Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/577

Rh MAR M A R 549 dnhabitants, free settlers from Russia, are very badly off on account of the difficulties of agriculture in this region, and from the bad selection of sites. Many have migrated to the sea-coast, whilst those who still remain are for the most part very poor, and almost every year require to be provided by Government with corn brought .from Transbaikalia. Sofiysk (1000 inhabitants, of whom 700 are military) is a purely military post. Khabarovka, on a high promon tory at the confluence of the Amur and Usuri, is the present capital of the Maritime Province. It has a settled population of about seven hundred, besides military and officials. A few Russian mer- ehants carry on an active trade in furs with natives (about 20,000 a year), in silver money brought from Russia and sold to Chinese, and in spirits and groceries. The Russian settlements on the right bank of the Usuri are very like those of the lower Amur. The peasants, who have received the name of Cossacks, and have a mill- tary organization, with the exception of a few settlements on the upper Usuri, are mostly in a wretched condition, and since 1859 have been dependent for food almost every year on Government aid. A line of posts and settlements connects the villages of the Usuri with the settlements on the shores of the Gulf of Peter the Great. This wide gulf, divided into two long bays, those of Amur and Usuri, which are connected by an inlet called the Eastern Bosphorus, is regarded as the principal port of Russia on the Pacific, and the town on the inlet has received the name of Vladivostok (&quot;ruler of the East &quot;) ; its spacious harbour, very similar to that of Sebastopol, lias been called the Golden Horn. At present Vladivostok has, how- -ever, merely the aspect of a middle-sized Russian village. One-half of its 8500 inhabitants are Chinese and Coreans, the other half being military and officials. All necessaries of life, including rye- bread biscuits, continue to be imported by sea, and every spring, before the opening of the navigation, provisions become scarce. The trade is in the hands of Chinese, who export stag-horns, sea weed, and mushrooms to a value of about 10,000 a year, and of Germans, who import groceries and spirits (218, 500 in 1879). The entrance to the harbour is well-fortified, and the town possesses a machine-work, storehouses, and a station of the Northern Tele graph Company. Other settlements (at the Imperial, Vladimir, .and Olga harbours, &c. ) are developing very slowly. Altogether the Russian population of these settlements has still a provisional character, and has to overcome great difficulties before it can become independent of the interior for its means of subsistence. The total population of the Maritime Province is estimated at 20,000 Russians, (12,000 military and officials), and at about 37,000 natives ; but this is certainly under the truth. The province is made up of one terri tory that of the Usuri and six circles (okrughi) : Nikolayevsk, Soiiysk, Petropavlovsk (Kamchatka), Okhotsk, Ghizhighinsk, and Udskoy ; the territory of the Usuri is subdivided into five circles : Usuri, Suifun, Khangka, Avvakumovo, and Suchan. (P. A. K. ) MARIUPOL, a seaport of Russia, on the northern shore of the Sea of Azoff, at the mouth of the Kalmius, in the government of Ekaterinoslav, 55 miles west of Taganrog. It is connected by a branch railway with the line between Kharkoff and Taganrog, and is situated on the highway between the latter town and the Crimea. The place is said to have been inhabited in remote times under the name of Adamakha ; but the present town was built only in 1779 by Greek emigrants from the Crimea who settled on the shores of the Sea of Azoff and on the left bank of the lower Kalmius. Mariupol is the chief town of this district, the 40,000 inhabitants of which are engaged in agriculture, cattle-breeding, and fishing, and sell their produce in the town. In export trade Mariupol ranks next to Taganrog among the ports of the Sea of Azoff; but its harbour is open to the south-east and shallow, the line of 14 feet being 1| miles from the shore, with a narrow strip, 12 to 22 feet deep, which allows larger flat-bottomed ships to approach the town, especially during south-east winds. Like all ports on this sea it is becoming more and more shallow. Mariupol is visited every year by about 150 foreign ships (about 30,000 tons) and by 700 to 860 coasting vessels (65,000 tons), mainly carrying wheat and linseed, as also skins and tallow, from the Greek district, and from the provinces of Don and Ekaterinoslav. The importance of the port may increase when the mineral riches of the district (coal close to the sea-shore, kaolin, and quartz sand) are exploited. Population, with two suburbs, Marinsk and Karasou, 9800 MARIUS, CAIUS (155-86 B.C.), is one of the most striking figures in Roman history. Born the son of a small farmer at Arpinum (Arpino), the birthplace also of Cicero, in 155 B.C., he worked his way up from this humble origin, in spite of the most determined opposition from the senate and the aristocracy, to the highest posi tion in the state, was seven times consul, and was spoken of as a third Romulus and a second Camillas. He began life as a soldier, and first saw war in Spain under the great Scipio Africanus, whose good opinion he won, and so rose from the ranks to be an officer. But this was not enough to help him forward, on his return to Rome, in rising to those political offices which were invariably a stepping-stone to the highest military rank. He had, however, when about forty years of age, the good luck to marry a great lady, of patrician rank, Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar ; and, being at the same time a popu^r favourite, as a man of plain and simple tastes, and a brave energetic soldier, he was in 115 B.C. elected praetor, which gave him an opportunity of still further showing his military ability in the thorough subjugation of the trouble some province of Further Spain (Spain west of the Ebro), where a good officer was specially wanted to check thu marauding raids of a number of wild tribes. But it was in the war with Jugurtha, from 109 to 106 B.C., that he distinctly came .to the front as the lieutenant of the consul Quintus Metellus. It would seem that his conduct towards his superior officer was not perfectly straightforward and honourable, as he tried to make the Roman traders in Africa, and through them the people of Rome, believe that the war was intentionally prolonged from corrupt motives. Under the circumstances this was comparatively easy, as political feeling was just at this time particularly bitter, and the senate was reputed, not without some good reason, to be venal and corrupt. Already Marius had achieved some important successes over Jugurtha, aud had shown that he was the man to settle a tiresome guerilla war, and now, when he was a little over fifty, in 107 B.C., he was, amid great popular enthusiasm, elected consul for the first time. In the following year, in conjunction with his future political rival, Sulla, he brought the war to a triumphant issue, and passed two years in his province of Numidia, which he thoroughly subdued and annexed to Rome s dominion. By this time Marius was generally recognized as the ablest general of the day, and in face of the great peril now beginning to threaten Rome from the north of the Alps, where an immense multitude of Citnbri and Teutones were hanging on the borders of Italy, public opinion promptly summoned him to the chief command. Two armies had been utterly destroyed in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Geneva, and it seemed as if a repetition of the disaster of Allia in 390 B.C., and the capture of Rome itself, might be not impossible. Marius, out of unpromising materials and a demoralized soldiery, organized a well- disciplined army, with which he inflicted on the invading hordes two decisive defeats, the first in 102 B.C. at Aqua 1 Sextise (Aix in the department of Bouches du Rhone, some way north of Marseilles), and the second in the following year at Vercellse (Vercelli, about midway between Turin and Milan), the result being that for a period of some centuries Rome had nothing to fear from the northern barbarians. Deservedly indeed was Marius elected consul a fifth time, hailed as the &quot;saviour of his country,&quot; and honoured with a triumph of unprecedented splendour. The really glorious part of his career was now over, and the remainder of his life is associated with the worst cruelties and horrors of civil war, revolution, and proscrip tion. The hideous strifes of Marius and Sulla have passed into a proverb. It is indeed a dreadful and monotonous story of bloodshed, but it must be carefully studied if we are to understand the nature of the political changes which had their final development in imperialism. Marius was a