I have spent a good many years of my life exploring new mineral territory, and have seen much of the best auriferous country known to modern times; but that Basuto country, presided over and held by a mere gang of black barbarians, ought, in my estimation, to be one of the richest gems in the British diadem.  That good payable gold-bearing rock exists there I know beyond question.  I also know beyond all doubt that diamonds are to be easily won from the soil, and I am thoroughly cognisant of the fact that at least one, and I believe many, quicksilver mines can be located there.  Others who know the country well have told me of coal and tin and silver mines, and samples have been shown to me which made my mouth water.  Yet, all this wealth, which nature’s generous hand has scattered so liberally for the use of mankind, is jealously locked away year by year by men who, in their savage state, have no use for it themselves, yet will not, upon any consideration whatever, grant a mining concession to a white man, no matter what that white man’s nationality may be.  Verily, the heathen badly want educating, and we have now 250,000 of the right kind of schoolmasters within handy reach of them.

MAGERSFONTEIN AVENGED.

THABA NCHU.

When, a few months ago, I stood upon the veldt almost within the shadow of the frowning brow of Magersfontein’s surly heights, and looked upon the cold, stern faces of Scotland’s dead, and listened to the weird wailing of the bagpipes, whilst Cronje gazed triumphantly down from his inaccessible mountain stronghold upon his handiwork, I knew in my soul that a day would dawn when Scotland would demand an eye for an eye, blood for blood.  I read it written on the faces of the men who strode with martial tread around the last sad resting-place Of him they loved—­their chief, the dauntless General Wauchope.  Vengeance spoke in the sombre fire that blazed in every Scotsman’s eye.  Retribution was carved large and deep on every hard-set Scottish face; it spoke in silent eloquence in the grip of each hard, browned hand on rifle barrels; it found a mute echo in each knitted brow, and leapt to life in every deep-drawn breath; it sparkled in each tear that rolled unheeded and unchecked down war-scarred cheeks, and thundered in the echo of the men’s tread across the veldt, right up to Cronje’s lines, as they marched campwards.  The Highland Brigade had gazed upon its dead; and neither time, nor change, nor thought of home, or wife, or lisping babe, would wipe the memory of that sight away until the bayonet’s ruthless thrust gave Scotland quittance in the rich, red blood of those who did that deed.