s cousin, the
Earl of Kellie, thereafter Mar and Kellie, and a Bill in Parliament
awarding it to his nephew, who is thus Earl of Mar.

MARABOUTS, a sect of religious devotees of a priestly order much
venerated in North Africa, believed to possess supernatural power,
particularly in curing diseases, and exercising at times considerable
political influence; their supernatural power appears to come to them by
inheritance.

MARACAYBO (34), a Venezuelan town and fortress on the W. shore of
the outlet of Lake Maracaybo; has handsome streets and buildings, and
exports coffee and valuable woods; the lake of Maracaybo is a large
fresh-water lake in the W. of Venezuela, connected with the Gulf of
Maracaybo by a wide strait, across which stretches an effective bar.

MARANATHA (lit. the Lord cometh to judge), a form of anathema in
use among the Jews.

MARANON, one of the head-waters of the Amazon, rising in Lake
Lauricocha, Peru, and flowing N. and E. till it joins the Ucayali and
forms the Amazon; the name is sometimes given to the whole river.

MARAT, JEAN PAUL, a fanatical democrat, born in Neuchatel, his
father an Italian, his mother a Genevese; studied and practised medicine,
came to Paris as horse-leech to Count d'Artois; became infected with the
revolutionary fever, and had one fixed idea: "Give me," he said, "two
hundred Naples bravoes, armed each with a good dirk, and a muff on his
left arm by way of shield, and with them I will traverse France and
accomplish the Revolution," that is, by wholesale massacre of the
aristocrats; he had more than once to flee for his life, and one time
found shelter in the sewers of Paris, contracting thereby a loathsome
skin disease; he was assassinated one evening as he sat in his bath by
CHARLOTTE CORDAY (q. v.), but his body was buried with honours
in the Pantheon by a patriot people, "that of Mirabeau flung out to make
room for him," to be some few months after himself cast out with
execration (1743-1793).

MARATHON, a village, 22 m. NE. of Athens, on the sea border of a
plain where the Greeks under Miltiades on a world-famous occasion
defeated the Persians under Darius in 480 B.C.; the plain on which the
battle was fought extends between mountains on the W. and the sea on the
E.

MARBURG (13), quaint university town of Hesse-Nassau, on the Lahn,
40 m. NE. of Limburg; has many old buildings; its Gothic church contains
St. Elizabeth's tomb; Luther and Zwingli held a