786 



WEST AFRICA. 



Gen. Luciano Mendoza, who had just been 

 elected president of the state of Carabobo, with 

 Gen. Antonio Fernandez and Gen. Lutowsky, for- 

 mer Ministers of War under Crespo and Andrade, 

 raised a revolutionary force at Villa de Cura. 

 An uprising also took place near Valencia, and 

 others were started in various parts of the coun- 

 try, even in the vicinity of Caracas. War-ships 

 of the United States, Germany, Great Britain, 

 France, and Italy were ordered to Venezuelan 

 ports. The Ban Righ, renamed the Libertador, 

 landed the expedition of Seiior Matos near Guz- 

 man Blanco, the port of Barcelona. All the ves- 

 sels of the Venezuelan fleet had been on the 

 watch for this vessel, which Castro threatened 

 to treat as a pirate. The adherents of Gen. Jose 

 Manuel Hernandez, called El Mocho because of a 

 crippled arm. who headed a revolt against Gen. 

 Castro in the autumn of 1899 and has since been 

 kept in prison, acted independently of the main 

 revolutionary organization supported by Matos, 

 which was working ostensibly for the restoration 

 of President Andrade. The army generally re- 

 mained faithful to President Castro, although 

 discipline and fidelity among the rank and file 

 were impaired owing to their not having received 

 their pay regularly. The partizans of Gen. Her- 

 nandez made an attempt to take the city of 

 Maracaibo, and were worsted, although they in- 

 flicted considerable losses on the Government 

 troops. In other places the Government troops 

 were successful when pitched battles took place. 

 Nevertheless the revolution gained ground, .and 

 new bodies of insurgents continued to be formed 

 all over the country and to be supplied with a 

 sufficiency of arms and ammunition. 



VERMONT. (See under UNITED STATES.) 



VIRGINIA. (See under UNITED STATES.) 



VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA. An account 



of the division in the Salvation Army in the 



United States and the formation of the society 



of the Volunteers of America, in 1896, was given 



in the Annual Cyclopaedia for that year. Like 

 the Salvation Army, the organization of the Vol- 

 unteers is military, but it is wholly American, 

 and all the officers are elective. Its object is to 

 carry on religious work among classes of popula- 

 tion who are outside of the influence , of the 

 churches, cooperating with the churches, teaching 

 the doctrines of those of them which are desig- 

 nated as evangelical, and observing their sacra- 

 ments. The Volunteers of America in 1901 had 

 expanded, as it is expressed in their reports, to 

 national proportions, had about 100 self-support- 

 ing posts, were recognized in nearly 150 cities and 

 towns, and returned $42,500 of assets, with $20,- 

 000 of liabilities, while they had raised during the 

 year $81,012 for their own support. It was esti- 

 mated that during the past nine months they had 

 reached 1,864,951 persons through their outdoor 

 agencies and 1,241,567 through their indoor 

 gatherings', making aggregate congregations for 

 the year of more than 3,100,000 people. The Vol- 

 unteers have 5 branches for philanthropic work, 

 including 8 shelters for men, food distribu- 

 tion, " slum work," homes of mercy for women, 

 through which 348 women were helped and cared 

 for, and Volunteer tenement work, by means of 

 which 1,583 families had been visited, and more 

 than 4,500 had been helped with food and cloth- 

 ing. Through the Volunteer Prison League, 

 which was established in 13 prisons (at Sing Sing, 

 Auburn, and Clinton Prisons, N. Y. ; Charlestown, 

 Mass.; Trenton, N. J.; Joliet, 111.; Columbus, 

 Ohio; Caiion City, Colo.; Baltimore, Md.; and 

 Folsom and San Quentin, Cal.), 12,000 members 

 had been enrolled. About 1,300 men had been 

 passed through the " Hope Halls " that have 

 been established for ex-prisoners in New York 

 and Chicago, 75 per cent, of whom were repre- 

 sented as known to be doing well. Through 

 their sociological branches the Volunteers had 

 received 234,814 men and fed about 371,297 at a 

 nominal cost. 



WASHINGTON. (See under UNITED STATES.) 

 WEST AFRICA. The main part of the west 

 coast Of Africa between Morocco and the Congo 

 State and the regions of the interior as far as 

 the Egyptian province of Bahr el Ghazal have 

 in recent times been divided by mutual agreement 

 between France, Great Britain, and Germany, the 

 largest share falling to France, whose sphere 

 south of Algeria has an extent of 3,314,000 square 

 miles, while the British colonies and protectorates 

 have a combined area of about 500,000 square 

 miles, and that of the German protectorates is 

 225,930 square miles. Spain has a sphere on the 

 coast of the Sahara desert about 100,000 square 

 miles in extent, and in the south an insignificant 

 station at Cape Nun, enclosed in British territory, 

 and a strip of coast between the Muni and Campo 

 rivers, containing about 15,000 square miles, but 

 surrounded on the land side by French territory. 

 Portuguese Guinea, 1,480 square miles in extent, 

 is also enclosed in French possessions. The salu- 

 brious Cape Verde Islands remain to Portugal, 

 and St. Thomas and Prince's island in the Bight 

 of Biafra, where Spain has Fernando Po, Anno- 

 bon, and the small islands opposite the Rio 

 Campo district recently recognized as Spanish by 

 France. The independent republic of Liberia has 

 an area estimated at 35,000 square miles. Two 

 incidents which have been the occasion of contro- 

 versy and recrimination for years were by a con- 



vention concluded on April 5, 1901, between the 

 French and British governments in 1901 referred 

 to the arbitration of Baron Lambermont, Minister 

 of State of Belgium. One was the seizure of Lieut. 

 Mizon's river steamer on the Binue river by the 

 officials of the British Niger Company, for which 

 the British Government admitted in principle that 

 an indemnity ought to be paid, and only ques- 

 tioned the amount. The other was the frontier 

 collision at Waima, which turned out to be in 

 British territory, the British victims of which or 

 their families the French Government was willing 

 to indemnify, but the complicated circumstances 

 of the affair made it impossible to fix valuations 

 that were acceptable to both governments. 



French Possessions. The French had a set- 

 tlement in Senegal in the seventeenth century, 

 asserted dominion where they had factories in 

 Guinea and on the Ivory Coast before the middle 

 of the nineteenth century, and in 1884, after Ger- 

 many had roused the rivalry of the old colonizing 

 powers by asserting a protectorate over Camer- 

 opns and Togo, started out to acquire a vast em- 

 pire in Africa, beginning in the Ogowe valley on 

 the border of the territories of the Congo Associa- 

 tion, the reversion of which to France if the King 

 of the Belgians should ever part with them, was 

 at that time secured by treaty. When the Ger- 

 mans turned their attention to the Niger valley, 

 and when afterward the British Royal Niger Com- 



