A large proportion of labour on the Boer farms, says the Christian Herald, is performed by Kaffirs; and since they are as yet uncivilized and by no means industrious, the barren, unprosperous appearance of the average Boer farm may in some measure be attributed to this fact. The Kaffirs preserve all their old superstitions; they are polygamous; and among the free Zulu tribes the number of a chief's wives is limited only by his ability to pay for them; the price of a wife is so many head of cattle, according to paternal valuation.

While on the Boer farms, frouw's show the lack of culture consequent upon isolation, the younger generation of women have had, as a rule, greater advantages than their mothers and grandmothers; many are mistresses of French, music and various other accomplishments acquired at college and through residence in Bloemfontein, Grahamstown, Johannesburg, Cape Town and other African cities. It happened that some Boer maids lost their hearts to young Englishmen (who are now, perhaps, wearing red coats and carrying arms for the English Queen, and hence many an African home is to-day a house of divided sympathies, the wife and mother a Boer, the husband and father a Briton.

Sturdy and strong and home-loving are these women of the veldt, whether they be schooled in the fine arts, or only in

such crafts as make the farmhouse comfortable according to unexacting Boer requirements; hospitable are they, too, and a warm welcome is ready for all comers-save the English. Early-rising, family worship, work in the house by the women, work among the cattle and the hunting of game by the men, evening prayers and early slumbers form the routine of Boer farm-life in times of peace.

Tidiness has never been named in the list of Boer virtues; but water is a luxury, of firewood to make it boil there is next to none, and criticism would be unjust. The average Boer home is low, one-storied; the door is on a level with the ground, and in and out the chickens wander at will, and perhaps lay and hatch in some cozy corner of the dining-room or kitchen. This description does not apply to the Boer home near the cities. In the vicinity of Cape Town, many picturesque white mansions mark the spots where Boers have made themselves attractive dwellings; this is also true of other localities.

Life in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Cape Town is, of course, a very different thing from the life of the veldt or from life in Pretoria. Indeed, Cape Town is about as cosmopolitan as New York. A visitor to Cape Town before the war thus describes his first impressions of the South African capital, which he reached on a fete day: "I was astonished at the great variety of gay

HALF-CASTE MALAY WOMAN, CAPE TOWN.

costumes among the motley crowdEnglish, Dutch, Germans and French Malays, Indian coolies, Kaffirs and Hottentots-a tremendous gathering, in fact, of all nations and all sorts' and 'conditions of men.'" The Dutch are not in such evidence now, but for the rest the streets of the city present even a more varied and stirring appearance than formerly. Daily, big warships come in bringing soldiers; the Highlanders go piping through the streets; the loaded trains bear out company after company to the front, while the bands play and people cheer and wave their handkerchiefs.

In spite of war, and perhaps in greater degree because of the stirring times and larger crowds, the street peddlers ply their usual trades; and the sweetmeat seller, the flower seller and the trinket seller have no particular cause to mourn because cannons are thundering in the remote regions of the Tugela and Vaal Rivers.

The Malay bride arrays herself as gorgeously in crinolined skirt and wonderful bodice and crown, gay with tinsel ornaments and flowers, and as merry a company comes to her wedding, where a Mohammedan priest officiates, as if there were no war. But there is mourning among the whites in Cape Town, for

s that go out to the music of the

;

band and the cheer of the populace, sometimes come back bringing the wounded and the dying.

There is mourning in Johannesburg, the City of Gold, and in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, although the swarthy coolie girls go so merrily about their accustomed tasks.

The Kaffir is not the only labourer on the African plantations where sugar-cane and tea and Kaffir corn are grown. The Indian coolies are the most efficient help that the Natal and Cape Colony planter has yet found; in the sugar and tea factories in towns their service is invaluable. Little coolie, as well as Kaffir, maids, serve attendance on ladies in Ladysmith, Durban and other places, and give a somewhat Hindu expression to African surroundings. The Zulu is a nobler-looking creature than the coolie; centuries of savagery have made him a hunter and a fighter rather than a toiler. But of his wife the contrary is true, for upon her fell all the agricultural and manual labour. In the kraals the women are always up early, grinding corn between stones, making mealie-porridge, sweeping with primitive brush-brooms in front of their huts; bringing water-usually from a long distance-and working in the field where maize is struggling for existence. Tidying the huts, after a fashion, is part of the day's work.-Christian Herald.

years the mines have been successfully worked. There are nearly two hundred mines in operation in the gold district, and the production of gold from all of them in 1896 amounted to $41,521,750, which nearly equalled the total gold output of all Australia. In 1897-98 the yield increased rapidly, and it was estimated that the production of the mines this year would have been nearly $100,000,000 if trouble between the Boers and England had not caused a suspension of operations.

The gold mines are marvels of modern engineering, and no end of capital has been invested in them to secure the rich

deposits of ore. The nominal capital of the mines may be roughly placed at $300,000,000, on which immense sum large dividends have been annually paid. The reason for the great cost of mining the gold in the Witwatersrand reef is that the veins of ore run in a perpendicular instead of a horizontal direction. This has made it necessary for the engineers to dig down to great depths, following

the vertical veins into the bowels of the earth, until it is questionable whether it will be safe or profitable to go further. The mines extend down now to over five thousand feet below the surface of the earth. In order to follow the vein to its next level it will be necessary to go down five thousand feet more. At that depth immense deposits, forming a new reef, will undoubtedly be found.

At the present limit of the mines, the temperature has sensibly increased, and at ten or twelve thousand feet down it is believed that the heat of the mines will make it almost unbearable for the miners to work steadily. From borings made in South Africa, the limit at which man can work below the surface of the earth, owing to the high temperature, has been placed at twelve thousand feet. Just before trouble between England and the Boers developed to a critical stage a plan was under consideration for carrying the mines down to a depth of fifteen thousand feet and artificially cooling the air by means of liquid air. Such an engineer

ing undertaking would be the most remarkable of its kind in the world, and its final success would be watched with interest. By the time the miners reached the fifteen thousand feet they would be pretty close to the interior cavity of the earth, and the thin crust between them and the molten heat below would be an ineffectual barrier if a volcanic eruption should burst through the mines. But, of course, that is barely a remote possibility.

The deep mines of Cornwall have frequently been described as the most remarkable in the world, but the bottom of the deepest shaft there is only a little over three thousand feet below the earth's surface, while in the gold mines of Witwatersrand the depth reached already is five thousand feet. The mines are composed of spacious and lofty caverns, which open out in every direction, giving the miners all the room they need to move about. It is owing to their spaciousness that the temperature is not higher than it is at the extreme depths. At a depth

of three thousand feet in the Cornwall mines the atmosphere is so hot and stifling that a heavy weight seems to press

upon the chest, and the pressure on the drums of the ears is very strong. In the workings the miners have to move about with bent heads, and grope about in the darkness with candle or lantern. In the Witwatersrand gold mines there is no such uncomfortable labour for the men. With the electric lights lighting up the immense caverns, the scene is more suggestive of an enormous cathedral or of fairyland. The trolleys run in all directions, carrying the ore away from the diggings, and they help to complete the illusion of a strange city of fairyland.

Owing to the vertical condition of the mines, a good deal of the ore is brought up straight from the low depths, instead of up inclines, as in most mines. The limit of this method of hoisting is about reached, for six thousand feet is considered the greatest depth at which it is safe for hoisting ore perpendicularly with steel ropes. If the mines are bored to a greater depth, some new method of hoisting will have to be adopted, and this is a part of the plan under consideration. If in their anger the Boers should ruin these magnificent mines, the engineering science of the world would be the loser.

Until, with joy, I see

Toronto.

Few more romantic and stirring stories are told in the pages of history than that presented by Dr. Bryce in this volume. It is distinctly one of the most important issues that this house has yet published. Dr. Bryce has lived for thirty years at Winnipeg-the very nerve-centre of the Hudson's Bay posts. He has heard the

"The Romance of the Fur Trade." The remarkable history of the Hudson's Bay Company, including that of the French Traders of Northwestern Canada, and that of the North-West, X. Y., and Astor Fur Companies. By George Bryce, M. A., LL.D., Professor Manitoba College, Winnipeg. Toronto: William Briggs. Octavo. Pp. 501, with numerous full-page illustrations and maps. Price, $3.00.

stories of the H. B. officers, read their travels, and listened to their tales of adventure in many of the out-of-the-way frontier forts. He recounts with adequate detail and in fascinating style, the history of the great monopoly that for two centuries had controlled those vast and, in large part, fertile regions of this continent. This company had been created by royal charter in 1670. With characteristic lavishness Charles II. granted to it the sole trade and commerce of the regions reached through Hudson's Straits.*

Forty years before this, Louis XIII.

*From the Prince Rupert it received name of Rupert's Land.