ling by night or not, to all but the toughest is needful in a week's journey, and indispensable in a Siberian continuous post journey of thirty days and nights. The charge for horses is the same whether supplied to the private tarantas or the telega of the post service, unless, indeed, the stage be hard or hilly, when the postmaster adds to the team, and the owner of a big carriage has to pay extra though the pace, perhaps, be a walking one, and he himself walk_too. The private carriage, as in other European countries, bears a charge at the toll-bars, which occur on the better roads.

nearly five thousand feet above the s and the nearer heights seemed at a sin lar distance from us. Before Kasbek station was in sight, a brilliant snow-top suddenly caught the eye through a cleft on the right, the veritable summit which Englishmen had been the first to reach, and it was from that station that Mr. Freshfield's party had started for their celebrated ascent of the mountain two years before.

The better view from the station itself was clouded, and the weather became dull as we passed the Krestovya Gora (Cross Mountain), the received boundary between Europe and Asia, and the watershed between the Terek and the Aragva. Trotting down a long series of zigzags, we made a sort of Splügen descent to the Georgian valley. The old local names, full of consonants, were samples of the hardto-be-pronounced language of the country. and culminated in the perhaps unsurpassed monosyllable Mtskhet, the last station before Tiflis.

We trotted out of Vladikavkaz by a good chaussée, which, with the grand station-houses, was chiefly the work of the late Prince Voronzov. The shadows were lengthening and gloom slowly enwrapped the massive heights as we drew near them. The Terek was on the left, and before reaching the first station we found the road washed away by it, so the horses had to make their way for some distance over the wide waste of stones which the torrent often suddenly includes in its dreary domain. Lars, the second station, is closely surrounded by the mountains. We stayed the night there; the house and the stables were handsome, well built of hewn stone, and spacious. Besides the reasonable fittings to a room of sound windows and floor, we found chairs and tables and good wooden couches, on which one's rugs and pillows may be appreciated even better than in a tarantas. The style of the route seemed to indicate an approach to the cap ital (different, indeed, I afterwards found were the three other routes from east, south, and west, to Tiflis). The horses, however, we understood, have been a constant exception; overworked and underfed, The scenery of the next day was less inthey were a disgrace to the post. Five teresting, the hills lower, and the country were attached to the carriage next morn- generally brushy. The ride was stopped ing; on whipping them up at starting they at Mtskhet with the news that nineteen fell at once in a heap, and eventually post-horse orders (padarojnias) were waitseemed but able to draw the vehicle with-ing already; so, instead of reaching Tidis

out us.

The scene grew more grand where the road crosses to the right bank of the river, and rises for once to some height above it. Putting aside the extravagant language of Ker Porter, and also of more recent travellers, these renowned "Caucasian gates reminded me of the Finstermuntz. Here was the Dariel defile, and the Russian fortress appeared crouching among the mighty piles of mountain, which seemed to close the way both behind and before. The tumbling of the Terek, fresh from glaciers and snows, was the only sound. We were

More population, mown grass fields, and a large breadth of tillage, were a contrast to rough uplands and their wild people, to half-cultivated steppe with untidy natives or Kozak colonists. The afternoon's ride was picturesque; basalt cliffs rose from the river, and there were neat áúls overhung with trees and surrounded with little fresh corn-stacks. The evening shed a golden and then a rosy glow on the wooded slopes which farther on encircled Pasanur. Behind our quarters, there was a specimen of the ancient Georgian fortress church, with the short conical roof of masonry. In another direction stood a bran new wooden Russian church, its bright colours staring at every comer. A rugged street was lined with cabarets and shanties.

soon after noon, we dawdled nine hours at the post-house and finished the journey in pitch dark, entering the city at midnight.

At Mtskhet it rained so as to prevent my seeing anything of the curious village (quondam capital of Georgian princes) or of the rather inviting ruins of an ancient castle on the hill which rose from the opposite bank of the Kúr. This stream, descending from the west, passes close by the post-house, near to which it joins the Aragva, then proceeds to Tiflis, and eventu ally reaches the Caspian. I killed time in watching the travellers, their baggage aud

equipages, and sometimes succeeded in siderations. One is that the harbour is passing a few remarks, many being edu- splendid one, and situated almost precisely cated men, officers of a regiment then en in the middle of the ordinary route for route from a camp in the southeast to Vlad-sailing ships bound to China and the far ikavkaz. The drain on the stables of the East, a part of the globe in which many post was great, and the trains of impedimenta which we had met belonging to this force had almost blocked the road, especially when a wheel was off, that common occurrence in Russia.

Later in the evening came the process of shifting the mails from one waggon to another. Well, our turn came at last, sure enough, five horses at a good trot. We could see nothing except that there was nothing particular to be seen. At the end of a long stage we gradually found ourselves in a wide Russian street, with petroleum lamps glimmering across it; very long it was, but a short turn at the end of it brought us to the " Hotel Europe." There was the very best of quarters, bed and board. Host and hostess Barberon made everything satisfactory, though it was after midnight.

Germans think they have reversionary interests. A second is that behind the Bay lies a vast stretch of habitable country, in which colonization might go on to an almost indefinite extent; and a third, and most important of all, is that the Bay is a natural point of entrance from the outside world to the territories claimed by the Boer or Free Dutch States. These States have repeatedly expressed an inclination to seek support in Europe, and two years ago despatched agents or envoys to make inquiries both at the Hague and in Berlin,-inquiries which were noted at the time by the Colonial Office. Our quarrel with them about the diamond-fields which, they claimed as conquerors of the Basutos, did not diminish this readiness, which may have resulted in formal offers of allegiance to the German Emperor. If these have been made, and have been favourably re garded, then the possession of Delagoa Bay gives the German Government an From The Spectator. immense and fertile territory, partly peo THE GERMANS IN SOUTH AFRICA. pled already by men who know it well; If the statement made by the Telegraph who can, with a little assistance defend it on Tuesday about Delagoa Bay is true, against all native assaults, and who acthe German Chancellor has made another cept the new dominion with willing and hit, and Lord Kimberley will have busi- unforced submission. From the Bay down ness on his hands of a very important to Natal, to the North as far as he pleases, kind. The statement is that the German and to the West as far as he can penetrate, Government either have purchased or are Frederick William may be lord of a splenabout to purchase the Portuguese settle- did domain, at least as large as England, ments in Delagoa Bay, which would give in which white men can work, and plant, them the sovereignty over any regions in and develop, as the Dutch settlers have that corner of Southern Africa not already done, all the physical qualities of Kenin the possession of European Powers, and tuckians. Where Dutchmen have thriven, there are several primâ facie reasons for Germans can thrive. There is no bigger, believing the report. The Germans, in or braver, or, if Colonial despatches may the first place, would like a colony within be trusted, more cruel man on earth than a semi-tropical climate very much indeed. the free Dutch settler of South Africa, The Parliament of Berlin has repeatedly who, if this report is correct, will be shortly expressed a desire for one, and the Empe- in correspondence with our Government ror himself is believed to be strongly of the Cape in the new character of submoved by the vast loss which, as he con- ject of the great German Empire. As siders, Germany sustains by the annual the native is pretty certain to try to play emigration to America, a movement which off the new Government against our own, he vainly attempts to check by raising the as the Boer is savage at English interferrailway fares and decreeing loss of status ence with his slaves, and English claims to to all who avoid military duty. If he "his " diamond-fields, and as the German could divert this emigration to a colony of wherever he is struggles hard for all he his own, it would seem to him less burden-deems his right, it will be well if our Colosome, more especially as colonies, in the nial Office is awake, if boundaries are opinion of all Continental statesmen, bring made pretty distinct, and if we devise for with them ships and commerce to the the two Colonial Governments some policy mother country. The selection of Delagoa on which they may dwell side by side in Bay as the point of settlement, on the peace. We should fight hard for Canada, other hand, is probably due to three con-ut we do not want two Canadas on o

hands, or the chance of having to resist forays in which German troops took part, and in which the sympathies of our own subjects might by possibility be divided. It is one thing to govern South Africa when we are alone on the continent, and quite another thing to let it govern itself when on its remotest frontier stands a jealous, exacting, and extremely powerful European State.

succeeded sufficiently to make the means of indefinite expansion in the future either indispensable or valuable to our dominions in that quarter of the world. There is more land to be settled, more work to be done, more mineral wealth to be utilized within our own frontier than we shall see the end of in centuries, and to resist or even criticise a German colonization of territories not yet ours, merely because they may some day march with ours, would be to play the dog in the manger without even the excuse of far-sighted precaution. The case does not in any

could only have asked for that colony with the intention of creating a dominion which could only be created at our expense, but we lose nothing in the settlement of Delagoa except our isolation and a future possibility of claiming more territory than, as far as observers can see, we shall ever need. There is no ground for resistance, or even, while we are strong at sea, for apprehension.

The Colonial Office will not like its new task or this consequence of its silent annexations, but there is, if Delagoa Bay has been sold, no means of avoiding a movement which, however inconvenient to our-way resemble of Pondicherry. Germany selves, is distinctly beneficial to the world. If the Germans have the courage and the capacity and the numbers to colonize South-Eastern Africa on any great scale, their enterprise is one to be welcomed by every lover of humanity. They will but take their proper place in the colonization, as they have long assumed it in the investigation of the world. Their people make splendid colonists everywhere, and have a full right to try if they cannot establish a colony for themselves, a country whither their surplus numbers may resort, carrying with them the special civilization, the language, the manners, and perhaps the political organization of the Fatherland. A German nation in South Africa would be a lever with which to extinguish the barbarism of one-half that continent. The work is far too great for us to do alone, even if we were ready to attempt it, and there have not been of late years many signs that we are at all so ready. Of all our temperate Colonies, the Cape has been the one in which we have least succeeded. It has never attracted emigrants who have preferred the less strange life of Australia, Canada, or the United States, and after a possession of sixty years, we have still but 120,000 white subjects in South Africa, of whom only a part are British subjects by descent or birth. At our present rate of advance, it would take centuries to build in South Africa a great self-supporting State like the Canadian Dominion, and nothing as yet suggests that the rate of increase will in our times be materially accelerated. The discovery of gold in large quantities might do it, but certainly nothing else would, and even the discovery of gold might not deflect the great streams of population now flowing from Europe to America and the Pacific colonies. People are afraid of the very word "Africa," and New Zealand rises faster in a year than South Africa in a decade. We have not exactly failed, because as colonizers we never do fail; but we certainly have not

There is just one possibility which might make the transfer of Delagoa Bay very annoying to Natal, and even to settlements farther South, and this remains to be considered. The Bay might be turned into a penal settlement, a change which would probably rnin the colony of Natal, or compel it to pass laws in which the Imperial Government might find constant cause of offence. Such an intention would be most annoying, unless the settlement were confined to military convicts, but it would not, that we see, offer any just ground for more than a temperate remonstrance. There has been a sort of tacit agreement among the nations of the world that penal settlements shall be established only in islands whence egress can be prevented, but this has not been observed in the French colony of Cayenne, and is not a rule upon which any power has any right to insist. That the people of Natal will be annoyed it is only natural to suppose, for the people at the Cape all but rebelled twenty years ago on less provocation; but there are no means of giving their annoyance any concrete expression, and they must, if this be the intention, accept the result of their geographical position. We should fain hope, however, that this design does not enter into German plans though we have noted for years in Russia, Italy, and France a spread of the idea that transportation is the best alternative for death and that Germany, if she enters Africa at all, intends to increase instead of diminishing the area of civilized government and colonization.

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