luxuriously on Mr. S. Ginsberg's farm as his guests, the camp having been provided by the Royal Engineers, and the next morning wandered over the farm inspecting the experimental growing of tobacco and oranges and an irrigation trench, some two and a half miles long, carried round the side of a hill. Another night we slept on the open veld wrapped in blankets and rugs. Our experience of the hotels at the three towns mentioned above was a favorable one; they have nothing to lose by a comparison with those in places of a similar size in either Europe or America.
The government is carrying on the work of improving the main roads in farming districts by building bridges over the deeper 'drifts' (fords where the rivers can be crossed), by metalling the surfaces, and by digging side trenches to carry off the torrential rains during the wet season. This is in line with the policy of developing the agricultural possibilities of the Transvaal through an increase in the facilities for getting the produce to a market. But the difficulties of raising it are many. The cattle have been nearly exterminated by war and disease; to prevent the spread of the latter in future the farms are being accurately surveyed and surrounded by barbed-wire fences. The raising of crops with any regularity seems to require expensive schemes of irrigation and the construction of dams to store the water, but it is by no means certain that these schemes can be made to pay their cost. Tobacco growing has long been fairly successful in some parts and the leaf finds a ready sale. Some fruits, especially oranges, can be also
