Mazoe, and Lo Magondas is very satis- | fatal to all quadrupeds which come factory, and new finds were occurring from without. It is a small grey fly, everywhere daily, until the present about the size of an ordinary horse-fly, complications with the Matabele put a with crossed wings, and is generated, stop to all operations; and it is really some suppose, in buffalo droppings; at on its gold-mines that the future of any rate, it is pretty clear that when Mashonaland depends; without gold the buffalo disappears from a district the country is not sufficiently rich to the fly does too. It is certainly a most warrant colonization. It could doubt- tiresome little insect, and has cost the less be self-supporting without gold, Chartered Company many thousands but as a speculation it would be value-of pounds. Now it is to be hoped that less; hence it is intensely gratifying the railway will obviate any further to those interested in the Company to loss from this cause. It has always hear such good reports of the gold remained a puzzle to me why it is that prospects, and every one is eagerly in a district where a foreign horse, ox, looking forward to the cessation of donkey, or dog is sure to die from the hostilities for further development in fly-bite, the zebra, buffalo, quagga, and this direction. The railway from Beira | native dogs never suffer at all. will enable plant to be introduced into the country for working the gold, Europeans, opinions differ considerwhich previously could not be done owing to the prohibitive distance by road from the Cape Colony, and the cost of transport.

There are, of course, several points which must seriously impede the progress of colonization in Mashonaland; first and foremost amongst these is the extreme unhealthiness of this country for all cattle. Oxen die on the road in quantities from the fatal lung sickness, which sometimes clears off whole teams; from drunk sickness, or staggers; and from numerous other diseases with curious Dutch names. The rank fodder is in many cases unwholesome, so that the owner of a wagon and a team of oxen is constantly kept at the highest pitch of anxiety concerning the health of his beasts. The fatal horse sickness, too, at present prohibits all but salted horses from entering the country. Ignorant of this fact, the pioneers took up unsalted horses, and they all died. At Fort Victoria we saw one hundred and fifty saddles in a row in the fort, and no horses to put them on. Again, salted horses are wretched things, for a horse not worth a fivepound note in England you have to give £100 if he is salted; and similarly, the best horse you could see is not worth the five-pound note up country if he is not salted.

Then there is the belt of tsetse-fly,

As to the fitness of the climate for

ably; certainly, during the rainy sea-
son, and when the long coarse grass is
rotting in the tropical sun, there is
much fever sometimes mild and
easily warded off by doses of quinine
and Warburg, and sometimes persist-
ent, running into hæmaturia, and with-
out proper care resulting in death; but
this is generally the case in a new coun-
try. It was so in Griqualand and the
Transvaal; but when the drainage of
the towns has been attended to, and
proper house accommodation erected,
the tendency to fever is much lessened.
The report of the senior medical officer
of the British South Africa Company, at
Salisbury, for 1892, is very satisfactory
on this head. He says:
"Good food,
good clothing, shelter from inclement
weather and the sun, an abundant sup-
ply of medicines and invalid necessa-
ries, and a mild season, have wrought
an enormous improvement in the gen-
eral health of the people, and the
Mashonaland of 1892 is not recogniz-
able as the Mashonaland of 1891." It
is to be hoped that the coming rainy
season, especially if the campaign be
not satisfactorily terminated before its
commencement, may be equally favor-
able to the health of Europeans.

Salisbury, Victoria, and Umtali will undoubtedly be the chief towns of the new colony. The position of Salisbury is exceedingly dreary, but it is the

healthiest of the three. It is close on the neighborhood.

Three hundred

five thousand feet above the sea level, stands have been located there, and it and enjoys an abundance of that peculis connected with Salisbury on the one iarly exhilarating air which is to be hand, and on the other with Chimoio, found only in the tropical highlands. by a good road which Mr. Selous conIt is surrounded by a large plain, and structed last year. the town is chiefly built on and around There is no doubt about it that in a diminutive tree-clad kopje, which their coming contest with the Matabele rises about two hundred feet out of this the Chartered Company will get no plain. The Chartered Company have assistance from the Mashonas; they spent a considerable sum on draining are abject cowards, and have for genthe immediate neighborhood of this erations lived in terror of the Zulu. town, and last wet season it was prac- During our experience of work at Zimtically free of fever. Eighteen hun-babwe we found that they could only dred stands have already been surveyed be treated with kindness; any repriand mapped out, and certain public mand terrified them, and they ran away buildings, such as offices for the admin-never to return, regardless of their istrator, bank, and police station, etc., wages. Once we had a quarrel with have been completed.

Victoria is not nearly so advantageously placed. The ground around it is marshy, and fever is here much more frequent; but possessing, as it does, the key to Providential Pass, and being in close proximity to newly discovered gold reefs, Victoria is bound to proceed rapidly. Already five hundred and seventy-two stands have been sold, and public buildings superior to those of Kimberley or Johannesburg have been erected.

A friend writes to me concerning the present condition of Fort Victoria:

a

The old fort is abandoned, and only few ruined huts are left to mark the place. We are now on a bit of ground between the fort of the Umshagashi and another stream, where was our first outspan after leaving Victoria. This town is now nearly as big as Mafeeking, and about as well built. There is a great square barrack-yard, surrounded by a loopholed brick wall ten feet high. At two corners are towers on which are machine guns, which sweep the country for a long distance around; so that this

place can hardly be taken by the Matabele.

Umtali is beautifully situated in a basin formed by the Manica Mountains. It is considerably lower than the other two, but as the fall is good the place is healthy. It will ultimately be on the railway system which is pushing in from Beira. Umtali has every prospect of a successful future, and there are numerous gold reefs in

the chief of the village on the hill; there was a great deal of shouting and bluster and shaking of assegais, but the moment we went for them they fled like monkeys, and laughed at us from their unapproachable eyries. It is the same when they fight with one another; there is much shouting and gesticulation, but rarely any bloodshed.

The Mashonas are decidedly clever and ingenious, and, when confidence is once established, they may be trained to make themselves very useful workmen. We had no difficulty with them in that respect, and they soon learnt work was decidedly good. They carve how to handle our tools; and their very well, and make very pretty knife handles and pillows, and their ingenuity in turning old meat tins into ornaments is most remarkable.

As for Khama's men, I doubt much whether they will be very efficient allies, if they are called upon to fight against the Matabele in the open; their value will be more in scouting and surprise parties, for the Bamangwato are an essentially pastoral race, with a wholesome dread of the Matabele. Throughout the length and breadth of South Africa there is not a tribe which can stand up to the Zulu, and all the hard fighting will have to be done by the white men.

Will, then, Lobengula be as easily quelled as the sanguine messages from Mashonaland lead us to hope? This is

a question which only time can answer. A savage tribe fighting for its very existence in a difficult and at times almost impassable country is a very formidable foe. Is it not likely that they will stand in a half circle in the open, to be shot down by the Chartered Company's guns, if ever the heavy artillery can be brought anywhere near them. Again, if there is no open opposition, and the British forces march on and destroy Baluwayo, what will be gained? Before the victorious army is at home again, another capital will be built, and the question will be no more settled than it was before. Nothing but making a clean sweep of the Matabele out of the country and driving them across the Zambesi can settle the matter. Then, if a series of forts is erected to prevent their return, Mashonaland and Matabeleland may hope for a time of peace and prosperity.

J. THEODORE Bent.

From The Cornhill Magazine.
THE CARETAKER.

Martha is boundlessly simple and contented. It is fortunate that an external cleanliness is not necessary to her happiness, since it has been her fate to look at Thames Street, breathe Thames Street, and live in Thames Street since she was five-and-twenty. Once she has been into the country. But that was a long time ago; though on the window-sill of her attic there still live miserably some of the cuttings she took from the plants she brought back with her.

Martha waters those forlorn and stunted geraniums with the greatest pride and indiscretion. She imagines that the smutty and despairing musk still smells deliciously, and puts her old nose into it and sniffs with the greatest enjoyment in the world. On sultry days she opens her window and sits at work by her "garden." Her old face is placid and contented. The expressive language of the costermonger below falls upon her ear. The refreshing scent of decaying vegetables must quite overpower that of the elderly musk. But either Martha has long ceased to expect unalloyed pleasure, or is of such a very simple nature that she can enjoy imperfect happiness perfectly.

Quand c'est le cœur qui conduit, il entraîne. MARTHIA caretakes a decrepit City warehouse. She cleans, or imagines Martha is very proud of her attic. It that she cleans, the offices of a de- may not, in fact, does not, contain pressed company of tea merchants and much oxygen. But there is a beautiful of a necessitous land surveyor. They picture of the queen smiling blaudly damn her hopelessly when they arrive out of a tradesman's almanac of the every morning and behold the thick-year fifty. Martha's circumstances renness of the dust on their ledgers and der it necessary that there should conthe black and smoky nature of their stantly be washing drying in lines fires. And Martha speaks of them across the ceiling. But she takes her tenderly as "my gentlemen," and in- meals quite blithely beneath this canopy quires fondly after their wives and fam- and has no feelings at all about cutting ilies. her cheese she never seems to eat anything except cheese or drink anything except tea on the patchwork quilt which covers the négligé manner in which she has made her bed.

Martha's appearance has, it must be confessed, a worn and dingy air, not unlike the house she lives in. She is invariably attired in an ancient shawl and a frowsy black bonnet. People Martha has a table, indeed, but it is are apt to forget that the wrinkled old quite covered with the accumulated face beneath it is very kind and tender. treasures of a lifetime. There is a reThe blackness of Martha's aprons and ligious work presented to her by a Bible the streaky nature of her house-clean-Christian minister angling for a coning cause them to lose sight of the gregation, which Martha values no fact that London griminess has never doubt the more because she cannot reached Martha's soul. read it. There is a creature which

may or may not represent a parrot, | dreadful, stout, stolid, apple-cheeked, with boot buttons for eyes and a body plebeian baby. But she took possession of many-colored wools. Martha blows of Martha's lonely old heart. Martha the dust from the glass case which in- carried back to London a cheap photocloses it, with an infinite affection and graph of Tilly in her best frock, and a reverence. She made the parrot her- deep-seated resolution concerning Tilly self a long, long time ago, and is ten- in her foolish old soul. When Tilly is derly proud of it still. By its side is a old enough she is to come up to LonTestament scored by a hand long dead,don to live, at Martha's expense, with and with Martha's homely name writ- Martha, and be 'prenticed to what ten in the fly leaf. There are two Martha speaks of reverentially in the china shepherdesses, with pink sashes abstract as "the dressmaking." Marand squints, on the mantelpiece, and tha, like a true Cockney, loves and an In Memoriam card of Martha's dead despises the country, and is convinced nephew. that London is the only place in which to get on. And the dressmaking iş such a genteel employment.

By the window there is a bird in a cage, to whom Martha chirrups cheerfully, and whom she addresses as To 'prentice Tilly to a very good 'Euery. The bird never chirrups to house, to be able to clothe Tilly as her Martha old age and the stifling air of high position will require, to be able to Thames Street having long silenced support Tilly what Martha calls "elehim forever. But Martha's placid op-gant," Martha instituted the moneytimism has caused her to believe per- box, and puts into it weekly much more sistently for many years that if she only than she can afford. She works for chirrups long and cheerfully enough, Tilly with the dogged persistence of 'Enery will reply to her at last. the woman of one idea. The stout, earthy child whom she has not seen for a dozen years or more has been beautified, perhaps beyond recognition, in her fond and foolish imagination. Or she thinks that large, red cheeks, and a stolid gaze-admirably caught by the cheap photograph are incapable of improvement. Tilly's picture is assigned an honorable place by the side of a terrible, but beloved portrait of the Prince of Wales. Though Martha is devotedly attached to the royal family, there have been days on which the prince's countenance has been left

"He's wonderful for company," she says, "and eats next to nothing." Which to Martha's mind is the greatest recommendation a friend can have.

Martha is indeed well paid for her caretaking. When one considers the sketchy nature of her cleaning she appears to be ridiculously overpaid. Martha's money is not spent on herself. She cats very little - and cheese and tea may be bought incredibly cheap and nasty in Thames Street. She indulges in no vanities of dress. The frowsy shawl and bonnet are of immemorial antiquity. Her employers sur-thick in dust. But Martha always mise uncharitably that she does not waste her substance on soap. Martha, in fact, wastes nothing. She has a money-box secreted in a drawer amid an awful confusion of other treasures. She is a miser. She has saved and stinted herself for years and years. She has denied herself not luxuries, for luxuries have never even suggested themselves to her, but what other people would call necessaries.

On that far-off visit to the country Martha found and loved a great-niece. Tilly was, it must be confessed, a

makes a point of cleaning Tilly reverentially with a corner of her shawl. She gazes at the picture when she has performed this operation with an admiration and tenderness in her dim old eyes which are quite ridiculous and pathetic. Two or three times a week she breathes on the glass which protects Tilly, and rubs it vigorously with a piece of a cloth which is used indiscriminately as a duster or a handkerchief.

For Tilly's sake she refuses to join a party of lady friends who are going by

water to Greenwich. One has to live particular sect, as because the Baptist in Thames Street, perhaps, to know chapel is very handy, the minister affawhat a temptation such an expedition ble, and the footstools large, fat, comrepresents. The land surveyor's wife fortable ones of a showy red baize. sends Martha a cheap petticoat for a "But it'd be sooperstition to let Christmas present. It is beautifully them 'assicks stand in the way of my striped in many colors, and Martha niece," Martha says thoughtfully to says, "It's too good for my likes," and herself. The 'assicks do not stand in puts it tenderly away in a drawer for Tilly. For Tilly's sake she denies herself sugar in her tea. For Tilly's sake she creeps about the old house in boots so aged that the tea merchant is constrained to speak to her severely on her disreputable appearance. For Tilly's Then Tilly comes. Martha has sake she goes to bed early to save can- house-cleaned her room for Tilly's redles, and lies awake hour after hour ception. She has not, indeed, housewith her old thoughts to keep her com- | cleaned it very thoroughly, partly pany. For Tilly's sake she daily makes, because she has not had time and is in fact, the thousand little sacrifices of which only a great love is capable.

The tea merchant, exasperated beyond bearing at last at her incompetence, tells her her services will be no longer required. On consideration, perhaps, of her having inquired tenderly after his relations every morning for an indefinite number of years, he consents to her still occupying the attic on the payment of a modest rent.

Tilly's way. In a day or two Martha, with an optimistic smile on her wrinkled old face, may be seen providing Ritualistic books of devotion to devout young gentlemen who have come to church to attend Prime.

seventy years old and a little feeble, and partly because Martha has never cleaned anything thoroughly, including herself. But she has blown the dust off most things, and put up a piece of new window curtain. She has bought a shilling looking-glass for Tilly's benefit, Martha never seeing her own kind, tender, wrinkled, grubby old countenance from year's end to year's end. She has provided quite a sumptuous She has made the

Before she goes out in the frowsy bonnet and ancient shawl to meet Tilly at the station she takes a last look,. through eyes proudly and tenderly dim, at Tilly's picture. The day has come for which she has been working for years, for which she has denied herself gladly, for which she has yearned and prayed. She can feel her heart beating quicker under the threadbare shawl, and her hands tremble a little.

Then Martha seeks some new em-tea-with sugar. ployment. Her old heart sinks when a bed almost neatly. She has, in fact, week has passed and she has failed to done everything that love cau suggest. find it. For herself she can live on to her. almost nothing. But Tilly is seventeen now, and is coming up to London next year. Martha would rather starve than take a penny from her money-box. She has called it Tilly's money so long that she really believes now to spend it would be robbing Tilly of her own. She is reduced to selling 'Enery - with tears. He fetches a very, very small sum, and Martha has loved him as if he were a human creature. The theological work presented by the Bible Christian minister goes also, aud Martha, who has never read it, cannot see the vacant place on the table because of the mist in her old eyes.

A

She is much too early for the train,. and has to wait so long in the waitingroom where she has arranged to meet Tilly that she falls into a doze. robust female with a developed figure,. a tight waist, and a flowery hat, nudges her at last impatiently with a tin hatbox.

At last she is engaged by the parish clergyman to clean the church. Up to this period Martha has been a Baptist not so much because she has a leanaunt!" says Tilly, "what ing towards that particular sect, or any with you so shabby, and snoring so un-

"Lor,