th which these remarks are prefaced. It is not likely that
many would at once be able to recall to mind the fact, that an
important British colony, dating its official existence from the 22d
of March 1851, has suddenly sprung up in the interior of Africa--a
colony already possessing an efficient legislature, a handsome
revenue, and several flourishing towns, with churches, schools, a
respectable press, and other adjuncts, of civilisation. A brief
description of this remarkable colony may serve to awaken for it an
interest which its future progress, if at all corresponding with the
past, will probably keep alive.

There is some difficulty in describing the 'Orange River
Sovereignty'--for such is the long and rather awkward name by which
this settlement is now known--so as to convey a correct idea of its
situation without the aid of a map. That the Cape Colony occupies the
southern coast of the African continent, and that the colony of Natal
is on the south-eastern coast, are facts of which few readers will
need to be reminded. Will it, then, be sufficient to say, that the
'sovereignty' in question is situated in the interior, between these
two colonies, having the Cape on the south, and Natal on the east? It
will be necessary to refer briefly to the manner in which it acquired
its rank as a colony, and its peculiar name. Just two hundred years
ago, in the year 1652, the Cape Colony was founded by the Dutch; and
about fifty years ago, it came into the possession of our own
government. During these two centuries, the colony has been constantly
extending itself towards the east and north, just as the British
settlements in North America, which were founded about the same time,
have been ever since extending their borders towards the west and
south, or as the settlements of Eastern Australia have been spreading
to the west, south, and north. It is a natural movement of
colonisation, and there seems to be no means of checking it, even if
any advantage were to be gained by doing so.

As the American backwoodsmen, in their progress westward, reached at
last the boundary-streams--as they were once considered--of the
Mississippi and the Ohio, so the South-African colonists gradually
found their way to the great Orange River, which, flowing nearly
across the continent, from east to west, formed a sort of natural
limit to the old colony. But beyond this boundary, extensive plains
and undulating downs, covered with nutritious herb