An Extraordinary Encounter.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 234, 8 February 1894, Page 3

An Extraordinary Encounter.

With regard to the recent unsuccessful fight between British native troops and the French in Sierra Leone, attributed to a mistake, a London dispatch received in New York, January 6, is to the following effect : — " There has been some strange night encounter between English and French forces in the bush up the river in the Niger Valley, in that vague hinterland between Sierra Leone and Senegambia. Three well, known young English officers, with sixteen black soldiers in British uniforms, have been killed by French weapons. The original reports from Sierra Leone, both to the news agency and to the Foreign Office, ascribe the action to be a mistake on the part of the French, who are said to have taken the negroes of a West Indian regiment, devspite their uniforms, for savage natives To put it mildly, this explanation impresses London as quite ' too thin,' and scepticism is all the more easy because for years back a number ot French officers along the upper Niger, notably Lieutenant Mizon, have displayed the utmost rancour towards the English, aad have been boldly taking, on their own initiative, a line of hostility which the French Foreign Office has been forced to disavow. Mizon returned to Paris a few months ago and told his side of the story, which both the English and Belgian officials in the Niger Congo country denounce as a pack of lies, but which so took the Parisian fancy that Mizon became the hero of the hour, and the Parisian press bullied the French Foreign Office into a tacit promise that hereafter French interests in the debatable hinterland should be more vigorously looked after. These antecedent circumstances raise a tolerably substantial presumption against the theory that the catastrophe at Warina was due to an innocent mistake, but in spite of this feeling the .London papers speak vsry guardedly of the matter. Ministerial papers, like the Daily News nnd Chronicle, are a trifle more alarmist in tone than the Times and the Tory organs, while evening papers of all shades counsel cool heads and patience till it is seen what the French will do. So far as one hears from Paris there are only brief press comments pitched in a rather careless key and foreshadowing a position that the fault was British because their troops were not on British territory. The danger is not so much that the French Foreign Office desires to avoid an apology and reparation as that the furious anti-English spirit in Paris may fan up a commotion which will coerce the Foreign Office into making difficulties against its will. This was the case in the Siam difficulty and the present is recognised by everybody to be a far graver affair." A later dispatch says international complications may possibly arise out of this affair. It appears the attack took place well within the sphere of British influence. A British force of 500 native troops, operating against the Sofas, while in camp were attacked early in the morning by Bengalese sharpshooters and native French auxiliaries. The moon was shining brightly at the time. In-spector-General Lendy of the British force and a number of native troops of both sides were killed in the encounter, at the conclusion of which the French forces retired, leaving the French commander, Lieutenant Moritz, on the field. He was brought into the British camp and cared for, but died. Before death he explained that he mietook tho white service uniforms of the British force for the dress of the Arab chiefs in command of the fc'ofas^