Mr. M---- was born at Cape Town. He is of Dutch origin, and is a fine, stalwart-looking man with great energy of character and keen intelligence. He seems well fitted to be a pioneer farmer, to develop the too-long neglected resources of this fertile land. He is about forty-five years of age, and a bachelor. He first arrived on his farm on a Saturday night three years ago, and the next day commenced tree planting. His first trees were thus planted on a Sunday Morning. This was a good omen of the success he deserves, as I remarked to him. While I was at Vryburg I was also taken by the proprietor of the Vryburg Hotel to see a farm about five miles off, where they were prospecting for gold. Mr. H---- informed me that the reef I saw, was the same description of rock, I should see at Johannesburg. The people in this neighbourhood are very sanguine; I was told that this may prove a great discovery for Bechuanaland. [Illustration: Decorative] [Illustration: Decorative] KLERKSDORP. Having received the same hospitable attention, as elsewhere, at Vryburg, our wagon party once more resumed its journey. Thirty miles brought us to the south-western frontier of the Transvaal, from whence we travelled on, through the most dreary, flat, uninteresting, barren, treeless plain, for two or three days more, sleeping every night on the veldt, until we reached Klerksdorp, about 120 miles from Vryburg. The south-western part of the Transvaal is certainly exceedingly inferior in appearance to what I saw in Bechuanaland. We remained at Klerksdorp three days. While there I visited one or two of the gold mines of this promising district. At the Nooitgedacht Mine I saw the process performed of pan washing of the previously crushed quartz. I also went to the stamping house, where a machine for crushing has been erected of twenty stamps. I inspected the mine generally, and its various shafts already sunk. The work appeared to me to be well and systematically conducted. Before leaving this mine the great gold cake lump, weighing 1,370 ozs., which was being forwarded, the day I was there, to the Paris Exhibition, was put into my hands. It seemed a wonderfully big lump of the precious metal, which is so earnestly sought for by every race of civilised man. I also went over another mine, at present in the early stage of its development, but which struck me as being conducted, as far as the working management was concerned, on good, sound, business principles--belonging to the Klerksdorp Gold Estates Company.