cretly south towards the residency of speaker, though his face twitched-"I Captain Strasbourger. Now this officer had been placed at the head of fifty Senegalis to guard against any encroachments which perfidious Albion might make in the way of extending her boundaries, and his special duty was to keep a watchful eye on Captain Sinclair. However, like most of his class, he was goodnatured and sociable, and as the two British officers were the only white men to be seen for months at a time, and, moreover, kept a choice assortment of spirituous comforts, he was accustomed to travel forty miles periodically to fraternize with them. The Ju-Ju man, therefore, instead of receiving many cases of gin as a reward, was put in irons, while with eight bearers Lieutenant Strasbourger was carried in his hammock through dismal swamps and dripping forests towards the British station. One morning, as Captain Sinclair bent over the couch of the feverstricken missionary, the hammock swung into the compound, and the Frenchman, hot and thirsty, alighted at the door. "Now for diplomacy," said the captain. "Charlie, get out the best drinkables and cigars. Come in, my friend." After quaffing a brimming glass Lieutenant Strasbourger took off his sunhelmet, and wiping the perspiration out of his eyes, threw himself back in a canvas chair, saying in fair English: "Ah, my brothers, it is a charm to enjoy your inestimable hospitality; but to-day it is an affair serious. Two days ago a man of the woods arrives with a tale, which is doubtless untrue, that the English have burned a village lying under the protection of the great nation of France," and the officer bowed theatrically, while Captain Sinclair bent his head with imperturbable gravity, and said encouragingly, "Go on, my friend, try again." Lieutenant Strasbourger went on. "Knowing the deep respect you bear to the flag of France, and trusting in your inestimable friendship,"-here Lieutenant Smith reached over and shook hands with the will not insult you by asking if it is true," there was a twinkle in the Frenchman's eye as he met Sinclair's glance "but I will tell the rascal they were all drunk and burned the place themselves, and will fine them much oil. The Ju-Ju man, too, he will see what it is to bring wicked tales to an officer of France!" Then Captain Sinclair poured him out half a tumbler of whiskey and the three pledged eternal friendship. When the sun rose higher and the temperature of the room became that of an oven, the brothers of the sword sat in the high verandah looking out over miles of forest, gleaming lagoons, and winding reaches of river, and sang English songs and French chansonettes to the accompaniment of a cracked banjo. At moonrise the Krooboy hammock-men, who had been freely regaled with trade gin, were with difficulty collected. Then captain and lieutenant hoisted the officer of France, who wept copiously on parting with mes braves amis, into his hammock, from which he immediately crawled head foremost, smashing his sun-helmet over his eyes. On being a second time packed away, the gallant soldier was borne unsteadily off into the forest awakening its echoes with uncertain scraps of song, while the Englishmen leaned against the gate and laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks. All night the bearers struggled through the forest. Twice they upset the officer into a muddy swamp, and once he wriggled himself out and fell face downwards in the slime, when the stolid Africans, who were used to this kind of thing, calmly picked him up and continued their journey, until two days later at sunset a disreputable, mud-stained group reached the French outpost. Next morning Lieutenant Strasbourger woke with a splitting headache and a most unenviable temper. He ordered out the Ju-Ju man, reproached him bitterly for his wickedness, and finally commanded the Senegalis to give him a dozen lashes at the triangles. This Bussa richly deserved; but it was a somewhat cruel instance of the irony of fate that the only time he received the punishment he merited, should also have been the only occasion in his ill-spent life on which he spoke the truth. Having thus lost his prestige, Bussa dared not return to his flock with the scars of disgrace upon him; he departed in search of new pastures far away to the east, and the black priest of Konnoto was seen in its streets no more. Meantime, the missionary, worn out with many sorrows and disappointments, as well as with the deadly climate, was slowly sinking. He had fought a valiant fight against sickness and hopelessness in the awful solitude of the African bush, and now the wasted frame seemed scarcely able to hold the brave spirit which burned within it. One stifling evening, as he lay gasping for breath in the verandah, he beckoned the captain near. "My friend," he said, "my time is nearly come and my work over; but I should like to see my wife and Lagos before the end." Then he ceased for want of breath, and the officer said huskily: "You'll pull through yet, with the change and sea-air on the coast-I'll send a runner down to-night to tell your wife to meet you, and you can start tomorrow." Early in the morning the three white men grasped each other's hands, and then the hammock-bearers and their escort swung south through the forest, travelling day after day beneath the great cotton-woods, wading through foul swamps, or forcing a path amid tall plume-grass which waved its golden tassels high above their heads. Twice the worn-out bearers mutinied and refused to move another foot, and once they were attacked at night by a marauding tribe; but the big Yoruba sergeant in command declared in the vernacular: "That the orders of the white captain were to deliver the infidel preacher at Lagos, alive or dead, and that while two men were left, by the beard of the prophet the command should be obeyed." So, beneath scorching noon-day heat and clammy midnight mist, with glittering eyes, burning skin, and blackened lips, the missionary was borne along, concentrating his remaining energy into a desperate effort to live until the end of his journey. At last, one morning as they marched out of the forest and halted upon the shores of a broad lagoon, a rapid beat of hoofs rose upon the steaming air, and a weary-faced woman flung herself out of the saddle, and, tearing aside the awning, bent down and kissed the wax-like forehead within, then bit her lips and turned her head aside, lest the sufferer might read the terror in her eyes,-and so husband and wife met. However, to every one's surprise, David Kinnett did not die. They swung him on board the Sokoto in an empty oil-puncheon, and by the time the steamer met the life-giving Trades off Cape de Verde he was convalescent. But the medical officers of the society forbade his returning to Africa, and the missionary and his wife were afterwards despatched to a healthier field of labor. Heathen darkness again settled down upon Konnoto, for Amaro stopped the weaving and declared that the old gods were sufficient for him, and that henceforward he would be their mouthpiece. So long as he is able to keep them out, he will have neither white nor black priest in his dominions, for it took him twelve months to pay the fine exacted by Lieutenant Strasbourger on the occasion of the disappearance of the first, and he will not again brook a rival in the latter. Still, on every anniversary of the great feast of devil-making, the villagers tremble as they gather round their fires, and tell the story how upon a time the lost souls of certain wicked English and Yorubas invaded the village, and carried the two priests of Konnoto away to the bottomless pit. Then Headman Amaro smiles grimly and holds his peace. From The Spectator. THE NATURAL ALLIANCES OF EUROPE. It is nearly impossible as one reads reports of the constant oscillations in the European Alliances, of the fears that they may break up, and of the elaborate efforts made to keep them firm, not to speculate for a moment as to what would be the natural alliances among the greater States, and as to the causes which seem, if not permanently, at least for long periods of time, to arrest their formation. To us, looking at the question without bias and purely as historians, it seems that the present arrangement is almost purely artificial, and that the only natural one is England and France on one side, and the "Imperial Powers," as Lord Beacons. field called them, on the other, with Italy swaying towards one or the other group, or remaining neutral, as her in terests or her desire for peaceful development might in turn dictate. England and France represent in different degrees and by different methods the great democratic idea that nations should govern themselves, and that no question of internal organization should be allowed to stand in the way of changes which a people decides to be clearly made in the interests of progress, either in their happiness or their civilization or their virtue. The ultimate instrument of government is therefore in both a representative body, or on great occasions an appeal to the mass of the population. The acceptance of that principle acts in both of them as a strong motive-force, and influences their action abroad as well as at home, operating, we admit, in the former case only spasmodically, as when France freed Italy, but still occasionally for long periods and in a great way and with permanent results. England and France, for example, have been honest in putting down slavery and the slavetrade. The three imperial powers, on the other hand, represent the conservative impulse of Europe; they are almost pledged to use force against any social uprising, and they all either tacitly or openly declare that the preservation of monarchical power is their first object, and should be that of their populations. That is a radical difference in the mo tives of action of the two groups, and is so far from an academic one that it has repeatedly produced great consequences, such as the Russian conquest of Liberal Hungary in 1894, the refusal of Prussia to join in a league against Russia in 1856, and the determination of the three emperors last year not to depose Abd-ul-Hamid,—that is, in fact, to maintain a grand source of inquietude in Europe. The interests of the two groups, moreover, tend historically to bind their component States together. The true "expansion" of France that which would really yield her at once a noble and a practicable field for her energies-would be in the vast region south of the Mediterranean, once the most directly valuable of the provinces of Rome, because the grand source of her food-supply. Well, allowing for a difficulty about Tangier, which must be neutralized, Great Britain would not care, provided she were left free to reign from Alexandria to the Cape, if France reigned from Barca to Mequinez, and southwards even to the Niger. That magnificent empire at her own doors is, on very moderate conditions, at the disposal of France, with the full approval of Great Britain. The supposed quarrel about Siam would be seen, if the two powers were friendly, to have nothing in it; and everywhere else in the world we are on the best of terms, Great Britain having even surrendered its really strong claim, as discoverer and civilizer, to Madagascar. We, for our part, literally want nothing except Egypt, as aforesaid, that France also thinks she wants. On the other hand, the imperial powers, already bound together by the partition of Poland, could if they agreed, not only dominate the Black Sea and the Scandinavian States, but practically treat the Turkish Empire and its old dependencies in the Balkan Peninsula as derelict kingdoms, to be governed and divided as suited best their aspirations or their interests. No power could resist them except England, and England, securely seated at Cairo and Khartoum, and incurably dis trustful of the Ottoman caste, would have no interest to defend worth the risks and the expenditure of a great war. The two leagues might endure for a century, for they would have plenty of work to do; at points their interests would become identical, and whenever they could agree they would be, if not the masters, at least the arbiters of the world, and could arrange, not, indeed, for disarmament, which is the dream of bookmen, but for such a reduction and redistribution of their forces as would perceptibly diminish their necessity for imposing taxes, and with it the Socialist tendency of their subjects and their own most discreditable hunger, even rage, for acquiring profitable estates. So strongly has the naturalness, as we must call it, of this system of alliances been felt, that it has been realized once, the result being the permanent disappearance of Poland from the map in the face of the unavailing protests both of England and France, and that kings and diplomatists have tried at least three times to renew it, always with imperfect and momentary effect. It very nearly became solid in 1856, but the "magnificent ingratitude" of the Hapsburgs, who wanted to keep Italy and their German position, induced them to swerve towards the Western powers, and so to lose the best opportunity they have ever had of expanding on their natural path to the south-east. The special interests of Austria in the West have, however, now disappeared, she is out of Germany, and it is difficult to believe that if a compensation to Germany could be devised-and two or three might be pointed out-the interests of the three powers-not their real interests, be it observed, but their interests as dynasts reckon them-could not be brought into nearly complete harmony. There remain, if the interests could be reconciled, certain distrusts which are probably ineradicable, like the German doubt whether the Hapsburgs have forgotten their old ascendency over Germany, certain acute antipathies of race, like those which divide Germans from Slavs, and which have their foundations deep in differfor example, postponing his pecuniary ences of national character-the Slav, interests to his antipathies, his passions, and his ideas in a way the German is slow to imitate-and the dislikes which have grown up in centuries between the dynasties. Those dislikes lie deep in the ruling dynasts. The Romanoffs, Hapsburgs, and Hohenzollerns have been rivals for long periods, they have with which an Englishman studies only studied each other with the minute care his closest connections, they have discovered what we may impolitely call for the sake of clearness the "vicious point" of each, and they dislike and resent it with a bitterness that it is not easy to great English or Scotch families, if explain, though we have been told that seated in the same county, often retain permanently, even friendships and marriage alliances, the in the midst of instance, that Hapsburgs and Hohensame feeling. If we should say, for zollerns "Greeks," that Romanoffs and Hapsthought the Romanoffs burgs thought Hohenzollerns greedy, and that Romanoffs and Hohenzollerns considered most to lunacy, most diplomatists Hapsburgs pompous alfamiliar with those courts and their histories cating manner, would smile in a depreand-not contradict. No greatly impede unity on any project dislikes of the kind would promising immediate advantage, but they do greatly impede cordial understandings, and help. with many other influences, to keep the imperial powers in their permanent position with regard to each other, which is one of jealous and even minute watchfulness. That watchfulness might, however, if their common interests as dynasts were aroused, or their territorial interests pear with startling suddenness. were reconciled by compromise, disap"Drei Kaiser Bund" is never quite a political impossibility. A written down these considerations with enormous to allow of that. It is the purse of France, not the army of France, that Russia wants to draw on, and has drawn on with a quite extraordinary measure of success. But it is worth the while of our readers when they hear of agreements and difficulties among the powers to remember that the present groupings are rather artificial, that the imperial families form a caste by themselves with thoughts of their own, that if Germany and Russia could agree there would in Berlin be no fear of France, and that, loudly as its servants speak, the house of Hapsburg is just as likely, when the hour arrives, to compromise with Russia, as it did in 1877, as to avail itself of its position on the Russian flank. We want, too, to point out that the peace which for eighty-one years has reigned between us and France suggests that we must have some motive-forces in common, that our jealousies must be in part at least superficial, and that our interests cannot be so permanently and deeply opposed to an alliance as it is often the custom to assume. We may, too, have to make up our minds about alliances much more clearly than we have done since 1870, ever since which turningpoint in history our statesmen and our people, with rare unanimity, have said to each other "Wait." "Splendid isolation" is a very proud attitude, but it can be maintained in only one way, and we can imagine contingencies, by no means remote, in which the choice would lie between strong alliances for definite ends, and an expenditure upon the army -the army, mind, not the navy-such as this generation has no experience of. We would ask those who doubt this, and who think that to-morrow will always be as to-day, to reflect for a minute on what the position of this country would have been if in 1857, when the strength of the army was afloat for the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, Napoleon III. had imagined in his dreamy reveries that the hour for avenging Waterloo had at last arrived. From Longman's Magazine. HOW WERE ANIMALS DOMESTICATED? How did animals come to be domesticated? There is a curious, if unconvincing, theory of this important step of civilization in Mr. Jevons's new "Introduction to the History of Religion." I say "unconvincing," because, even on his own hypothesis, there must have been degrees in development of which Mr. Jevons takes no note, and, in any case, much more evidence is required. Mr. Jevons starts from Totemism-that is, the savage belief in accordance with which every one is ascended from some object of nature, is a member of its clan or kin, and is bound to hold it sacred. Let the object be, as it often is, an animal; that animal will be protected (except on rare sacrificial occasions), will grow tame, if it is capable of growing tame, and, as the belief in its sacredness dies, will be made useful, if a cow, goat, or sheep, first for its milk, then for food, clothing, and so forth. Thus several ancient and modern peoples, Hindoos, Britons, Greeks, at an early period kept kine and fowls, but seldom or never killed and ate them. It is evident that, without domesticated animals and plants, a settled life is impossible. Man remains in the hunter stage; a sporting but precarious existence is his. But how did man come to domesticate plants and animals? Not for use, says Mr. Jevons, because the savage is too thoughtless and improvident. Nor will he attribute so large a process to the mere love of pleasure in keeping pets. On the other hand, "the Totem animal . . . the whole species, is reverenced, protected, and allowed, or rather encouraged, to increase and multiply over the whole area traversed by the tribe." Thus the creature becomes tame rather than is tamed. This sounds plausible, and would be probable if the wandering "tribe," which ranges over a given area, were composed of individuals who revered a single Totem animal- say, the wild sheep. But Mr. Jevons must know very well that this is not the case. In any local tribe, ranging over, say ten thou |