NEWS OF THE WEEK
T has been arranged that Major Marchand shall return to Fashoda viti the Nile, and then withdraw his force viei hyssinia and the dominions of llenelek. We cannot help egretting this decision for many reasons, but since our overnment has agreed it would now be useless to protest, ad we can only hope that our representative at the Court of enelek will be able to make the true facts of the case clear o the Abyssinian Sovereign. Major Marchand before leaving airo was entertained at a dinner by the French colony, ad made a speech full of allusions to Napoleon and the phinx. Fashoda was only a point, and "if we lose the point e abandon nothing of our thesis." "The granite Sphinx the Sphinx, by the way, is not granite, but sandstone], which ear at hand dreams on the desert sands, the Sphinx which aw the passage of Bonaparte, which saw Lesseps and his ork, has not yet uttered its last word, has not murmured the upreme sentence." The object of the Congo-Nile Mission was ot to make a journey of exploration. Its aim was higher,— ' to carry across French Africa to the French in Egypt a and-grip from the French of France." Major Marchand tided, as he began, with the Sphinx : "We must never espair, and who can say that the Sphinx may not be about o smile ? " That is rather a double-edged symbol. We emember and prefer the prophecy made by Kin glake sixty ears ago. Writing of the Sphinx in 1837, he declared that ome day "the Englishman, leaning far over to hold his uved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, ad sit in the seats of the faithful."
