Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/490

 66 CHBONICLE. [*ov.

28. An arrangement concluded between the German Government and the African Trans-Continental Telegraph Company, according to which permission was granted to carry through German East Africa the Cape to Cairo Telegraph. A further arrangement with the British South Africa Company pointed to the location of the ocean terminus of the Tran6-Continental Railway at Great Fish Bay, belonging to Portugal.

30. A battalion each of the Royal Irish Fusiliers and of the Gloucester- shire Regiment, and a mountain battery, in all about 1,000 men, which had been detached from the main body near Ladysmith, surrounded by the Boers, and after a severe struggle of nine hours the survivors, about 840 men, were forced to surrender, having exhausted their ammunition. A general attack on the Boer position made by the whole force under Sir G. White's command was also unsuccessful, and was forced to retire with heavy loss.

— A serious explosion occurred at the Rochdale works of the Man- chester Gas Works. The manager was burnt to death, and the deputy- manager and eleven workmen seriously injured by the flames of the escaping gas.

— The marriage of Prince Jean d'Orleans, son of the Due de Chart res, and Princesse Isabel le d'Orleans, daughter of the Comte de Paris, celebrated at Kingston-on-Thames. The Due d'Orleans, as head of the family, conferred upon them the title of Due and Duchesse de Guise.

31. News reached Paris of the death on August 10 of Adminis- trator Bretonnet, two officers, and twenty-seven Senegalese in an en- gagement with Rabah, a powerful Soudanese chief at Gribnigi.

— The proposed erection of a statue to Oliver Cromwell outside Westminster Hall provoked several expressions of strong adverse feel- ing. The statue had been presented by a private donor on the under- standing that the Office of Works would provide a suitable site.

NOVEMBEB.

1. A destructive boiler explosion occurred at a steel manufactory at Sheffield, in which six workmen were killed and many others seriously injured.

— An accident took place on the Paris and Orleans Railway near Thouars, in which the engine-driver and guard were killed, and many people seriously injured, among them the Bonapartist deputy, M. Cuneo d'Ornano, both of whose legs were broken.

— A special committee of the London School Board reported that out of an average attendance of 449,945 children attending Board Schools, 66,050 were underfed, the highest district being South wark wi th 5,912 out of 26,645.

2. The Princess of Wales placed at the disposal of the British Red Cross Society the balance of the sum unexpended by her branch of the Society after the Egyptian campaign of 1885. The sum, together with a donation of 1,000/. from herself, was to defray the expenses of the ship being sent out by the society to South Africa