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MARMORA

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MARQUETTE

For this the Bonapartists called him a traitor. He took no further part in affairs till the Revolution of 1830, when at the head of a body of troops he tried to capture Paris, and with the few battalions that remained faithful to the royalist cause he carried Charles X across the frontier. He died at Venice, March 2, 1852, the last of the marshals of the first empire. His Memoires have been published.

Marmora (mar'md-rd), Sea of, called the Propontis in early times, separates European from Asiatic Turkey and joins the ^Egean Sea by the Dardanelles (formerly the Hellespont) with the Black Sea by the Bosporus. It is an oval 175 miles long and 50 broad. It covers 4,499 square miles, and its greatest depth is 4,250 feet. The Gulf of Ismid reaches about 30 miles eastward into Asia. There are several islands; the largest, Marmora, is famous for its quarries of marble and alabaster.

Marmoset (mar'mo-zet'}, a small monkey of squirrel-like appearance inhabiting South America. The headquarters of the family is Brazil. Marmosets are the smallest of the monkey tribe and the lowest of the Anthropoidea, the group which contains monkeys, baboons and higher apes. They have a furry coat and a bushy tail, which is not prehensile. See MONKEY.

Mar'mot (mar'moi), a burrowing animal belonging to the group of ground-squirrels. The common marmot is an European form inhabiting die Alps, Pyrenees and other more northern mountains. The groundhogs or woodchucks, so generally distributed in the United States and Canada, belong to the group. They are the largest and heaviest animals of the squirrel family. They are about two feet long and covered with long coarse hair. Their ears are small, and their tails short and bushy. When

ALPINE  MARMOT

numerous, woodchucks are a great pest, eating nearly everything green and being difficult to exterminate. There are three species in North America — the ground hog proper, the yellow-bellied marmot of the Rocky Mountains and the large, hoary marmot further north. The prairie-dogs also are marmots. See PRAIRIE-DOG,.

Maroons (ma-roon'z), the name formerly applied in Jamaica and Guiana to escaped negro slaves. When the British won Jamaica from the Spaniards in 1655, many slaves fled to the mountains. They and their descendants kept up a protracted warfare with the colonists for 140 years; but in 1795 they were conquered and part of them taken to Nova Scotia and, afterward, to Sierra Leone. The Maroons of Guiana, who are generally called bush-negroes, about 4,000 altogether, form a number of independent bodies. See Dallas' History of the Maroons.

Marque (mark} and Repris'al, Letters of, are commissions which may be granted by a state in time of war to vessels which are the property of private individuals, giving them authority to wage war upon the enemy. The origin of the term marque is variously attributed to the fact that permission is given to wage war beyond the march, mark or border; and to the French term lettres de marque, meaning stamped or marked letters. Vessels sailing under letters of marque are known as privateers. The practice is now discouraged by international law, but not prohibited. Privateers are objectionable because their actions scarcely affect the naval situation, since their operations are directed solely against helpless merchantmen; they therefore do much damage to little purpose. They also are objectionable because of the reckless and often criminal character of their crews and their tendency towards sheer piracy. The War of 1812 between America and England illustrated the mischievous practice of issuing promiscuous letters of marque.

Marquesas (mar-kd'sds) Islands are a group in Polynesia (the southern Pacific) belonging to France. This group includes four or five islands discovered by Mendana in 1595 and the Washington group of seven islands discovered by Ingraham in 1797. The Marquesas cover 480 square miles, and are volcanic. In the time of Captain Cook the natives numbered 100,000; by 1838 there were but 20,000; and now there are only some 4,300. They perhaps are the finest race of brown Polynesians, courteous but cruel and revengeful.

Marquette ( mar'kef), Jacques, a French explorer and missionary in America, was born at Laon in 1637. When 17 he became a Jesuit, and in 1666 was sent to Canada. He studied some of the Indian languages in the neighborhood of Three Rivers, and founded the mission at Sault Ste. Marie. He next preached among the Hurons and Ottawas, and, when they were scattered by the Sioux, followed them to Mackinaw, where he built a chapel. He had heard of the Mississippi from the Indians, and in 1673 was sent to explore it by Frontenac, the governor of Canada, together with Louis Joliet. With five other French-