GENERAL NOTES.
AFRICA.
—A plan to expend $10,000,000 in the purchase of land to form two hundred new villages in Algeria will be presented to the French Chamber at the beginning of the session.
—Ahmed Tewfik Effendi, a Turk of high rank, has made a profession of Christianity and has gone to Cairo to work among the Mohammedans, under the direction of Mr. Klein.
—The Khedive has given a portion of land at Cairo to Miss Whately that she may erect a building for her school. The school contains 200 girls and 300 boys, of which two-thirds of the girls and one-half of the boys are Mohammedans.
—The London Daily News announces that the Egyptian government has decided to send an engineer to Soudan to form a plan for a railroad between Khartoum and Souakim.
—The Magwangwaras have released without ransom twenty-three Christian prisoners that they had taken at Masasi. The amount that had been destined to liberate these has been used to redeem the Makouas and the Yaos, their neighbors, who had been reduced to captivity with them. The farmers of Masasi, who have been sent to Zanzibar, will return to their station when it is deemed expedient.
—Mr. O’Neill will undertake a journey of exploration in the region between Mozambique and Nyassa. His principal object will be the study of the western and northern shores of the lake Chirona, and the ascension of a mountain near by, that is said to be covered with snow. The Geographical Society of London has given two hundred pounds for the enterprise.
—The English government has accepted an offer made by several chiefs to cede to it a strip of territory between Liberia and Sherbro 30 kilometres in length and two in width. The English rule will then extend in an unbroken line from Sierra Leone to the northern frontiers of Liberia.
—The chiefs along the river Magbeli have formed a union and concluded a treaty of peace, which has opened the river to commerce, and by this means a large quantity of products from the interior will be brought to the coast.
—The number of slaves liberated by the fact of their arrival on French territory increases rapidly at St. Louis. There are among them many small children that must be left with their mothers, but those who have attained an age when they can make themselves useful are placed in the families of the settlers.
—Captain Hore and his companions have successfully accomplished the arduous undertaking of conveying to Ujiji in sections the steel life-boat, which was dispatched from England in July last. The caravan reached its destination on the 23d of February.
—The reports this year from the Niger Mission sent in by the two African Archdeacons, Henry Johnson and Dandeson Crowther, are among the most remarkable of recent date. There are now 4,000 souls under regular Christian instruction at Bonny and Brass. On one occasion Mr. Johnson was invited to tell the story of the Gospel in a heathen town, where he found 500 people waiting to hear him.