reply—but it may be well to point out that the hopelessness of the Cretan case is manifested by a long series of rebellions, in which the islanders, though singlehanded, engaged themselves against the whole strength of the Ottoman Empire in a struggle of life and death for deliverance. M. Gennadios enumerates the revolts of 1831, 1841, 1858, 1866-68, 1877-78, 1889, and finally 1896. These figures carry with them their own demonstrative efficiency. It is not in human nature, except under circumstances of grinding and destructive oppression, to renew a struggle so unequal. The details of that oppression and of the perfidy with which the pretended concessions to Cretans were neutralized and undermined, and of truly a Turkish manœuvre, by which a Mohammedan minority was sent on from Constantinople to carry on armed resistance to measures of concession, must be sought in their proper place, the histories of the time. This simple aggregate of the facts, presented in outline, once for all convicts the central power and shows that it has no title to retain its sanguinary and ineffectual dominion. It is needless to go further. We are really dealing with a res judicata, for though not of their own free will, the six powers have taken into their own hands the pacification of the island and the determination of its future. But we must not suppose that we owe this intervention to a recrudescence of spirit and courage in counsels that had hitherto resulted in a concert of miserable poltroonery. A new actor, governed by a new temper, has appeared upon the stage; not one equipped with powerful fleets, large armies and boundless treasuries, supplied by uncounted millions, but a petty power, hardly counted in the list of European States, suddenly takes its place midway in the conflict between Turkey and its Cretan insurgents. But It is a power representing the race that had fought the battles of Thermopylæ and Salamis and had hurled back the hordes of Asia from European shores. In the heroic age of Greece, as Homer tells us, there was a champion who was small of stature but full of fight. He had in his little body a great soul, and he seems to have been reproduced in the recent and marvellously gallant action of Greece. It is sad to reflect that we have also before us the reverse of the picture in the six powers, who offer to the world the most conspicuous example of the reverse, and present to us a huge body animated, or rather tenanted, by a feeble heart. We have them before us, it is literally true, a David facing six Goliaths. Nor is Greece so easily disposed of as might have been anticipated; and what the world seems to understand is this: that there is life in the Cretan matter, that this life has been infused into it exclusively by Grecian action, and that if, under the merciful providence of God and by paths which it is hard as yet to trace, the island is to find her liberation, that inestimable boon will be owing. not to any of the great governments of Europe, for they are paralyzed by dissensions, nor even to any of the great peoples of Europe, for the door is shut in their faces by the "concert of Europe," but to the small and physically insignificant race known as the Greeks. Whatever good shall be permitted to emerge from the existing chaos will le to their credit and to theirs alone. Is it to be wondered at that Greece should have endeavored to give aid to the Cretans? As often as they rise in rebellion and their efforts, due to Turkish blindness and bad faith, are encountered by lawless cruelty, they fly in crowds to Greece, which is their only refuge; and that poor country has to stand and stand alone between them and starvation. As to their Turkish masters, it is not to be expected that they should find any cause for uneasiness in such a state of things, for ever since that evil day, the darkest perhaps in the whole known history of humanity, when their star reeking with gore rose above the horizon, has it not been their policy and constant aim to depopulate the regions which they ruled? The title of Turkey de jure is, in truth, given up on all hands. In the meagre catalogue of things which the six united powers have done, there is this, at least, included, that they have taken out of the hands of the sultan the care and administration of the island. If Turkey has the proper rights of a governing power, every act they have done and are doing and their presence in Canea itself is a gross breach of in ternational law. It is the violence, cruelty, and perfidy of Ottoman rule which alone gives them any title to interfere. The intention which has been announced on their behalf, an announcement incredible but true, is that when the Greek forces should have left the island the Turkish soldiery, the proved butchers of Armenia, the same body and very probably the same corps and persons were to remain as guardians of order in the island. But the six powers have no more right than I have either to confer or to limit this commission unless the sultan by his misconduct has forfeited his right to rule. Autonomy, too, being announced for Crete, and not by his authority but by theirs, Crete being thus derelict in point of lawful sovereignty, does all reversionary care for it fall to the six powers? Are we really to commence our twentieth century under the shadow of a belief that conventions set up by the policy of the moment are everything, and that community of blood, religion, history, sympathy, and interest are nothing? How stands the case of Crete in relation to Greece? Do what you will by the might of brute power, "a man's a man for a' that," and in respect of everything that makes a man to be a man, every Cretan is a Greek. Ottoman rule in Crete is a thing of yesterday, but Crete was part of Greece, the Cretan people of the Greek people, at least three thousand years ago; nor have the moral and human ties between them ever been either broken or relaxed; and in the long years and centuries to come, when this bad dream of Ottoman dominion shall have passed away from Europe, that union will still subsist and cannot but prevail, as long as a human heart beats in a human bosom. In the midst of high and self-sacrificing enthusiasm the Greek government and people have shown their good sense in pleading that the sense of the people of Crete, not the momentary and partial sense, but that which is deliberate and general, shall be considered. The Greeks have placed themselves upon a ground of indestructible strength. They are quite right in declining to stand upon an abstract objection to the suzerainty of Turkey if it so pleases the powers. Why should not Crete be autonomously united with Greece and yet not detached in theory from the body of the Ottoman Empire? Such an arrangement would not be without example. Bosnia and Herzegovina are administered by Austria, but I apprehend that they have never been formally severed from the overlordship of the sultan. Cyprus is similarly administered by Great Britain and European history is full of cases in which paramount or full sovereignty in one territory has been united with secondary or subordinate lordship in another. I quote the case of Cyprus as a precedent, and I apprehend that so far it is good, while I subjoin the satisfaction I should feel, were it granted me before the close of my long life, to see the population of that Hellenic island placed by friendly arrangement in organic relations with their brethren of the kingdom and of Crete. But in thus indicating a possible solution I claim for it no authority. I exclude no other alternative compatible with the principles which have been established by the situation. These I take to be that, by the testimony alike of living authority and of facts, Turkish rule in Crete exists only as a shadow of the past and has no place in the future; and that there is no organ upon earth, subject to independent provisions on behalf of the minority, so competent or so well entitled to define a prospective position for the people as that people itself. Further, it remains to be recognized that, at the present juncture, Greece, whom some seem disposed to treat as a criminal and disturber, has by her bold action conferred a great service upon Europe. She has made it impossible to palter with this question as we paltered with the bloodstained question of Armenia. She has extricated it from the meshes of diplomacy and placed it on the order of the day for definitive solution. I can remember no case in which so small a State has conferred so great a benefit. As to the notion that Greece is to be coerced and punished, I hardly like to sully the page on which I write by the mention of an alternative so detestable. It would be about as rational to transport the Greek nation, who are in this as one man, to Siberia by what, I believe, is called an administrative order. If any one has such a scheme of policy to propose, I advise his proposing it anywhere rather than in England. Let it be borne in mind that in this unhappy business all along, under the cover of the "concert of Europe," power and speech have been the monopoly of the governments and their organs, while the people have been shut out. Give us at length both light and air. The nations of Europe are in very various stages of their training, but I do not believe there is a European people whose judgment, could it be had, would ordain or tolerate the infliction of punishment upon Greece for the good deed she has recently performed. Certainly it would not be the French, who so largely contributed to the foundation of the kingdom, nor the Italians, still so mindful of what they and their fathers have undergone; and, least of all, I will say, the English, to whom the air of freedom is the very breath of their nostrils, who have already shown in every way open to them how they are minded, and who, were the road now lalu open to them by a dissolution of Parliament, would show it by returning a Parliament which upon that question would speak with unanimity. Waiving any further trespass on your time by a repetition of apologies, I remain, my dear duke, sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE. Chateau Thorenc, Cannes, March 13. From Macmillan's Magazine. One scorching July afternoon we were lounging beneath the awnings of the Royal Mail Steamer Loanda, as that vessel churned her way up the muddy Warri creek, one of the maze of tangled waterways intersecting the delta of the Niger. The yellow water flamed around us like a sheet of molten brass; the very palm fronds seemed limp with heat; and every beverage became lukewarm on its passage from the ice-chest to the thirsty lip. On either side were wastes of mangrove swamps, stretching away as far as the eye could reach, broken here and there by the raw green of the palm-trees. The atmosphere was that of the Niger delta, dense and steamy, with something in it besides the heat which seemed to sap the energy of the European. At last, as the steamer swung round a bend, scaring flocks of screaming parrots by the roar of the mail-gun, the Warri station came in sight. This, as perhaps the finest government post on the Oil Rivers save Calabar, seems to merit a description. Beyond a steep bank of firm earth, for here was dry land, lay a clearing hewn out of the dense cottonwood forest. In the centre of this rose a handsome wooden house, built, as usual in the Niger country, on piles, in the vain hope of escaping the malaria, surrounded by a wide verandah and roofed with galvanized iron. On either side lay a few straggling factories, the long whitewashed sheds flashing back an in.tolerable glare, until the tired eyes were glad to turn again towards the green shade of the forest. Such is Warri, and every West African outpost, from Lagos to Cameroons, more or less resembles it. When the Loanda was moored to the rickety wharf we went ashore in search of Major Crawford,1 who ruled that district at the head of a few Yoruba black troops. There was a machine gun at either corner of the 1 The late Major Copland-Crawford, D. S. O., who perished in the recent massacre at Benin. Witness after witness contradicted one another, for few races can lie like the West African when he makes up his mind to it; and still the major examined carefully into each minute detail, in spite of the sweltering heat and fetid air, while the Yorubas stood grimly on guard with their rifles in their hands. Residency, and two Yoruba soldiers, tested the wisdom of Solomon. meanors. scene. mass "Major inside court, sah," said the big Mahomedan soldier, and we entered the room. It was a curious the The hall below house proper was packed with a of naked black humanity, oily and perspiring; and though every door and window had been opened, the atmosphere was awful. A soldierly man, with the stamp of the West Coast upon him (there is no mistaking any one who has lived long in the feverland), was seated with a weary face at the end of the hall. A doubtful case of ambush and murder was being tried, and the officer leaned forward a little as the black interpreter examined a witness. When he saw us he beckoned us forward, and said, in reference to a request on a former visit, that we might stay and hear the cases, if we cared. Our companion made some remark about the Black Hole of Calcutta, and went hurriedly out into the open air, but we called up our courage and remained. The natives before us were chiefly clad in blue tattoo, and wore their hair knitted up into fantastic plaits. They were men of great stature and breadth of shoulders, wonderfully muscular, for all the Niger tribes practically live with the paddle in their hands, the creeks being the only roads. Some had been arrested by the Yoruba patrol, and some had been sent down voluntarily by their own headmen, to be tried according to the justice of the white men. Steal ing wives or slaves, adulterating palmoil, and participating in abominable Fetish rites were the principal offences; and the major listened with infinite patience to cases which would have as At last the court was dismissed for the day, and when darkness settled down and the fever-mist crept out of the forest and spread its ghostly trails across the river, we sat out upon the wide verandah, and the major discoursed upon the comparative demerits of the climates of India and Africa. It is a melancholy coincidence, but nevertheless, a fact, as a certain surgeon in the African mailboats may remember, if the fever has still spared him, that the last words Major Crawford said to us were these, as nearly as the writer can remember: "India is bad, but with care a strong man may live even in a very unhealthy jungle. Here no man must expect to live long; life is very uncertain." It may not be out of place to say here that there were few British officers from Gambia to Niger so universally esteemed Major Crawford. He was marked by a courtly consideration for every one with whom he came in contact, though the bush-tribes found his hand heavy if they provoked him too far. The writer remembers a time when the major had a despatch to send to the Colonial Office, and in order to save delaying the mail-steamer, he came off to it in a small canoe. He would not allow us to lower the accommodation-ladder, but seizing a line scrambled up the steamer's side till his despatch could be handed on board. A trader's clerk from a third-rate factory would have required a gig and six hands to bring him off; a black official of the Gold Coast Customs would have gasped at the idea of such a lack of ceremony; and yet the holder of the distinguished service order was pleased to do what he could to save trouble to strangers. At dawn next morning the Loanda Trailing plants of many hues hung in resumed her journey and steamed away through the creeks. That was the last the writer saw of Warri, and he has no desire to see it again; the germs of the African fever periodically stir within him even now. As a thin skeleton of a trader who went home, with us said: "I came here fourteen stone, and look at me now; it's a ghastly place." When darkness came again we dropped anchor in the centre of a narrow creek, and the big steamer (four thousand tons she was) floated motionless with the muddy river gurgling against her bows. It was too hot to play cards in the smoking-room; the heat and the mosquitoes made sleep in our stifling, cockroach-haunted berths out of the question; and we sat on deck while the long, dark hours dragged by. A damp mist hid the surface of the creek, though the wall of sombre forest rose dim and shadowy above it, while from out of the darkness came the hoarse croaking of storks wading along the edge of the mud. At intervals an alligator splashed noisily among the mangrove roots, or a leopard howled somewhere afar off on firmer ground; then there would be silence for a space, and half choked with heat and the foul emanations of the swamps we longed for the cool air of dawn. festoons from the massive branches, and the ground beneath their feet was carpeted with clusters of the fragrant African lilies, whose flowers only unfold at night, among which could be seen the crimson-spiked leaves of the pineapple. Here the tropical forest was royally beautiful; but it was a deceitful beauty, for death or sickness lurked in every breath of its scented air, and the germs of fever mingled with the odors of many spices. Beyond a few flocks of frightened parrots, or an occasional alligator, neither beast, nor bird, nor reptile was visible, for the wild creatures of the African forest invariably lie fast in their lairs by day, and only seek their prey at night. Of men, however, there were plenty. Canoe after canoe passed us, varying from forty feet to ten in length. The former are unwieldy craft, hollowed out of a single cottonwood log, and loaded down to the last inch with greasy kernels or palm-oil. In the bows a number of naked slaves, frequently women, plied the quaintly carved Benin paddles. The word slaves is used advisedly, for although this is British territory, domestic slavery is everywhere common. Parents freely sell their children, and it would be interesting to know how many wives some of the white traders have purchased at £5 a head. The With the first of the daylight we waist of the craft is piled high with were off again, steaming six knots an cargo, and under an awning aft the hour towards Benin, through what headman-trader lies in state. He genmust surely be one of the strangest erally affects a striped flannel jacket countries on earth. The dingy foliage and battered silk hat, when he looks of the mangroves spread far out across grotesque; but occasionally he appears the winding creek, brushing the in his native nudity, and then he is steamer's side as she passed, while be- statuesque and antique. Let any athneath the arched roots, which resem lete or anatomist view one of these bled the tentacles of a crawling Niger-men, and he will confess that it octopus, were fathomless depths would be hard to find a finer specimen foul slime or banks of festering mud, of physical humanity. Of his mental alive with loathsome scaly things that capacity, however, so much cannot be swam or crawled. Water, mud, and said, though white traders have distrees everywhere, and nothing else. covered that to take the bushman in Then at intervals we steamed by strips is not so easy as it seems. Almost inof firm earth, where lordly cotton- variably a guard of half-a-dozen big woods and feathery oil-palms broke warriors, armed with sharp matchets the monotony of the mangroves. and flintlock guns, occupy the stern, of |