MAZARRÓN, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Murcia, 19 m. W. of Cartagena. Pop. (1900), 23,284. There are soap and flour mills and metallurgic factories in the town, and iron, copper and lead mines in the neighbouring Sierra de Almenara. A railway 5 m. long unites Mazarron to its port on the Mediterranean, where there is a suburb with 2500 inhabitants (mostly engaged in fisheries and coasting trade), containing barracks, a custom-house, and important leadworks. Outside of the suburb there are saltpans, most of the proceeds of which are exported to Galicia. MAZATLÁN, a city and port of the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, 120 m. (direct) W.S.W. of the city of Durango, in lat. 23° 12´ N., long 106° 24´ W. Pop. (1895), 15,852; (1900), 17,852. It is the Pacific coast terminus of the International railway which crosses northern Mexico from Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, and a port of call for the principal steamship lines on this coast. The harbour is spacious, but the entrance is obstructed by a bar. The city is built on a small peninsula. Its public buildings include a fine town-hall, chamber of commerce, a custom-house and two hospitals, besides which there is a nautical school and a meteorological station, one of the first established in Mexico. The harbour is provided with a sea-wall at Olas Altas. A government wireless telegraph service is maintained between Mazatlán and La Paz, Lower California. Among the manufactures are saw-mills, foundries, cotton factories and ropeworks, and the exports are chiefly hides, ixtle, dried and salted fish, gold, silver and copper (bars and ores), fruit, rubber, tortoise-shell, and gums and resins. MAZE, a network of winding paths, a labyrinth (q.v.). The word means properly a state of confusion or wonder, and is probably of Scandinavian origin; cf. Norw. _mas_, exhausting labour, also chatter, _masa_, to be busy, also to worry, annoy; Swed. _masa_, to lounge, move slowly and lazily, to dream, muse. Skeat (_Etym._ Dict.) takes the original sense to be probably "to be lost in thought," "to dream," and connects with the root _ma-man_-, to think, cf. "mind," "man," &c. The word "maze" represents the addition of an intensive suffix.