BRITISH EAST AFRICA.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5311, 24 June 1904, Page 5

BRITISH EAST AFRICA.

COMMISSIONER. RESIGNS. OFFICIAL INTERFERENCE ALLEGED. * LONDON, June 22. Sir C. N. E. Eliot. Commissioner,and Commander-in-Chief for the British East Africa Protectorate, lias resigned his position. Ho has appealed to Sir Balfour, Prime Minister, to inquire into the circumstances of his resignation. He declares that the Marquis of Lansdowne, Foreign Secretary of State, prohibited grants of land to individuals, while ordering him to give a monopoly of enormous tracts on unduly advantageous terms to a Jewish East African syndicate. Sir Charles Eliot considers thp proposal was unjust and impolitic.

The Imperial British East African Company was incorporated by Royal Charter, dated September 3rd. 1S8S; and nnder the control of tho Secretory of State for Eoio’gu Affairs, exercised sovereign jurisdiction over the territories leased to it by the Sultan of Zanzibar, or acquired by treaties entered into witli native chiefs. A British Protectorate was announced over these territories on Juno Ibm, 1895, and the company banded over the administration on July Ist, 1595. Those territories are now comprised-under the name of tho East African Protectorate. A great portion of the vast region in question consists of pasture lands or barren wastes, but there are not broking extensive districts of groat natural fertility on tne coast as well as in tho interior. Sir Charles Eliot assumed the office of Commissioner and Commandcr-m-Chicf of the ißritish East African Protectorate in 1000.