near them, and their armament is a menace to the public safety.
If their young men will not settle down to the peaceful calling of
husbandmen, tillers of the soil, and breeders of stock, let them be drafted
into our Army for service abroad. If there is not enough for the more
elderly men to do in the farming line, let them turn their energies towards
the development of the diamond mines and gold mines that lie within their
borders--mines which at present they will not work themselves nor allow any
white man to work.

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 Wau