Open main menu
This page needs to be proofread.

the Pacific coast terminus of the International railway which crosses northern Mexico from Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, and a port of call for the principal steamship lines on this coast. The harbour is spacious, but the entrance is obstructed by a bar. The- city is built on a small peninsula. Its public buildings include a fine town-hall, chamber of commerce, a custom-house and two hospitals, besides which there is a nautical school and a meteorological station, one of the first established in Mexico. ~ The harbour is provided with a sea-wall at Olas Altas. A government wireless telegraph service is maintained between Mazatlan and La Paz, Lower California. Among the manufactures are saw-mills, foundries, cotton factories and rope works, and the exports are chiefly hides, ixtle, dried and salted fish, gold, silver and copper (bars and ores), fruit, rubber, tortoise-shell, and gums and resins.

MAZE, a network of winding paths, a labyrinth (q.v.). The word means properly a state of confusion or wonder, and is probably of Scandinavian origin; cf. Norw. mas, exhausting labour, also chatter, masa, to be busy, also to worry, annoy; Swed. masa, to lounge, move slowly and lazily, to dream, muse. Skeat (Etym. Dict.) takes the original sense to be probably “ to be lost in thought,” “ to dream,” and connects with the root ma-man-, to think, cf. “ mind,” “ man,” &c. The word “ maze ” represents the addition of an intensive suffix.


See N. I. Kostomarov, Mazepa and the Mazepaniles (Russ.) (St Petersburg), 1885; R. Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905); S. M. Solovev, History of Russia (Russ.), vol. xv. (St Petersburg, 1895). (R. N. B.)

MAZER, the name of a special type of drinking vessel, properly made of maple-wood, and so-called from the spotted or “ birdseye ” marking on the wood (Ger. M aser, spot, marking, especially on wood; cf. “ measles ”). These drinking vessels are shallow bowls without handles, with a broad flat foot and a knob or boss in the centreof the inside, known technically as the “ print.” They were made from the 13th to the 16th centuries, and were the most prized of the various wooden cups in use, and so were ornamented with a rim of precious metal, generally of silver or silver gilt; the foot and the “ print ” being also of metal. The depth of the mazers seems to have decreased in course of time, those of the 16th century that survive being much shallower than the earlier examples. There are examples with wooden covers with a metal handle, such as the Flemish and German mazers in the Franks Bequest in the British Museum. On the metal rim is usually an inscription, religious or bacchanalian, and the “print” was also often decorated. The later mazers sometimes had metal straps between the rim and the foot. A very fine mazer with silver gilt ornamentation 3 in. deep and 9% in. in diameter was sold in the Braikenridge collection in IQ08 for £23001 It bears the London hall-mark of 1534. This example is illustrated in the article PLATE: see also DRINKING Vassats.

MAZURKA (Polish for a woman of the province of Mazovia), a lively dance, originating in Poland, somewhat resembling the polka. It is danced in couples, the music being in % or =} time.


MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE (1805-1872), Italian patriot, was born on the 22nd of Tune 1805 at Genoa, where his father, Giacomo Mazzini, was a physician in good practice, and a professor in the university. His mother is described as having been a woman of great personal beauty, as well as of active intellect and strong affections. During infancy and childhood his health was extremely delicate, and it appears that he was nearly six years of age before he was quite able to walk; but he had already begun to devour books of all kinds and to show other signs of great intellectual precocity. He studied Latin with his first tutor,

1 Th. Mommsen in Corpus inscr. lat. (Berlin, 1883>, x. 739.