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Rh founded in 1873 by the Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Bishop College, was founded in 1881 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society and incorporated in 1885. Marshall is situated in a region growing cotton and Indian corn, vegetables, small fruits and sugar-cane; in the surrounding country there are valuable forests of pine, oak and gum. In the vicinity of the city there are several lakes (including Caddo Lake) and springs (including Hynson and Rosborough springs). The city has a cotton compress, and among its manufactures are cotton-seed oil, lumber, ice, foundry products and canned goods. The municipality owns and operates the waterworks. Marshall was first settled in 1842, was incorporated in 1843, and received a city charter in 1848; in 1909 it adopted the commission form of government.

MARSHALL ISLANDS, an island group in the western Pacific Ocean (Micronesia) belonging to Germany. The group consists of a number of atolls ranged in two almost parallel lines, which run from N.W. to S.E. between 4° and 15° N. and 161° and 174° E. The north-east line, with fifteen islands, is called Ratak, the other, numbering eighteen, Ralik. These atolls are of coralline formation and of irregular shape. They rise but little above high-water mark. The highest elevation occurs on the island of Likieb, but is only 33 ft. The lagoon is scarcely more than 150 ft. deep and is accessible through numerous breaks in the reef. On the outward side the shore sinks rapidly to a great depth. The surface of the atolls is covered with sand, except in a few places where it has been turned into soil through the admixture of decayed vegetation. The reef in scarcely any instance exceeds 600 ft. in width.

The climate is moist and hot, the mean temperature being 80.50° F. Easterly winds prevail all the year round. There is no difference between the seasons, which, though the islands belong to the northern hemisphere, have the highest temperature in January and the lowest in July. Vegetation, on the whole, is very poor. There are many coco-nut palms, bread-fruit trees (Artocarpus incisa), various kinds of bananas, yams and taro, and pandanus, of which the natives eat the seeds. From the bark of another plant they manufacture mats. There are few animals. Cattle do not thrive, and even poultry are scarce. Pigs, cats, dogs and rats have been imported. There are a few pigeons and aquatic birds, butterflies and beetles. Crustacea and fish abound on the reefs.

The natives are Micronesians of a dark brown colour, though lighter shades occur. Their hair is not woolly but straight and long. They practise tattooing, and show Papuan influence by distending the ear-lobes by the insertion of wooden disks. They are expert navigators, and construct curious charts of thin strips of wood tied together with fibres, some giving the position of the islands and some the direction of the prevailing winds. Their canoes carry sails and are made of the trunk of the bread-fruit tree. The people are divided into four classes, of which only two are allowed to own land. The islands lie entirely within the German sphere of interest, and the boundaries were agreed upon between Great Britain and Germany on the 10th of April 1889. Their area is estimated at 160 sq. m., with 15,000 inhabitants, who are apparently increasing, though the contrary was long believed. All but about 250 are natives. The administrator of the islands is the governor of German New Guinea, but a number of officials reside on the islands. There is no military force, the natives being of peaceful disposition. The chief island and seat of government is Jaluit. The most populous island is Majeru, with 1600 inhabitants. The natives are generally pagans, but a Roman Catholic mission has been established, and the American Mission Board maintains coloured teachers on many of the islands. There is communication with Sydney by private steamer, and a steamer sails between Jaluit and Ponape to connect with the French boats for Singapore. The chief products for export are copra, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, sharks’ fins and trepang. The natives are clever boat-builders, and find a market for their canoes on neighbouring islands. They have made such progress in their art that they have even built seaworthy little schooners of 30 to 40 tons. The only other articles they make are a few shell ornaments.

The Marshall Islands may have been visited by Alvaro de Saavedra in 1529, Captain Wallis touched at the group in 1767, and in 1788 Captains Marshall and Gilbert explored it. The Germans made a treaty with the chieftains of Jaluit in 1878 and annexed the group in 1885–1886.

See C. Hager, Die Marshall-Inseln (Leipzig, 1886); Steinbach and Grösser, Wörterbuch der Marshall-Sprache (Hamburg, 1902).

 MARSHALLTOWN, a city and the county-seat of Marshall county, Iowa, U.S.A., near the Iowa River and about 60 m. N.E. of Des Moines. Pop. (1890), 8914; (1900), 11,544, of whom 1590 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,374. Marshalltown is served by the Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago Great Western, and the Iowa Central railways, the last of which has machine shops here. At Marshalltown are the Iowa soldiers’ home, supported in part by the Federal Government, and St. Mary’s institute, a Roman Catholic commercial and business school. The city is situated in a rich agricultural region, and is a market for grain, meat cattle, horses and swine. There are miscellaneous manufactures, and in 1905 the factory product was valued at $3,090,312. The municipality owns and operates its waterworks and its electric-lighting plant. Marshalltown, named in honour of Chief Justice John Marshall, was laid out in 1853, and became the county-seat in 1860. It was incorporated as a town in 1863, and was chartered as a city in 1868.

 MARSHALSEA, a prison formerly existing in Southwark, London. It was attached to the court of that name held by the steward and marshal of the king’s house (see and ). The date of its first establishment is unknown, but it existed as early as the reign of Edward III. It was consolidated in 1842 with the queen’s bench and the Fleet, and was then described as “a prison for debtors and for persons charged with contempt of Her Majesty’s courts of the Marshalsea, the court of the queen’s palace of Westminster, and the high court of admiralty, and also for admiralty prisoners under sentence of courts martial.” It was abolished in 1849. The Marshalsea Prison is described in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit.

 MARSHBUCK, a book-name proposed for such of the African bushbucks or harnessed antelopes as have abnormally long hoofs to support them in walking on marshy or swampy ground. (See and .)

 MARSHFIELD, a city of Wood county, Wisconsin, about 165 m. N.W. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890), 3450; (1900), 5240, of whom 1161 were foreign-born; (1905) 6036; (1910) 5783. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha, and the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault Ste Marie railways. It contains the mother-house of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. Lumbering is the most important industry, and there are various manufactures. The city is situated in a clover region, in which dairying is important, and Guernsey and Holstein-Friesland cattle are raised. The municipality owns and operates the waterworks and the electric-lighting plant. The site of Marshfield was part of a tract granted by the Federal government to the Fox River Improvement Company, organized to construct a waterway between the Mississippi river and Green Bay, and among the original owners of the town site were Samuel Marsh of Massachusetts (in whose honour the place was named) and Horatio Seymour, Ezra Cornell, Erastus Corning, and William A. Butler of New York. Marshfield was settled about 1870, and was first chartered as a city in 1883.

 MARSH GAS (methane), CH4, the first member of the series of paraffin hydrocarbons. It occurs as a constituent of the “fire-damp” of coal-mines, in the gases evolved from volcanoes, and in the gases which arise in marshy districts (due to the decomposition of vegetable matter under the surface of water). It is found associated with petroleum and also in human intestinal gases. It is a product of the destructive distillation of complex organic matter (wood, coal, bituminous shale, &c.), forming in this way from 30 to 40% of ordinary illuminating 