holds, and thus striking a decisive blow at the naval supremacy of Great Britain, could France ever hope to carry out her designs.

MASSOWA AND ABESSINIA.

Massowa in former times constituted part of the Abessinian Empire, and was governed by the Baharnagash, or Prince of the Sea, who had his residence at Dixan. It was occupied at the commencement of the 17th century by the Turks, in whose possession it has remained ever since. The Belaw, who inhabit the island and neighboring coast, were the first to embrace Islamism, and from amongst them the Pasha of Jidda nominated as vice-governor of the main-land, the "naib," i. e., substitute, a dignity since confined to the members of one family. The naibs, by stratagem or force, acquired a considerable influence over the neighboring tribes, and their authority was recognized by the Shoho, Beduan, and Habab. The two former, being the earliest subjects, merely promised a contingent in time of war. The naibs also successfully restricted the commerce of Abessinia to Massowa; and when, about fifty years ago, caravans were known to frequent Ait, a port situated further south, war was made upon that place, and its chief compelled to swear upon the Koran not to receive any more caravans.

Repeated complaints of the arbitrary conduct of the naib at last induced the Pasha of Jidda to give orders for his deposition. The governor of Massowa, with his Turkish troops, crossed over to Arkiko, the residence of the naib, destroyed that place, and built a fort which he garrisoned with 200 men. The naibs subsequently might have regained their former influence, for the governor's conduct towards the Shohos and Belaw, from whom he demanded taxes, was by no means judicious; family disputes, however, prevented this. In 1853 the Shohos and Belaw were in open rebellion, but they at once returned to their former allegiance when, towards the close of 1854, a new naib arrived from Jidda, where he had successfully prosecuted the claims of his branch of the family to that dignity. He was invested with plenary powers as far as the main-land was concerned, and thus rendered almost independent of the Turkish Pasha, who has since 1850 resided at Massowa.

At the present time the Turks have a garrison of 250 regulars and 150 Bashi-bozuks at Massowa; 50 Bashi-bozuks occupy the fort at Arkiko, and since July, 1857, 27 have occupied Ait.

The claim of Turkey to the west coast of the Red Sea, and specially to that part of the coast extending between Massowa and Ait, however slight her authority, appears to us to be clearly established by the mere fact of her nominating the naibs, and this for a period of nearly 300 years. Abessinia still prefers a claim to these territories, but has never been able to expel the Turks, and as late as 1848, when Ubie, the Regent of Tigre, attempted to do so, and sent an army of 20,000 men against Arkiko, he was compelled to retire, after having burnt a few villages and made a raid upon some cattle. Still, the claim of Abessinia to the coast offering the sole maritime outlet to her commerce, and formerly part of her territory, might be allowed, were she in a position to enforce it. It must, however, cause surprise to hear of France, a European power, at amity with Turkey, purchasing from the Regent of Tigre, who never yielded the slightest authority there, the port of Ait, and subsequently that of Zula.

The endeavors of France to gain a footing upon the Red Sea may be

traced back for a number of years. M. Combes, who in 1835 visited Adoa, purchased from Ubie, the Regent of Tigre, the port of Ait, for £300, obviously for the purpose of attracting to it the commerce of Abessinia, then, as now, carried on through Massowa. A French vessel sent there by a Bordeaux house was not, however, able to open commercial intercourse; they neither found purchasers for their ill-assorted wares, nor the expected caravans with ivory and gold dust. For a long time afterwards French interests in Abessinia were intrusted to the Romish missionaries, and to a consul, who took his residence at Massowa, a port with which France had no intercourse whatever. In 1840 the naib ceded to the consul a small plot of ground at Mokullu, close to Massowa, upon which the missionaries built a chapel in 1848, and they also extended their operations to a Christian tribe of the Shohos, dwelling above Zula, and to the Bogos to the north of Abessinia. The consul gave the Turkish governor much trouble, and has of late insisted upon considering the main-land as independent. When Kassai had succeeded in making himself master of Abessinia, and a prospect of a stable government was at hand, France, who in this most probably saw the downfall of her own schemes, sowed disunion by rendering her support to Ubie, and subsequently to Yeh, the opponents of Kassai in Tigre. At the close of 1857, the French consul, accompanied by a priest, traveled to Adoa for the purpose of inducing Yeh to occupy the coast. The result of this journey has perhaps been the so-called cession of Zula, a port situated upon Annesley Bay, and only about twenty-five miles south of Massowa. Zula formerly was a place of great commercial importance; its trade, however, has been removed to Massowa, which is more favorably situated, and at the present day it merely consists of a few huts of fishermen and camel-drivers. Its importance as a naval station is but slight, and the assertion of French writers that it commands the route to Aden is absurd, cut off, as the place would be, from receiving any support whatever, in case of hostilities with a naval power like Great Britain, holding in Aden and Perim the keys to the Red Sea. It might, however, serve as a stepping-stone to further conquests in Abessinia; but is France in a position to find funds for the conquest of a second Algeria ?†

*

Abessinia has for a number of years been a prey to intestine wars, which we had hoped to see terminated by the usurpation of the throne by Kassai, whose energy may even now enable him to gain the object of his desiresthe re-establishment of the Abessinian Empire. Kassai is a native of Kuara, a small province of Western Abessinia, the limits of which had been extended by his father and elder brother, Komfu, to the Abai and Lake Tsana. He wrested by conquest the province of Dembia from the mother of Ras Ali, governor of Gondar, thus carrying his boundary to within a few miles of the capital. His desire of independence, and refusal to pay the customary tribute, soon brought him into hostile collision with the Ras, and the latter, in 1850, conferred the greater part of the provinces held by Kassai upon Buru Goshu, Prince of Gojam, a more loyal satrap. Kassai, with his scattered forces, retired before the large army sent against him, to Kuara,

According to French papers this cession was made by Ubie, (Oubieh.) Our information regarding late political events in Abessinia is very fragmentary; we nevertheless have reason to suppose that Uble has left the field of political action.

The revenues of Algeria at the present day cover the expenses of the civil administration, (£300,000 to £900,000 ;) the maintenance of the military establishment requires, however, an outlay of about £200,000 more.

where he made active preparations to reconquer his lost territories. When his adversary had quietly settled down in Dembea, he broke forth from his mountains and defeated him in a sanguinary battle near the lake, Buru Goshu himself being amongst the slain. Ras Ali fled from Gondar, but, aided by Ubie of Tigre, and other Abessinian princes, collected a large force; but he was also defeated in 1853, near Gorada, and obliged to seek safety amongst his Mohammedan relations. Kassai next turned his victorious arms against Ubie, whom he defeated and took prisoner in 1855;* he then appointed a relation of Sabagadis, the former rightful sovereign of Tigre, as vice-governor; and by consenting to expel the Romish priests, who had greatly interfered with the internal management of the Church, he induced the Abuna to remove from Adoa to Gondar, and to annoint him as Theodore, (Tadruss,) Negus or Emperor of the Abessinian Empire. In 1856, Shoa was added to the dominions of Kassai. He was not, however, long to enjoy his conquests.

We glean from disjointed information obtained subsequently, that fresh opponents arose against Kassai in Tigre, and at the close of 1858 the fate of the empire had not yet been decided by battle. It is, however, to be hoped, in the interests of humanity, that Kassai, who is still a young man, may triumph over his enemies, and thus carry out the reforms he contemplated.t

MADAGASCAR.

Madagascar first attracted the attention of the French in 1642, when Louis XIII. granted the island to the Companie de l'Orient. The first vessels arrived in 1643, and possession was taken of the Island Ste. Marie and of Antongil Bay, and a small colony established at Ste. Luce, which soon afterwards was removed to Fort Dauphin. The new settlement was but badly supported by France; the governors treated the natives with execra ble cruelty, and even sold them to Dutch slave-dealers, conduct which brought about the massacre of the French colonists when celebrating a midnight mass on Christmas eve, 1672. Only a few made their escape to the Island of Bourbon.

The next attempt at settlement was directed towards the Island Ste. Marie in 1750; but conduct similar to that pursued at Fort Dauphin caused a second massacre, four years after the arrival of the colonists.

Fort Dauphin was again temporarily occupied in 1768, but up to 1774, when Count Benyovski arrived with his expedition in Antongil Bay, France was represented on the island merely by a few independent traders. The Count, having lost most of his people in battle or by disease, returned to France to vindicate his conduct. The government did not, however, think fit to intrust him with the conduct of a second expedition, and, stung with disappointment, he went to the United States, where he collected a band of adventurers, with whom he landed in Madagascar with a view of conquering that island on his own account, but fell in defense of a small fort, in 1786, against a French force sent against him from Mauritius.

In 1810, when Great Britain took possession of Mauritius, French agents were found established at Tamatave and Foulepointe, and surrendered to the British squadron. By the treaty of Paris, of 1814, Mauritius with its

* Ubie subsequently appears to have been liberated on payment of a ransom of £10,000. + Compare Dr. Krapf's Travels, p. 358.

dependencies was ceded to Great Britain, including, of course, any settlement which might have been made in Madagascar; France, however, subsequently refused to acknowledge this claim. In 1815 a tract of land was purchased from native chiefs at Port Luquez, and a small settlement founded, which was, however, finally abandoned in 1718, when Great Britain acknowledged the claim of Radama to the whole island.

The French, however, continued their efforts at colonization; in 1819 they reoccupied Ste. Marie and Tintingue, and sent a few men to garrison Fort Dauphin; native chiefs in 1821 ceded the coast between Fenerife and Antongil Bay. Radama protested against this aggression, and in 1822 expelled the French from the main-land, and occupied Fort Dauphin in 1825. In 1829 another expedition was sent to Madagascar; the French occupied Tintingue, burnt Tamatave, but were ingloriously defeated by a much inferior number of Hovas at Foulepointe. The former place was again evacuated in 1831, and up to the present day the French settlements on the east coast have been restricted to the small Island of Ste. Marie.

Seeing their efforts in this quarter unavailing, they now directed their attention to the west coast. In 1840 they procured from native chiefs the cession of Nossibe and some neighboring islands, together with the mainland facing them; they were not, however, able to prevent the Hovas from occupying the latter, nor did they resent their destroying, in 1856, a French fort built near Bavatuka Bay, thirty miles from Nossibe, where a French company worked some coal-mines, and from which they carried away five guns as trophies of victory. The superintendent of the coal-mine, and others, were killed, and the laborers, about one hundred in number, taken prisoners to Tananarivo.

In 1841 the French also took possession of Mayotte, one of the Comoro Islands, a position equally useless as a naval station or commercial entrepôt.*

A more daring attempt upon Madagascar has been made recently, and reflects little credit upon the government which sanctioned it. M. Lambert, in 1855, visited Tananarivo avowedly for commercial purposes, but obviously with the object of organizing a conspiracy in conjunction with Laborde and several native chiefs. This Laborde was formerly a slave-dealer, and, at the time, Great Chamberlain at the court of Emirne. His preliminary arrangements being made, M. Lambert started for France, and after two interviews with the emperor returned to Madagascar, taking with him presents to the amount of £2,000, and accompanied by Père Jean, Apostolic Vicar of Madagascar, disguised as a trader, and by Madame Ida Pfeifer, who, we hope, was ignorant of the purport of the mission. The conspirators arrived at Tananarivo in 1857. It was their intention to depose the queen, and place upon the throne a native prince, who, in case of success, promised to acknowledge himself a vassal of France, and to introduce the Roman Catholic religion. The plot, however, was discovered, and the chief conspirators were expelled the island, and many others are supposed to have suffered death in consequence of their participation in it.

Still more recent is the acquisition of a large tract of land near Bali Bay.

* This island was not " ceded" by the native prince, but occupied under protest. Vide "Madagascar Past and Present, by a Resident." (London, 1847,) p. 222.

+ Vide MacLeod's “Travels in Eastern Africa." Barbie de Bocage, in his work on Madagascar (Paris, 1559,) makes no mention of M. Lambert's share in this conspiracy. He merely gives an extract from the "Patrie" newspaper (p. 276,) according to which a "Catholic" party had been formed in opposition to the queen's government, and the discovery of which led to the massacre of two thousand individuals

A French vessel, the "Marie Angelique," engaged in the so-called Free Immigration Scheme, had been plundered there by the natives, and the government agent on board of her killed. On the news of this disaster reaching Bourbon, the frigate "La Cordeliere" was at once sent to the spot; the villages in which the culpable parties were supposed to reside were destroyed; the chief of the territory, a female, was deposed, and her lands given to a neighboring chief, who, "recognizing the ancient rights of France to the territories occupied," made a cession of the whole. We do not know whether the territory thus acquired has actually been settled, but believe not. The present state of the French settlements near Madagascar is not at all commensurate with the pains taken in their formation during the two last centuries. Ste. Marie, in 1856, had a population of 5,743 souls. The population of Nossibe, and the smaller islands in its vicinity, was 22,577 in 1856; the imports amounted to £24,000, the exports to only £5,400. Mayotte, in 1853, had 6,829 inhabitants, and its exports and imports amounted, in 1856, to £30,740. The island of Bourbon or Reunion, in 1858, had 143,600 inhabitants, amongst whom were 93,000 immigrant laborers. The imports of the island amounted to £1,333,000 in 1856, the exports to £1,187,000.

Reunion has a garrison of 1,200 European troops, a company of native sappers and miners 150 men strong, besides an organized militia of 5,000 men. The other possessions mentioned are garrisoned by some 200 Europeans and 250 Africans. None of these possess a harbor desirable as a naval station, and the loss of Mauritius, with its safe and well-defended anchorage, and unique position at almost equal distance from Aden, British India, and the Cape, could never be adequately compensated, even by their occupying the whole of Madagascar. Nor are these settlements calculated to become of importance as commercial entrepôts; the French can never hope to see Mayotte the rival of Zanzibar, though no doubt these colonies. may become important by the establishment of sugar and coffee plantations. Mauritius, at the present day, depends for its supply of cattle almost exclusively upon Madagascar; for out of 8,711 head imported in 1857, 485 only came from other countries. Besides these, 6,584 cwt. of rice and a little tobacco were imported from that island, the total imports amounting to only £43,000. During the same period the value of cereals and flour imported from British India and others of our colonies amounted to £494,000. Should the French at some future period be able to stop the export trade of Madagascar, which they could only do by subjecting the whole of that island to their sway, Mauritius might draw the whole of her supply of cattle from our fast-growing colony of Natal,* and as long as Great Britain maintains her naval superiority, no fear need be entertained of that island being ever reduced by famine.

In fact, the designs of France upon Madagascar need cause no apprehension; in case of war, that island would prove a source of embarrassment rather than of strength. No doubt commercial operations might be extended, and this without prejudice to British enterprise, which will find much more profitable employment in the colonization of Natal, and ultimately of the whole of Kaffraria.

The distance from Mauritius to Natal is about 1,740 miles. Occasionally cargoes of cattle have been imported from Mombaz or Brava, a much greater distance. Hitherto Natal has not exported any cattle.