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 right bank of the river Ramganga, 655 ft. above sea-level, and has a station on the Oudh & Rohilkhand railway, 868 miles from Calcutta. Pop. (1901), 75,128. It was founded in 1625 by Rustam Khan, who built the fort which overhangs the river bank, and the fine Jama Masjid or great mosque (1631). The town forms a large centre of trade in country produce. It has a special industry in ornamental brassware, sometimes plated with lac or tin, which is then engraved. Cotton weaving and printing is also carried on.

The lies east of the Ganges and west of the native state of Rampur. Area, 2285 sq. m. It lies within the great Gangetic plain, and is demarcated into three subdivisions by the rivers Ramganga and Sot. The eastern tract consists of a submontane country, with an elevation slightly greater than the plain below, and is traversed by numerous streams descending from the Himalayas. The central portion consists of a level central plain descending at each end into the valleys of the Ramganga and Sot. The western section has a gentle slope towards the Ganges, with a rapid dip into the lowlands a few miles from the bank of the great river. In addition to Moradabad the principal towns are (q.v.), Sambhal (39,715) and Chaudansi (25,711).

For the early history of Moradabad see. It passed into the possession of the British in 1801. The population in 1901 was 1,191,993, showing an increase of 1·1% in the decade. Mahommedans are more numerous than in any other district of the province, forming more than one-third of the total. The principal crops are wheat, rice, millet, pulse, sugar-cane and cotton. The main line of the Oudh & Rohilkhand railway traverses the district from south to north, with branches towards Aligarh and Rampur. A third branch from Moradabad city towards Delhi crosses the Ganges at Garhmukhteshwar by a bridge of eleven spans of 200 ft. each.

MORAES, FRANCISCO DE (c. 1500–1572), Portuguese romance writer, was probably born at the close of the 15th century. We know very little of his life, except that he was treasurer of the household to King John III., and he is first found in Paris in the suite of the Portuguese ambassador, D. Francisco de Noronha, who had gone there in 1540. He was a commander of the Order of Christ, and was called O Palmeirim on account of his authorship of the famous romance of chivalry Palmeirim de Inglaterra; in 1572 he was assassinated at Evora. He appears to have written his book in France (perhaps in Paris) in 1544, dedicating it to the Infanta D. Maria, daughter of King Manoel, but the first extant Portuguese edition only came out in 1567. A Spanish version was published as early as 1548, and on the strength of this many critics have contended that the book was originally written in that language and that Moraes only translated it into Portuguese. Both tradition and a critical examination of the Portuguese and Spanish texts, however, tell overwhelmingly in favour of the first being the original with Moraes as its author. The episode of the four French ladies shows an intimate acquaintance with the court of Francis I., where Moraes spent some years, and one of these ladies named Torsi is the one he loved and to whom he addressed some verses entitled “Desculpa de huns amores.” The Palmeirim de Inglaterra belongs to another branch of the same cycle as the Amadis de Gaula; the two romances are the best representatives of their class, and for their merits were spared from the auto da fé to which Cervantes condemned other romances of chivalry in D. Quixote. It has a well-marked plot, clearly drawn characters, and an admirable style, and has been reckoned a Portuguese classic from the time of its issue.

MORAINE, a term adopted from the French for the rocky material carried downwards on the outside of a glacier, and deposited at its sides and foot. The position of the moraine with regard to the glacier is indicated by the names applied to it. The lateral moraine is the fringe of rock fragments at the glacier side. The glacier is always slowly moving down the valley. There are always points in the valley where rock falls are more frequent than in other places. The glacier as it moves forward catches this material and carries it onward in a long heaped line distributing it evenly all down the valley sides. When two glacial valleys converge into one valley two. lateral moraines unite at the point of junction and form a median moraine in the resultant broader glacier, which now has two lateral moraines and one median. All this material carried by the glacier is deposited where the glacier ends, and forms the terminal moraine, frequently in the form of a crescentic dam across the valley. This material is carried farther downwards by stream action and distributed; otherwise the end of all glacier valleys would be blocked with debris against which the ice would be piled to a great height, and the glacier would finally become stationary. The material pushed forward beneath the glacier is sometimes called the ground moraine, the part left beneath the ice the lodge moraine, that carried to the edge and dropped the dump moraine, and that carried forward the push moraine. (See .)

MORAN, EDWARD (1829–1901), American artist, was born at Bolton, Lancashire, England, on the 19th of August 1829. He emigrated with his family to America at the age of fifteen, and subsequently settled in Philadelphia, where after having followed his father’s trade of weaver, he became a pupil of James Hamilton and Paul Weber. In 1862 he became a pupil of the Royal Academy in London; he established a studio in New York in 1872, and for many years after 1877 lived in Paris. He was a painter of marine subjects and examples of his work are in many prominent collections. Among his canvases are thirteen historical paintings, intended to illustrate the marine history of America from the time of Leif Ericsson to the return of Admiral Dewey’s fleet from the Philippines in 1899. He died in New York City on the 9th of June 1901. His sons (Edward) Percy Moran (b. 1862) and Léon Moran (b. 1864), and his brothers Peter Moran (b. 1842) and (q.v.), also became prominent American artists.

MORAN, THOMAS (1837–), American artist, was born at Bolton, Lancashire, England, on the 12th of January 1837, and emigrated with his parents to America in 1844, the family settling in Philadelphia. After having been apprenticed for some years to a wood-engraver, he studied under his brother Edward and under James Hamilton, in Philadelphia, and later studied in London, Paris and Italy. In 1871 he accompanied Professor F. V. Hayden’s exploring expedition to the Yellowstone, and in 1873 he went down the Colorado with Major J. W. Powell’s famous exploring party; and on these two trips he made sketches for two large pictures, “The Grand Cañon of the Yellow-stone” and “Chasm of the Colorado River,” both of which were bought by the United States government and are now in the Capitol at Washington. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1884 and of the American Water Color Society. His wife, Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899), who was born in Strathaven, Scotland, and emigrated to America in 1852, was also an artist, and was particularly prominent as an etcher.

MORAR, a town of Central India, in the native state of Gwalior, 3 m. E. of Gwalior city. Pop. (1901), 19,179. It was formerly a British military cantonment and residence of a political agent, but in 1886, when the fortress of Gwalior was restored to Sindhia, the troops at Morar were withdrawn to Jhansi, and the extensive barracks were likewise made over to Sindhia. In the Mutiny of 1857 Morar was the scene of the most serious uprising in Central India, It is a centre for local trade, and has an important tanning industry.

MORAT (Ger. Murten), a small town on the east shore of the Lake of Morat, in the Swiss canton of Fribourg, and by rail