Mafeking.

Before we came to Vryburg, the continuous valley had broadened out into a prairie, with not a hill in sight. The face of the land was as bare as though ploughed. By 4 p.m. we had come to the 850th mile, showing that the rate during the last twenty-four hours had been sixteen and a third miles an hour. Since Taungs, 731 miles, we had been closely skirting the Transvaal frontier, while to the west of the line lay what was once the mission-field of Livingstone and Moffatt. An hour later we arrived at Mafeking, on the Moloppo River, a tributary of the Orange River. Mafeking will always be celebrated in the future as the place whence Jameson started on his desperate incursion into the Dutch Republic. The Moloppo River contains lengthy pools of water along its deepened course, but the inhabitants of Mafeking are supplied by copious springs from Montsioa’s old farm. The town lies on the north, or right bank, and is 870 miles from Cape Town. It is 4194 feet above the sea. Already it has been laid out in broad streets which are planted with trees, and as these are flourishing they promise to furnish grateful shade in a few years. Outside of the town there is not a tree in sight, scarcely a shrub, and consequently it is more purely a prairie town than any other. Due east of it lies Pretoria, the Boer capital, about 180 miles distant, and it may be when the Boers take broader views of their duty to South Africa at large, and their own interests, that they will permit a railway to be constructed to connect the two towns, in which case the people of Mafeking cannot fail to profit by having exits at Delagoa Bay, Durban, and Cape Town. It will be passing strange also if the neighbourhood of Mafeking will not be found to contain some of the minerals for which the Transvaal is famous. The Malmani Gold Field is about 50 miles off, and the Zeerust Lead and Quicksilver Mine but a trifle further. For the growing of cereals it ought also to be as distinguished as the neighbouring state, for the soil is of the right colour.