Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/265

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
250
MACINTOSH—McKEESPORT

in Spain, he inspired Larra (q.v.) in the play Macías and in the historical novel entitled El doncel de Don Enrique el doliente.

See H. A. Rennert, Macias, o namorado; a Galician trobador (Philadelphia, 1900); Théodore J. de Puymaigre, Les vieux auteurs castillans (1889–1890), i. 54-74; Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano (New York and London, 1902), ed. H. R. Lang; Christian F. Bellermann, Die alten Liederbücher der Portugiesen (Berlin, 1840).


MACINTOSH, CHARLES (1766–1843), Scottish chemist and inventor of waterproof fabrics, was born on the 29th of December 1766 at Glasgow, where he was first employed as a clerk. He devoted all his spare time to science, particularly chemistry, and before he was twenty resigned his clerkship to take up the manufacture of chemicals. In this he was highly successful, inventing various new processes. His experiments with one of the by-products of tar, naphtha, led to his invention of waterproof fabrics, the essence of his patent being the cementing of two thicknesses of india-rubber together, the india-rubber being made soluble by the action of the naphtha. For his various chemical discoveries he was, in 1823, elected F.R.S. He died on the 25th of July 1843.

See George Macintosh, Memoir of C. Macintosh (1847).


MACKAY, CHARLES (1814–1889), Scottish writer, was born at Perth, on the 27th of March 1814, and educated at the Caledonian Asylum, London, and in Brussels. In 1830, being then private secretary to a Belgian ironmaster, he began writing verses and articles for local newspapers. Returning to London, he devoted himself to literary and journalistic work, and was attached to the Morning Chronicle (1835–1844). He published Memoirs of Extraordinary Public Delusions (1841), and gradually made himself known as an industrious and prolific journalist. In 1844 he was made editor of the Glasgow Argus. His literary reputation was made by the publication in 1846 of a volume of verses. Voices from the Crowd, some of which were set to music by Henry Russell and became very popular. In 1848 Mackay returned to London and worked for the Illustrated London News, of which he became editor in 1852. In it he published a number of songs, set to music by Sir Henry Bishop and Henry Russell, and in 1855 they were collected in a volume; they included the popular “Cheer, Boys! Cheer!” After his severance from the Illustrated London News, in 1859, Mackay started two unsuccessful periodicals, and acted as special correspondent for The Times in America during the Civil War. He edited A Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry (1867). Mackay died in London on the 24th of December 1889. Marie Corelli (q.v.) was his adopted daughter. His son, Eric Mackay (1851–1899), was known as a writer of verse, particularly by his Love Letters of a Violinist (1886).


MACKAY, HUGH (c. 1640–1692), Scottish general, was the son of Hugh Mackay of Scourie, Sutherlandshire, and was born there about 1640. He entered Douglas’s (Dumbarton’s) regiment of the English army (now the Royal Scots) in 1660, accompanied it to France when it was lent by Charles II. to Louis XIV., and though succeeding, through the death of his two elder brothers, to his father’s estates, continued to serve abroad. In 1669 he was in the Venetian service at Candia, and in 1672 he was back with his old regiment, Dumbarton’s, in the French army, taking part under Turenne in the invasion of Holland. In 1673 he married Clara de Bie of Bommel in Gelderland. Through her influence he became, as Burnet says, “the most pious man that I ever knew in a military way,” and, convinced that he was fighting in an unjust cause, resigned his commission to take a captaincy in a Scottish regiment in the Dutch service. He had risen to the rank of major-general in 1685, when the Scots brigade was called to England to assist in the suppression of the Monmouth rebellion. Returning to Holland, Mackay was one of those officers who elected to stay with their men when James II., having again demanded the services of the Scots brigade, and having been met with a refusal, was permitted to invite the officers individually into his service. As major-general commanding the brigade, and also as a privy councillor of Scotland, Mackay was an important and influential person, and James chose to attribute the decision of most of the officers to Mackay’s instigation. Soon after this event the Prince of Orange started on his expedition to England, Mackay’s division leading the invading corps, and in January 1688–89 Mackay was appointed major-general commanding in chief in Scotland. In this capacity he was called upon to deal with the formidable insurrection headed by Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. In the battle of Killiecrankie Mackay was severely defeated, but Dundee was killed, and the English commander, displaying unexpected energy, subdued the Highlands in one summer. In 1690 he founded Fort William at Inverlochy, in 1691 he distinguished himself in the brilliant victory of Aughrim, and in 1692, with the rank of lieutenant-general, he commanded the British division of the allied army in Flanders. At the great battle of Steinkirk Mackay’s division bore the brunt of the day unsupported and the general himself was killed.

Mackay was the inventor of the ring bayonet which soon came into general use, the idea of this being suggested to him by the failure of the plug-bayonet to stop the rush of the Highlanders at Killiecrankie. Many of his despatches and papers were published by the Bannatyne Club in 1883.

See Life by John Mackay of Rockville (1836); and J. W. Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. i.


MACKAY, JOHN WILLIAM (1831–1902), American capitalist, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on the 28th of November 1831. His parents brought him in 1840 to New York City, where he worked in a ship-yard. In 1851 he went to California and worked in placer gold-mines in Sierra county. In 1852 he went to Virginia City, Nevada, and there, after losing all he had made in California, he formed with James G. Fair, James C. Flood and William S. O’Brien the firm which in 1873 discovered the great Bonanza vein, more than 1200 ft. deep, in the Comstock lode (yielding in March of that year as much as $632 per ton, and in 1877 nearly $19,000,000 altogether); and this firm established the Bank of Nevada in San Francisco. In 1884, with James Gordon Bennett, Mackay formed the Commercial Cable Company—largely to fight Jay Gould and the Western Union Telegraph Company—laid two transatlantic cables, and forced the toll-rate for transatlantic messages down to twenty-five cents a word. In connexion with the Commercial Cable Company he formed the Postal Telegraph Company. Mackay died on the 20th of July 1902 in London. He gave generously, especially to the charities of the Roman Catholic Church, and endowed the Roman Catholic orphan asylum in Virginia City, Nevada. In June 1908 a school of mines was presented to the University of Nevada, as a memorial to him, by his widow and his son, Clarence H. Mackay.


MACKAY, a seaport of Carlisle county, Queensland, Australia, on the Pioneer river, 625 m. direct N.N.W. Pop. (1901), 4091. The harbour is not good. Sugar, tobacco and coffee thrive in the district. There are several important sugar mills, one of which, the largest in Queensland, is capable of an annual output of 8000 tons. Rum is distilled, and there are a brewery and a factory for tinning butter for export. Workable coal is found in the district. This is the port of the Mt Orange and Mt Gotthart copper mines, and the Mt Britten and Eungella gold-fields. It is a calling-station for the Queensland royal mail steamers. The town is named after Captain John Mackay, who discovered the harbour in 1860.


McKEESPORT, a city of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., at the confluence of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers (both of which are navigable), 14 m. S.E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890), 20,741; (1900), 34,227, of whom 9349 were foreign-born and 748 were negroes; (1910 census) 42,694. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the Pittsburg & Lake Erie and the Pennsylvania railways. The city has a Carnegie library, a general hospital, and two business schools. Bituminous coal and natural gas abound in the vicinity, and iron, steel, and tin and terne plate are extensively manufactured in the city, the tin-plate plant being one of the most important in the United