Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/452

 28 CHRONICLE. [may

16. Kau-lung City, in the Hong-Kong extension, occupied by British troops, and the Chinese garrison disarmed with consent of the mandarin.

— Major Marchand and his escort arrived safely at Jibuti, having thus crossed Africa from the Atlantic to the Bed Sea.

— An application by Lord F. Hope to sell the Hope or Tavernier blue diamond, valued at 18,115/., refused by the Court of Chancery.

17. The Queen, in semi-state, and attended by the members of the royal family, laid the first stone of the new buildings of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, by which the work begun by the Prince Consort was to be completed.

— In the House of Commons it was found impossible to obtain a quorum of forty members, and as it was against the orders for " a count " to be taken, the sitting was suspended until 4 p.m., when the House adjourned.

— The Khedive signed a decree reforming the Mekhemeh Sherich, the Court of Appeal for judging questions affecting personal status in accordance with the sacred law.

18. The Peace Conference, assembled at the Hague, at its first meeting elected M. de Staal, the chief Russian representative, presi- dent. Twenty-five States were represented by a hundred delegates, Brazil being the only important absentee.

— In Paris, in consequence of the refusal of the Senate to pass a bill embodying an increase of their pay, 3,000 postmen struck, throw- ing the delivery of letters into great confusion. The strike, however, only lasted twenty-four hours.

— M. Paul Deschanel, President of the Chamber of Deputies, elected member of the French Academy, in succession to M. Edouard Herv6.

19. The Czar, on the occasion of his birthday, ordered the appoint- ment of a commission, under the presidency of the Minister of Justice, to consider the question of substituting another penalty for transporta- tion to Siberia.

— The contract for the Anglo-German Tien-tsin to Chin-kiang Railway loan of 7,400,000/. at 5 per cent, signed at Pekin.

— The German Emperor in proposing the Czar's health at a birthday banquet in honour of the latter at Wiesbaden, declared that Russia and Germany were of one mind with regard to the aims of the Peace Con- ference.

20. The Chinese Government consented to permit the occupation of Sammun Bay by Italy as a purely commercial port.

— The annual convention of the Irish National League held at Bradford, under the presidency of Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P. Few members of Parliament attended, and a resolution condemning the dissension in the ranks of the Irish Nationalists was adopted.

21. The American liner Paris, on her voyage from Cherbourg to New York in fair weather, ran on the Manacle rocks off Falmouth, within a few hundred yards of the spot where the Mohegan had been wrecked some months previously. No lives were lost, and all the mails and passengers' effects were saved.