NEWS OF THE W EEK.
AFRICA has grown darker this week. Mr. Stanley has been compelled by opinion to formulate his charges against his Rear-Guard, and they prove to be of the most frightful kind. He accuses Major Barttelot of habitual and murderous cruelty to his followers, whom he perpetually kicked, prodded with a steel-pointed stick, and flogged for little reason, the latter punishment being continued in one instance till the victim died, covered with sores, and with flesh dropping from him. He also accuses Mr. Jameson, the naturalist, of having purchased a Negro girl of ten years, and given her to the Mamynema Negroes in order that he might witness her murder, and the eating of her remains. This he did, making sketches the while of the revolting scenes. We have stated our opinion of these dreadful charges elsewhere, but must say here that the testimony of Mr. Bonny, in medical charge of the Rear-Guard, and of Lieutenant Troup, second-in-command, confirms the general accusation against Major Barttelot, but leaves no reason to doubt that he had become insane, in the most ordinary medical sense. The charge against Mr. Jame- son, on the other hand, breaks down. The Levantine, Assad Farah, who originally made it, retracted it; Lieutenant Troup gives a different account, attributing callousness but no crime; and the story now rests solely upon a statement which -Sr. Bonny alleges that Mr. Jameson made to him. There is no apparent reason to question Mr. Bonny's good faith, and, indeed, the invention of such a tale is nearly as impossible as its truth ; but he either mistook what Mr. Jameson said, or the latter was telling him a traveller's tale against himself, of a kind by no means unusual in human experience. Private soldiers are said to be always doing it. Such a crime in an -educated Englishman, not insane and personally gentle, would be a moral miracle ; and, for our part, we disbelieve it utterly.
