238 Bombardment of Zanzibar [1896 



has bombarded Zanzibar. The Sultan had died suddenly, and Khalid, 

 one of his relations, son of the former Sultan Bargash, had seized the 

 throne and got the native soldiery to join him. These held the palace 

 against the fleet, which bombarded them from close quarters, killed 

 five hundred of them, and burnt out the remainder. Our papers are 

 again exultant, and raise a cry for annexation on the plea for abolishing 

 slavery in Zanzibar. Yet I remember fifteen years ago Sultan Bar- 

 gash applying to me to get the Indian Government to allow him coolie 

 labour as a substitute for the slaves. Zanzibar was a model Arab 

 Sta'te, a hundred times more liberal in its ideas than the Government 

 of India, which would not hear of helping the Sultan. I know this, 

 having brought the case before Lytton. Thirdly, there has been a 

 new great slaying of Armenians at Constantinople, the companion of 

 what took place last year, but on a larger scale. It was begun, as in the 

 first instance, by the Armenian Committee, which seized the Ottoman 

 bank and threw bombs into the street, their object being to force on a 

 crisis. To this the Moslems retorted with a massacre. 



" 2nd Sept. — The Nile expedition has been stopped by floods, great 

 seyls from the hills, which have swept away the new railway just as 

 they have finished it. The talk is now of having hardly time to get to 

 Dongola before the river goes down. If the expedition fails, all I have 

 said about the abdication of Providence has been blasphemy. The 

 good Egyptian troops have been worn out by hard work in a thankless 

 labour. They are said now to be ' tired.' Broadwood wrote me this 

 some time ago. 



" 3rd Sept. — To Wotton to dine and sleep. The good old Evelyn 

 is packing up his trunks to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Next day 

 to London to see Morris, whom the doctors now declare to be in a 

 pulmonary consumption. Mrs. de Morgan was there and Cockerell, 

 and while I was sitting with them in came Madeline Wyndham, beauti- 

 ful in her old age. She took me away with her to see some enamel 

 work she is learning to do at the studio of one Fisher, and I was 

 shown all the process of mixing the colours, ground glass with water, 

 arranging them on a silver plate and burning 'them on a small oven. 

 Fisher has done a beautiful triptych of a Crucifixion, and a very pretty 

 classic bit called ' Love's Chase,' but the best thing there was one of 

 Madeline's own, two peacocks. 



" 8th $*pt. — Started on a series of visits 'to Scotland, and, on my 

 way north, I fin^i the following : 



" 12th Sept. — Met Lord Loch in the train, and had much interest- 

 ing talk with him on South African affairs and the intrigues of Ger- 

 many. He 'told me that when he was at Pretoria some of the Boers 

 explained these to him. Also that the opposition of Germany in South 

 Africa dated from 1886, when Bismarck began it, as against the Em- 



