MOUNDSVILLE  , a

city and the county-seat of Marshall county, West Virginia, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, 12 in . S. of Wheeling . Pop . (1900) 5632; (1910) 8918 . It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, by an electric line to Wheeling, and by boats to Pittsburg, Cincinnati and intermediate ports . Near Moundsville, at the mouth of Grave Creek, is Grave Creek Mound, one of the largest relics of the " American mound-builders "; it is in the form of a regular cone, and is about 320 ft. in diameter at the base and 70 ft. in height . Two sepulchral chambers were discovered in it in 1838 . In the upper chamber, about half-way between the centre of the base and the apex, was a single skeleton, adorned with beads, copper bracelets and plates of mica; in the lower chamber, directly under the upper and partly in the natural earth, were twoskeletons, one adorned with beads and the other without ornament . On the sides and top of the lower chamber was a framework of timbers, which seems to indicate that the mound is of comparatively recent date . The city of Moundsville was formed in 1866 by the consolidation of the town of Moundsville (laid out on the Ohio river in 1831, and incorporated in 1832), and the town of Elizabethtown (laid out, about a m. from the river, in 1798, and incorporated in 1830) . MOUNET-SULLY, JEAN (1841- ), French actor, was born at Bergerac, on the 28th of February, 1841 . He entered the Conservatoire at the age of twenty-one, and took the first prize for tragedy .

In 1868 he made his debut at the Odeon without attracting much

attention . His career was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, and the liking he developed for soldiering had almost decided him to give up the stage, when he was offered the opportunity of playing the part of Oreste in Racine's Andromaque at the Comedie Francaise in 1872 . His striking presence and voice and the passionate vigour of his acting made an immediate impression, and the eventual result was his election as societaire in 1874 . He became one of the mainstays of the Comedie Frangaise, and distinguished himself in a great variety of tragic and romantic parts . Perhaps his most famous impersonation was that of Oedipus in L'Oedipe roi, a French version by Jules Lacroix of Sophocles's drama . This was first performed in the old Roman amphitheatre at Orange in 1888 . Other prominent parts in Mounet-Sully's repertoire were Achille in Racine's I phigenie en Aulide, Hippolyte in Padre, Hamlet, the title parts in Victor Hugo's Hernani and Ruy Bias, Francis I. in Le Roi s'amuse, and Didier in Marion Delorme . He was created chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1889 . He also wrote a play, La Buveuse de larmes, and in 1906, in collaboration with Pierre Barbier, La Vieillesse de Don Juan in verse .