to replace Consul Knappe, and all the acts against which the English and American consuls had protested were condemned by the Chancellor as contrary to international law; and the new consul was instructed that the demand made by Knappe in his negotiations with Mataafa, that Germany should assume the administration of the Samoan Islands and represent them politically in their external relations, as well as his proposition for annexation, was opposed to treaties, and could not be accomplished without the assent of the United States and Great Britain. When Admiral Kimberly arrived, on March 11, he offered to co-operate with the German and British consuls for the re-establishment of peace and order, and admonished both Mataafa and Tamasese to await the decision of the conference.

Naval Catastrophe.-On March 15, 1889, a hurricane destroyed or disabled all the American and German war-ships in the harbor of Apia. The vessels were anchored near together in the harbor, a semicircular bay, which is entered through a break in the coral reef that extends across its mouth. When the storm arose in the night, the engines were set at work to relieve the strain on the cables. Nevertheless the vessels dragged their anchors and were dashed one against another and carried upon a coral reef on the western side of the bay. The German gunboat "Eber" first struck the reef, and was turned keel upward. The Samoans, losing sight of their warfare, ran out into the breakers at the great risk of their lives, and saved 1 officer and 4 men, while 5 officers and 66 men were lost. The German flagship, the Adler," was lifted by the waves to the top of the reef and thrown over on her side. Of the 130 officers and men, 20 were drowned or killed when the ship capsized; the rest swam to the wreck, and clung to the guns and spars, sheltered from the storm, till they were taken off. The American steamer Nipsic," by skillful handling, was kept clear of the reef, and run upon the beach. The German corvette "Olga," after striking against nearly every other vessel, was beached on a sand-flat. The British corvette "Calliope," having more powerful engines than any of the other vessls, slipped her cable and succeeded in steaming out to sea, narrowly escaping being thrown upon the reef. The United States steamer "Vandalia was carried on the reef near shore, and sank. Those who attempted to swim ashore were nearly all drowned, and those who clung to the masts were swept off by the "Trenton," which floated by a few hours later, some of them falling into the water and some on the deck of the vessel. The "Trenton" was thrown on the beach in front of the American consulate. The "Nipsic" lost 7 men; the "Vandalia," 5 officers and 39 men; the Trenton," one man. The Samoans showed great heroism in rescuing the crews, making no distinction between Germans and Americans. A large proportion of the saved were wounded. About 900 American and German sailors had to be provided for on shore. The "Olga" was got afloat again soon after the storm, which lasted two days. The Nipsic' was floated on the 23d, but had lost both screw and rudder. The 15 merchant vessels in the harbor were either sunk or stranded.

The Conference.-At the Samoan Conference of 1887, Germany proposed that the three pow– ers should appoint a single mandatory to supervise their common interests, who should be nominated for five years by the power having the predominant interests in Samoa. He was to have the post of Prime Minister to the native but merely nominal King. This scheme, which would virtually convert Samoa into a German dependency, was supported by England; but the United States would not listen to it, and proposed that there should be three foreign advisers, one nominated by each power, who should preside over the departments of foreign affairs, internal affairs, and finance respectively, and should form with the two kings the governing council.

The new conference met on April 29. The representatives of the United States, appointed by President Harrison shortly after his inauguration, were John A. Kasson, William Walter Phelps, and George H. Bates. The English plenipotentiaries were Sir Edward B. Malet, British ambassador at Berlin; Charles S. Scott, minister to Berne, who was formerly secretary to the Berlin embassy; and J. A. Crowe, commercial attaché at Paris, who had acted as English representative at the Congo Conference. The German representatives were Count Herbert von Bismarck-Schönhausen; Baron Holstein, formerly of the German legation at Washington; and Dr. Krauel, all of the German Foreign Office. Count Bismarck presided at the meetings.

About the time when the conference began its labors, Malietoa was brought back to Samoa and set free. A sub-committee was appointed to consider the future government of the islands, and another to form a plan for adjudicating upon private titles to lands, which were in the greatest confusion, the clains of foreigners embracing an extent of land much greater than the entire area of the islands. A general act was elaborated, which was signed by the plenipotentiaries on June 14. The first article contains a declaration respecting the independence and neutrality of the islands, the equal rights of citizens of the three signatory powers, and the right of the Samoans to elect their own King and choose their form of government, over which neither of the powers shall exercise a separate control. With a view to prompt restoration of peace and order, the powers agreed to recognize as King the deposed Malietoa Laupepa. The second article simply declared that the new treaty should prevail over any conflicting provisions in former treaties. The third article provided for the creation of a Supreme Court, to consist of a single judge, who shall be named by the three treaty powers, or, if they fail to agree, by the King of Sweden and Norway, and may be removed for cause at the request of a majority of the signatory powers. The Supreme Court shall have jurisdiction of all questions arising under the treaty, and any question aris-* ing among the Samoans respecting the election of kings or chiefs, shall not lead to war, but shall be referred to him for decision; and any difference between either of the treaty powers which they shall fail to adjust by mutual accord shall not lead to war, but shall be presented for decision to the chief justice. He may recommend to the Samoan Government laws

for the punishment of crime and the protection of good order, and for the collection of taxes in Samoa outside the district of Apia. He shall have exclusive jurisdiction over: 1, all civil suits concerning real property; 2, all suits between natives and foreigners; 3, all crimes committed by natives against foreigners or by foreigners against natives, except in Apia. Questions between masters and seamen of their respective nationalities remain under the jurisdiction of the consuls. The fourth article provides that there shall be no more alienation of lands by the natives, except town lots in Apia and agricultural lands that are not needed for support of the native population. The latter may be leased to foreigners for forty years, subject to the approval of the Samoan King and the chief justice. All titles to lands claimed or occupied by foreigners will be examined and passed upon by three commissioners to be named by the three treaty powers, and shall not be allowed unless conveyed by the rightful owner for a reasonable consider ation and properly described and identified. All disputed claims are to be referred for final decision to the chief judge. When land has been cultivated and improved, a defective title may be made complete by the payment of an additional sum to be ascertained by the commission and approved by the court. Continued occupation and cultivation for ten years establish a title by prescription. All claims based on mere promises to sell or options to buy, or where the articles of conveyance give no description sufficiently accurate to enable the commission to define the boundaries of the property, or where no consideration was expressed, or where the consideration was not paid in full or was manifestly inadequate, or finally in cases where the consideration for the sale, lease, or mortgage was firearms or munitions of war or intoxicating liquors, the claims must be rejected. The commission, which shall complete its labors before the end of two years, is required to survey the lands of all Europeans, and register all valid titles. The fifth article relates to the municipality of Apia. The tax-payers will elect six councilors, but the president of the council and chief executive officer of the municipality will be appointed by the three powers, or, if they fail to agree, on any person, by the chief executive of Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, or Brazil. He may act on the joint instructions of the three powers, but not on the separate instruc tions of one of them; and may advise the Samoan King, and shall give such advice when the King requests it. He will have charge of the municipal revenues, rendering account of receipts and disbursements to the King and the Municipal Council. He shall superintend the harbor and quarantine regulations, and shall have charge of the administration of the laws and ordinances applicable to the municipal district. The sixth article requires that all foreign goods must be imported through the port of Apia; but coal and stores for the naval stations may be landed at the harbors reserved for the several powers, and are not subject to duty. The customs duties, license taxes, and other taxes collected in the district of Apia, are available for the support of the municipal government, except license taxes paid by Samoans and the

native capitation-tax of $1 per annum, the proceeds of which must be turned over to the Samoan Government. Imports of alcoholic liquors, tobacco, and sporting arms and gunpowder are taxed at specific rates, and all other merchandise pays 2 per cent. ad valorem. Export duties of 1, 2, and 2 per cent. respectively are levied on cotton, coffee, and copper. Imported laborers pay a capitation-tax of $2, and for every trade, profession, and store a license duty is charged. All revenues collected outside the district of Apia shall be for the use of the Samoan Government. The seventh article prohibits the sale to natives of intoxicating liquors of any kind, and the importation of firearms except for sporting, for which licenses must be obtained from the president of the Municipal Council. The sale of arms to Samoans or other Pacific islanders by foreigners is also prohibited. The seventh article provides that the treaty shall remain in force until changed by the consent of the powers; that at the end of three years the powers shall consider what ameliorations may be introduced, and in the mean time special amendments may be adopted by the consent of the three powers and the Samoan Government. The treaty shall be ratified within ten months of the date of the signature, and in the mean time the powers respectively engage to adopt no measure that is opposed to it, but to give effect to its provisions prior to its ratification.

The Restoration of Malietoa.-After the powers had come to an agreement at the conference, Tamasese, who had refused to make peace at the demand of Admiral Kimberly, except on the basis of Mataafa's submission, agreed to peace at the prompting of the German authorities. Malietoa and the three other exiled chiefs were brought back on a German gunboat, arriving in Samoa on Aug. 11, and Herr Stübel informed Malietoa that he was at liberty to do as he pleased. Mataafa met him and offered to resign the royal powers into his hands. Malietoa declined to assume control of affairs until a satisfactory settlement could be made. The people preferred Mataafa for King, and when the tribes met in October for the election of their chief, King Malietoa, in the presence of the foreign representatives, praised Mataafa, and recommended that he should be elected. The assembled people acclaimed Mataafa as King. Tamasese's followers did not assent to the election, and some of them on the island of Savaii attacked some of Mataafa's partisans. A force of several hundred collected to punish the aggressors, and a fight took place in which 1,000 men were engaged, and many were killed. The American representatives in Samoa would not countenance the election of Germany's enemy, and pressure was brought to induce the Samoans to choose Malietoa, who was elected King by a later assembly, and was recognized as such by proclamations issued by the consuls of the three powers on Nov. 9. On Dec. 16 a large number of the chiefs who had been attached to Tamasese's party came in a body to Malietoa and announced their allegiance. On Dec. 24 the King issued a proclamation in which he prohibited the sale, lease, or mortgage of any land to foreigners, the importation of arms or ammunition, and the sale of intoxicating liquors.

attempt by pressure on the people, notwithstanding the new Constitution, which is in many particulars the most liberal in Europe, to bring in a Liberal majority in the elections for the regular Skupshtina in the autumn. The Radicals were furious at the King's determination to exclude them from office, and Cristich was unwilling to play a game so dangerous, and on March 2 told King Milan that it was impossible for him to remain in office. On March 6 King Milan abdicated the throne in favor of his son, in the presence of the ministers and chief dignitaries and the members of the diplomatic body assembled in the Konak to celebrate the anniversary of the erection of Servia into a kingdom in 1882. On the following day he issued a manifesto to the Servian people, in which he declared that his abdication was the realization of an intention formed long before. He said he had endeavored to constitute Servia as a modern state, and to win the support of the powers interested in the maintenance of the Berlin Treaty. His strength was exhausted, and he felt it to be safer to place the interests of Servia and of his son in the care of the regents whom he had selected, who are capable of leading the country along the path of progress and of so conducting Servia's foreign policy that peace and order may be preserved in the Balkan Peninsula.

The regents, who had all been connected with the Liberal party, on March 7 published the list of ministers, all of whom were chosen from the Radical party. The Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a circular note to the Servian ministers in foreign countries, in which he informed them of the change of government, and said that the first duty of the Government would be to work out the legislation that was necessary to carry into effect the provisions of the new Constitution, and that its chief task would be to regulate the finances by means of a rational development of the financial resources and extreme economy. One of the first acts of the Government was to grant an amnesty to the leader of the Radicals, Pashich, who became President of the Skupshtina in the autumn.

The Regency. The circumstances that had compelled King Milan to abdicate arose from the policy that he had pursued from the beginning of his reign, both in domestic and foreign affairs, and had forced upon the people against their will, repeatedly revealed in the elections. Under the semblance of a modern constitutional monarchy, he had a bureaucratic system that galled the spirits of the Serbs, who were attached to the patriarchal democracy of Slavic self-government, which could only be maintained by police tyranny, by falsification of elections or suppression of the legislative will, and by grinding taxes. When the clergy lifted their voices against his oppression, he overthrew the Church, banishing the Metropolitan Michael and the obnoxious bishops. The Serbs were attached to the militia system, in which every man has his rifle in his house, but Milan introduced a standing army and the burdensome compulsory service. The popular predilection for Russia was based not only on gratitude for Russia's protection in the past and the conviction that only by her aid will the provinces occupied by Austria and the Servian districts in Turkey be reunited

to Servia, but on ethnical and religious affinity and the desire to preserve the Slavic institutions and national life. The failure of the Union Générale and the reverse at Slivnitza gave a fatal blow to the system that Milan's oratorical and political talents had enabled him to uphold so long, and the hostile political activity of his wife and their consequent divorce weakened his position to such an extent that the Radicals triumphed in the elections for the Grand Skupshtina, while the King's party, the Austrophile Progressists, were wiped out of existence. Milan was unwilling to reign longer when the reversal of his policy became inevitable, even if by submission to the people's will he could have purchased the privilege.

The new Government dismissed the political officials who had acted as instruments of repression, and introduced simpler, cheaper, and more popular methods of administration. The legations in London, Rome, and Athens were abolished. The Metropolitan Michael returned, and was reinststed in office, the Metropolitan Theodosius, who had been appointed in his place, retiring into a monastery. The deposed bishops were likewise restored to their sees, and the decrees of 1883, interfering with the composition of the synods and other infractions of the rights of the Church, were remedied. A meeting of the Progressist party was broken up by rioters on May 26, and Garashanine, against whom the anger of the mob was chiefly directed, enraged the people still further by firing a revolver at his assailants. As a student was killed, he was charged with the homicide and confined in a fortress. The tobacco monopoly that had been farmed by the Vienna Länderbank, an association of Austrian and French capitalists, was bought back by the Government. The Servian railroads were managed by a French company. On June 3 the Servian Government, on the ground of alleged irregularities, canceled the contract, and assumed possession of the line and rolling-stock, offering to purchase the property of the company, which had made a great deal of money while serving the public very badly. Although the employés of the company were French, the stock, which lost two thirds of its value through the confiscation, was held mainly in Germany and Italy. By a settlement reached through the intervention of the French Government, the company received 10,000.000 francs. M. Persiani, the Russian representative at Belgrade, was advanced to the rank of a minister plenipotentiary. The Servian agent at Sofia was recalled. The Servian Government announced that it would not renew the commercial treaty with Austria-Hungary expiring in 1890. After a national and religious celebration on June 27 at Krushevatz of the five hundredth anniversary of the battle of Kossovo, Alexander was anointed as King in the monastery of Zitcha on July 2. The Russian minister was the only foreign representative invited to be present. On resuming his office as head of the Church on June 9, Archbishop Michael issued a dispensation ratifying all the acts of his predecessor, including the royal divorce, which he had before declared illegal, but was now constrained to approve by conditions made by the Government, which was pledged to uphold the divorce.

The Government alarmed the Bulgarian authorities by distributing 30,000 rifles among the people as a preparatory measure toward creating a national militia and as reparation for the act of the Progressist Government in disarming the rural population after the revolution of Saitchar. A census of all men in the kingdom was taken, with the intention of arming the entire adult male population, numbering about 350,000 men capable of bearing arms. The second class of reserves was armed subsequently, and the Government negotiated for a supply of 100,000 more breech-loaders from abroad."

The general election was held on Sept. 14, under a provisional electoral law dividing the country into 25 urban and 15 rural districts, each of which returned as many deputies as there are multiples of 4,500 in the number of its inhabitants. The voting was by district tickets. The names of the candidates had to be handed in between the end of June and Sept. 1, and could not be recalled or changed. The Progressists put forward no candidates. The Liberals, who are willing that Servia should become an autonomous province of Russia. like Saxony in Germany, are outnumbered in the new Skupshtina six to one by the Radicals, who are Russophile, but desire, above all, that Servia shall be independent. The house is composed of 102 Radicals and 15 Liberals. Pashich was elected president. On Dec. 10, in pursuance of its policy of rescuing Servia from its tributary position toward foreign capitalists who have drawn large profits from the farms and monopolies granted to them by former ministries, the Government confiscated the salt monopoly that was held by the Anglo-Austrian Bank of Vienna, alleging various abuses and breaches of contract.

SILK-WORM GUT. The province of Murcia, Spain, has always enjoyed a practical monopoly of the manufacture of silk-worm gut. Though the industry is small, it has long attracted the attention of silk culturists all over the world. Gut is still made in Sicily; but the quality of the Sicilian product is invariably poor, and as it can therefore compete only with the very lowest grades of the Spanish article, it is hardly possible that there can ever be a profit to the manufacturers. Silk culturists in China, Japan, France, Italy, and the United States have done their best to produce a marketable quality of silk-worm gut; but they have never succeeded, unless the fortuitous manufacture of a few strands of a fair quality can be considered success. In the United States, China, and Japan, a long, heavy gut has frequently been made; but in no instance has the strand had the tensile power of much lighter Spanish gut. The numerous and invariable failures to produce a good quality of it outside of Murcia force the conclusion that there are unique conditions favorable to its manufacture there, and insurmountable obstacles to its manufacture elsewhere.

The town of Murcia, capital of the province of the same name, is the seat of the industry. It is in the midst of what is known as the garden of the province, and has a population of nearly 100,000. This "garden" is about sixteen miles long by a little less than eight miles wide, and is most luxuriant. There are never less than two crops of vegetables in the year; generally there

are three, and sometimes four. The mulberry trees are innumerable, and the leaves are always abundant and wonderfully tender and succulent. To the eye of even the ordinary observer the mulberry tree in Murcia has a richness of foliage beyond what it has elsewhere. Looking from the cathedral tower, the whole garden seems filled with a countless mass of little houses, about which are plantations of mulberry trees. The leaves of the mulberry are the food of the silkworm, and the dwellers in the little houses almost invariably devote a good part of their time to raising silk-worms.

In order to understand how silk-worm gut is made in Murcia, and why it can not be made elsewhere, it will be quite necessary to note carefully the methods employed in the development of the seed and what is called "the education of the worms. While the methods hereinafter described are followed almost exactly by the most successful makers of gut throughout Murcia, there are occasional deviations, caused mainly by the peculiarities of an unusual season. An additional fact is that nearly all the makers are what might be called small farmers, and therefore there is not as much systematic care as would result from a larger individual experience. The climate, which is so good for the manufacture of silkworm gut, is apt to produce in the inhabitants a temperament that leads them to do no more for the worms than is necessary. Murcia has lost its former place as an important producer of silk cocoons, while it has much more than held its place as a producer of gut. At first, the Murcians made gut only from the worms when they had lost the market for cocoons, or were afraid they would lose it. Afterward, one and another turned their product into gut. Step by step the industry increased. To-day there are merchants in Murcia who bid against each other for the raw gut. Every season buyers come from the silkmaking districts of France to purchase cocoons. The price offered by the cocoon buyers is determined by the market value of silk; that offered by the buyers of gut is determined by the number of buyers and the approximate amount of silk-worm gut needed for the annual supply. A common device of the gut buyers is to offer a large price at the beginning of the season, which induces the producers to refuse the offers of the cocoon buyers; and afterward the gut buyers decline to continue purchasing except at a price that will be likely to prove remunerative to them. But the competition of the gut buyers generally fixes the average price at a point that is fair; indeed, sometimes they raise it so high that they all lose money.

The seed (that is, the eggs) used in Murcia is that of the Bombyx mori, commonly called the Chinese moth, though there are many other Chinese silk-producing moths. The best results are obtained by having the eggs of the Bombyx mori imported into the south of France and there developed. The eggs of moths so developed are taken to Murcia. Some care is taken in the selection of the seed, and a great deal of care is taken with its incubation. It is amazing that such consideration should be given to everything during the incubation, and such lack of what silk raisers almost anywhere else would deem merely ordinary attention to the development of