There has been practically no news from the Red Sea
thisk week. Stores are accumulating at Wady Haifa, the railway thence to Akasheh is going on, and reports come in daily of Dervish parties which have been seen scouting, but there has. been no fighting, and unless Osman Digna threatens Suakin, or the Emir of Dongola advances to Akasheh, there will be none till August. The Italians on their side have not abandoned Kassala, and have not made peace with Menelek. who has withdrawn himself for the present into Shin. Under these circumstances, comment has fastened itself upon. eighty Russians who are on their way to join Menelek's camp, and who are suspected of a mission not wholly peaceful. They are, it is intimated, to convey to Menelek the wish of Russia and France that he should go on fighting, and some advice as to the best mode of doing it. The story may be true, but one hardly sees how they will help the Negns, and it is much more probable that their object is to persuade the Abyssinian Patriarch that he and his country- men would do well to join the Orthodox Church. Overtures have already been made to the Abyssinian priesthocd with that end.
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