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 Mazatlán and La Paz, Lower California. Among the manufactures are saw-mills, foundries, cotton factories and ropeworks, 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.
MAZEPA-KOLEDINSKY, IVAN STEPANOVICH (1644?–1709), hetman of the Cossacks, belonging to a noble Orthodox family, was born possibly at Mazeptsina, either in 1629 or 1644,
the latter being the more probable date. He was educated at the
court of the Polish king, John Casimir, and completed his studies
abroad. An intrigue with a Polish married lady forced him to
fly into the Ukraine. There is a trustworthy tradition that the
infuriated husband tied the naked youth to the back of a wild
horse and sent him forth into the steppe. He was rescued and
cared for by the Dnieperian Cossacks, and speedily became one of
their ablest leaders. In 1687, during a visit to Moscow, he won
the favour of the then all-powerful Vasily Golitsuin, from whom
he virtually purchased the hetmanship of the Cossacks (July 25).
He took a very active part in the Azov campaigns of Peter the
Great and won the entire confidence of the young tsar by his
zeal and energy. He was also very serviceable to Peter at the
beginning of the Great Northern War, especially in 1705 and 1706,
when he took part in the Volhynian campaign and helped to
construct the fortress of Pechersk. The power and influence of
Mazepa were fully recognized by Peter the Great. No other
Cossack hetman had ever been treated with such deference at
Moscow. He ranked with the highest dignitaries in the state; he
sat at the tsar’s own table. He had been made one of the first
cavaliers of the newly established order of St Andrew, and
Augustus of Poland had bestowed upon him, at Peter’s earnest
solicitation, the universally coveted order of the White Eagle.
Mazepa had no temptations to be anything but loyal, and loyal
he would doubtless have remained had not Charles XII. crossed
the Russian frontier. Then it was that Mazepa, who had had
doubts of the issue of the struggle all along, made up his mind
that Charles, not Peter, was going to win, and that it was high
time he looked after his own interests. Besides, he had his
personal grievances against the tsar. He did not like the new ways
because they interfered with his old ones. He was very jealous
of the favourite (Menshikov), whom he suspected of a design to
supplant him. But he proceeded very cautiously. Indeed, he
would have preferred to remain neutral, but he was not strong
enough to stand alone. The crisis came when Peter ordered him
to co-operate actively with the Russian forces in the Ukraine. At
this very time he was in communication with Charles’s first
minister, Count Piper, and had agreed to harbour the Swedes in
the Ukraine and close it against the Russians (Oct. 1708). The
last doubt disappeared when Menshikov was sent to supervise
Mazepa. At the approach of his rival the old hetman hastened
to the Swedish outposts at Horki, in Severia. Mazepa’s treason
took Peter completely by surprise. He instantly commanded
Menshikov to get a new hetman elected and raze Baturin,
Mazepa’s chief stronghold in the Ukraine, to the ground. When
Charles, a week later, passed Baturin by, all that remained of the
Cossack capital was a heap of smouldering mills and ruined
houses. The total destruction of Baturin, almost in sight of the
Swedes, overawed the bulk of the Cossacks into obedience, and
Mazepa’s ancient prestige was ruined in a day when the metropolitan
of Kiev solemnly excommunicated him from the high
altar, and his effigy, after being dragged with contumely through
the mud at Kiev, was publicly burnt by the common hangman.
Henceforth Mazepa, perforce, attached himself to Charles.
What part he took at the battle of Poltava is not quite clear.
After the catastrophe he accompanied Charles to Turkey with
some 1500 horsemen (the miserable remnant of his 80,000
warriors). The sultan refused to surrender him to the tsar,
though Peter offered 300,000 ducats for his head. He died at
Bender on the 22nd of August 1709.
See N. I. Kostomarov, Mazepa and the Mazepanites (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 “birds-eye”
marking on the wood (Ger. Maser, 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 centre of 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 912 in. in diameter was sold in the Braikenridge collection in 1908 for £2300. It bears the London hall-mark of 1534. This example is illustrated in the article Plate: see also Drinking Vessels.
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 38 or 34 time.
MAZZARA DEL VALLO, a town of Sicily, in the province of Trapani, on the south-west coast of the island, 32 m. by rail S. of Trapani. Pop. (1901), 20,130. It is the seat of a bishop;
the cathedral, founded in 1093, was rebuilt in the 17th century.
The castle, at the south-eastern angle of the town walls, was
erected in 1073. The mouth of the river, which bears the same
name, serves as a port for small ships only. Mazzara was in
origin a colony of Selinus: it was destroyed in 409, but it is
mentioned again as a Carthaginian fortress in the First Punic
War and as a post station on the Roman coast road, though
whether it had municipal rights is doubtful.[1] A few inscriptions
of the imperial period exist, but no other remains of importance.
On the west bank of the river are grottoes cut in the rock, of
uncertain date: and there are quarries in the neighbourhood
resembling those of Syracuse, but on a smaller scale.
See A. Castiglione, Sulle cose antiche della città di Mazzara (Alcamo, 1878).
MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE (1805–1872), Italian patriot, was born on the 22nd of June 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,
- ↑ Th. Mommsen in Corpus inscr. lat. (Berlin, 1883), x. 739.
