MASSACRE OF ENGLISH AT NYANZA.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1341, 1 June 1878, Page 3

MASSACRE OF ENGLISH AT NYANZA.

The Zanzibar correspondent of the “ Times of India,” on the 6th of March, writes : The unfortunate news I have to send you to-day will probably roach your readers before it is known in London, where it is certain to create excitement as the first practical result of Mr Stanley’s swashbuckling policy. Two or three davs ago Lr. Kirk, the political agent and Consul-General of Zanzibar, received information of the brutal murder of Mr Shergood Smith, late a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and Mr O’Neill, together with nearly the whole of their party. _ The expedition, it seems, had landed on an island in Lake Victoria Nyanza, where the people were known to bo friendly. -As soon, however, as the news of their arrival was bruited abroad, a large gang of natives belonging to a tribe against whom Stanley, with the British (lag flying before him, had inflicted a murderous campaign, assembled together and attacked them. The expedition Deems to. hayo made no defence, and ,t is known that their ammunition wag scanty. The “whole party were brutally murdered as they stood, only one of two natives escaping to tell the tale. Some two years ago a roving correspondent, dating from Aden, described this little missionary enterprise in your columns, and I jnay recall, with melancholy interest, one

paragraph from that letter : —“ The whole party hay© resolved to make any sacrifice of time and distance rather than stain their sacred mission by a single drop of b qod. Even from a mere practical point of view there is a strong necessity for nothing but peaceful measures, if they desire a permanent connecting road to Zanzibar.” Stanley’s lawless conduct has, however, changed all this.

Many of your renders will remember poor Shergood Smith as a naval officer of much distinction in the Ashantee campaign. He afterwards came out from England in a little steam yacht, the Highland Lassie, which was intended for coast service in connection with the Mombas Mission. At Zanzibar he was joined by O’Neill, an engineer and architect, who was the practical man of the party, and three or four other Europeans ; and engaging the services of an escort of natives, they left for Nyanza last August twelvemonth. Here they were to have been joined by the Rev. C. T. Wilson, 8.A., of St. Mary’s Hall, Oxon, who was the spiritual, as Smith the lay, leader of the expedition, together with the surgeon, Mr J. Smith, and four other Europeans, who all came out together as far as Aden, in the Siam, in June, 1876. The mission was started by an “unprofitable servant,” who anonymously offered £SOOO to the Church Missionary Society to organise a permanent settlement at Lake Nyanza —an offer that was at once seconded by a number of zealous people. But the mission may now be considered as over. The first party have been massacred; Mr Wilson himself is the only survivor of the second party, while the doctor and carpenter both died of fever within a few days of leaving Zanzibar, It is a melancholy end to the eager hopes of these enthusiastic men, but one that was unhappily foreseen by everybody who met them here. They had enthusiasm, but they had little besides. The whole of the second party, indeed, were raw and inexperienced young men, without the training, without the knowledge, without the physique to render such a task as they attempted at all feasible. Mr Elton, the Yicc-Consul at Mozambique, is dead. He died of fever in the interior while away on a surveying expedition, with a view to opening up the country between Zanzibar and Lake Nyassa. By the last mail from Mozambique, I hear that one of the boats belonging to H.M.S. Vestal, while away from the ship on detached service for the suppression of the slave trade, was lost off Cape Tanzon, in the Mozambique Channel, forty miles south of Majunga. Navigating Sub-Lieutenant Saul, late of H.M.S. Undaunted, was in charge of her, and with eleven men tried to round the Cape. The boat was running before a heavy sea, but suddenly filled in and went down. Lieutenant Saul and six men, after being eight hours in the water, succeeded in reaching land, where they had forty miles of dense jungle and bush to penetrate, naked as they were, without either water or food. _ They finally reached Majunga, where they still remain in a wretched state, and are waiting for their ship to come and pick them up. The remaining five men were drowned. The boat is the third one belonging to the service that has been lost within the last three months in the suppression of the slave trade. H.M. s. Lynx arrived here yesterday from Mozambique, with a slave dhow in tow. She is to proceed to Trincomalee, to release H.M.’s Rifleman, which comes here instead. The latter is to be re-commissioned, as I dare say you have seen in the papers. The Simoon, troopship, is expected here by the 16th, with a new crew.

Lieutenant Matthews, R.N., is organising a small body of men for the Sultan of Zanzibar. They are 500 strong at present. The men are armed with the Snider rifle ; they are getting on remarkably well, and will soon become a well-regulated corps. The Sultan has a very good brass band of forty strong, all of Goa. They hare just arrived, and are creating a great excitement here.