henslowe’s diary there is a note of a performance of a play, Hewen of Burdoche, on the 28th of December 1593. For the literary fortune of the fairy part of the romance see [Oberon].
The Chanson de geste of Huon de Bordeaux was edited by MM F. Guessard and C. Grandmaison for the Anciens poètes de la France in 1860; Lord Berners’s translation was edited for the E.E.T.S. by S. L. Lee in 1883-1885. See also L. Gautier, Les Épopées françaises (2nd ed. vol. iii. pp. 719-773); A. Graf, I complementi della Chanson de Huon de Bordeaux (Halle, 1878); “Esclarmonde, &c.,” by Max Schweigel, in Ausg. u. Abhandl ... der roman. phil. (Marburg, 1889); C. Voretzsch, Epische Studien (vol. i., Halle, 1900); Hist. litt. de la France (vol. xxvi., 1873).
HUON PINE, botanical name Dacrydium Franklinii, the most valuable timber tree of Tasmania, a member of the order Coniferae (see [Gymnosperms]). It is a fine tree of pyramidal outline 80 to 100 ft. high, and 10 to 20 ft. in girth at the base, with slender pendulous much-divided branchlets densely covered with the minute scale-like sharply-keeled bright green leaves. It occurs in swampy localities from the upper Huon river to Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour, but is less abundant than formerly owing to the demand for its timber, especially for ship-and boat-building. The wood is close-grained and easily worked.
HU-PEH, a central province of China, bounded N. by Ho-nan, E. by Ngan-hui, S. by Hu-nan, and W. by Shen-si and Szech’uen. It has an area of 70,450 sq. m. and contains a population of 34,000,000. Han-kow, Ich’ang and Shasi are the three open ports of the province, besides which it contains ten other prefectural cities. The greater part of the province forms a plain, and its most noticeable feature is the Han river, which runs in a south-easterly direction across the province from its northwesterly corner to its junction with the Yangtsze Kiang at Han-kow. The products of the Han valley are exclusively agricultural, consisting of cotton, wheat, rape seed, tobacco and various kinds of beans. Vegetable tallow is also exported in large quantities from this part of Hu-peh. Gold is found in the Han, but not in sufficient quantities to make working it more than barely remunerative. It is washed every winter from banks of coarse gravel, a little above I-ch‘êng Hien, on which it is deposited by the river. Every winter the supply is exhausted by the washers, and every summer it is renewed by the river. Baron von Richthofen reckoned that the digger earned from 50 to 150 cash (i.e. about 1½d. to 4¼d.) a day. Only one waggon road leads northwards from Hu-peh, and that is to Nan-yang Fu in Ho-nan, where it forks, one branch going to Peking by way of K‘ai-fêng Fu, and the other into Shan-si by Ho-nan Fu.