Article IV. The Emperor Menelek engages himself to allow his Britannic Majesty’s Government and the Government of the Soudan to select in the neighborhood of Itang, on the Baro River, a block of territory having a river frontage of not more than 2000 metres, in area not exceeding 400 hectares, which shall be leased to the Government of the Soudan, to be administered and occupied as a commercial station, so long as the Soudan is under the Anglo-Egyptian Government. It is agreed between the two high contracting parties that the territory so leased shall not be used for any political or military purpose. Article V. The Emperor Menelek grants his Britannic Majesty’s Government and the Government of the Soudan the right to construct a railway through Abyssinian territory to connect the Soudan with Uganda. A route for the railway will be selected by mutual agreement between the two high contracting parties." ACCIDENTS TO WORKMEN: In the United States. See (in this Volume) LABOR PROTECTION. ACHINESE, Dutch hostilities with the. See (in this Volume) NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1904. ACRE DISPUTES, The: Claims on the region by Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. Its final partition. A considerable territory of much richness in the southwestern part of the Amazon Valley, around the upper waters of the Madeira, the Aquiry, and the Purus tributaries, was long in dispute between Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, and became a cause of serious quarrel between the two first named in 1903. The then Brazilian President, Rodriguez Alves, in his first annual message, May, 1903, stated the situation from the Brazilian standpoint as follows: "Our former relations of such cordial friendship with Bolivia have suffered a not insignificant strain since the time when the Government of that sister Republic, unable to maintain its authority in the Acre region, inhabited exclusively, as you know, by Brazilians who, many years previously, had established themselves there in good faith, saw fit to deliver it over to a foreign syndicate upon whom it conferred powers almost sovereign. That concession, as dangerous for the neighboring nations as for Bolivia itself, encountered general disapproval in South America As the most immediately interested, Brazil, already in the time of my illustrious predecessor, protested against the contract to which I refer, and entered upon the policy of reprisals, prohibiting the free transit by the Amazon of merchandise between Bolivia and abroad. {2} Neither that protest nor the counsels of friendship produced at that time the desired effect in La Paz, and, far from rescinding the contract or making the hoped-for modifications therein, the Bolivian Government concluded an especial arrangement for the purpose of hurrying the entrance of the syndicate into the possession of the territory.