The news of the week from East Africa is all
unfavourable to Europe. A messenger despatched from Suakin to Khar- toum brings back a letter from Slatin Bey confirming the existence of the belief in that city that Emin Pasha had been captured and his provinces occupied by the Mahdi. The Kingdom of Uganda, on the Victoria Nyanza, has been over- thrown by the Arab slave-dealers, who found the new King, Kiwewa, much too friendly to the Christians. They appealed in November to Mussulman feeling, murdered the semi- Christian Ministers of the King, massacred the converts, and expelled the English and French missionaries, who, how- ever, escaped with their lives, and are residing in safety at Usambiro. On the 13th 'inst., again, the Arabs attacked the German missionary-station of Tugu, within the German dominion, carried away great numbers of released slaves, and murdered eight male and female German missionaries. Their bodies were barbarously mutilated with knives. The French missionaries at Bagamoyo are also threatened, and, more ominous than all, the half-caste Arabs of the coast have received large reinforcements from Muscat, showing that the revivalist Mussulman movement and the expulsion of Euro- peans from Africa have the sympathies of the great popula- tion across the Red Sea. Fortunately, there are two sides to this extension of the movement, as the new recruits are sub- jects of the Sultan of Muscat, who is almost a feudatory of Great Britain. We have, however, little hope, for reasons stated in another column, that the reluctance to attack the English will last long, and have some dread of an explosion in Zanzibar itself. Sir J. Kirk, whose influence is paramount there, is, however, on his way back.
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