§ MR. J. F. HUTTON (Manchester, N.)asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Her Majesty's Government has received any information confirming or contradicting a telegram in The Times of the 15th instant, that Lieutenant Andersen, on behalf of the German East African Society, had acquired the Sabaki territory lying between the Zanzibar Coast and Kilima-Njaro, and that the expedition had been fired on by the soldiers of the Sultan of Zanzibar; and, whether Her Majasty's Government has received any information relative to a telegram in the daily papers, dated Vienna, 16th instant, to the effect that the Sultan of the Comoro Islands, who hitherto had been under the nominal protectorate of the Sultan of Zanzibar, had accepted the protectorate of, and had concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with, the Government of the French Republic?
§ THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. BRYCE) (Aberdeen, S.)As to the first part of the Question, no information of any sort has been received. No official information has reached Her Majesty's Government of the reports which have appeared in various newspapers as to the extension of the Protectorate of France, which has 1370 for some time existed in Mayotte, over any other Island of the Comoro Group.