AFRICA.
——West Central Africa is to receive four missionaries from Oberlin, who will go out under appointment of the A. B. C. F. M.
——The London Standard has received from Durban a dispatch announcing the return of Mr. Richards, a missionary, who has been well received by Oumzila. The King has permitted him to establish a mission in his possessions.
——Of forty physicians who offered themselves to accompany to the Gold Coast Mr. Praetorius, sub-inspector of the Basle Missions, the committee has chosen Dr. Ernest Maehli, of Swiss origin.
——A survey is to be made for a light railway from the West African Gold Coast through the mining regions of the Wassan. If this road is constructed it will open up a country rich in palm oil, India rubber and precious metals.
——John Smith Moffat has been sent to Lessouto as British representative. Born at Kourouman and brought up in England, he has still passed nearly 25 years in Africa, and exercised in the Transvaal a civil magistracy among the natives, whose interests, material and moral, he has always protected.
——Capt. Foot, commander of the ship Ruby, has accepted a call of the Sultan of Zanzibar, with a view to the suppression of the slave trade, which appeared concentrated at Bemba. The Arab bark with which Capt. Brownrigg joined combat has been captured. The French and English governments have taken up the matter.
——The Arab influence is said by the missionaries of the C. M. S. to be destroyed in Mtesa’s kingdom. “No fear of starving now,” writes Mr. O’Flaherty. “We can water our garden, which bears fruit twice a year. We live like lords on native food, have flesh meat twice a day. The climate is lovely, country beautiful, people affable and kind, and we are happy. Our work is so increasing daily that we do not know where to begin or what to do first.”
——A section of the Geographical Society, of Lisbon, has been formed at Horta, chief town of Fayal, one of the Azores, and has commenced to seek means for establishing a help station for shipwrecks, a measure desired for a long time in this latitude where violent tempests so frequently surprise one.
——Messrs. Thornycroft & Co., of England, are constructing a steamer for the use of the Baptist mission on the Upper Congo. The steamer is to be of steel, having twin screws for her more easy control and management amid the currents and sand-banks of the river. Her length will be 70 feet and she will draw only 12 inches of water. The lightness of flotation is secured by a singularly ingenious arrangement of the screws. The contract price of the vessel, complete and packed for transmission to the Congo, with a steel boat and duplicates of the most important portions of the machinery and gear, has been fixed at £1,700. To this will have to be added about £150 for sundry stores, so that the entire cost of the vessel will not exceed £2,000.
THE INDIANS.
——There are 5,500 Indians drawing rations at the Agency of Standing Rock, Dakota.
——During the present session of Congress 140 bills relating to the Indians have been introduced, an average of one to about every 1,700 Indians.
——Thirty descendants of Indians in Delaware have asked to be admitted to the Maryland Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church.
——There are 1,000 Indians in the Everglades of Florida, speaking their own language. They are said to be friendly and honest in their dealing with the whites.
——Among the 275,000 Indians reported in the United States there are 219 churches and 30,000 church members. Out of 70 tribes, 22 are stated to be self-supporting.
MODOC FUNERAL.
——The Choctaw Nation, in the Indian Territory, have long had a law to prevent excessive cruelty to animals; inspired, it seems, not from any example of the whites, but from their own instincts of humanity. The penalty is a fine of thirty lashes.
——A sub-committee appointed by Presbyterians to prepare a memorial for Congress relating to the Indians, adopted the following: “For Indians we want American education, we want American homes, we want American rights——the result, of which is American citizenship.”