"When you have got out of the train before the corrugated iron building which stands on the edge of the illimitable grey, green veldt, to mark where the great station of the future is to arise, there is one feature of Buluwayo which is making ready to seize hold upon you. It is not, perhaps, the most important feature, but it is conspicuous enough to entitle it to a first place in any jotting of local impressions. It is what a logician might call the _differentia_ of Buluwayo. Put it bluntly it comes to this, that you have arrived in a community of gentlemen. A stranger making his way about the brown streets, neat brick and corrugated iron buildings set down on red earth, and divided into alternate avenues and streets--'little New York,' said a policeman complacently--a stranger pauses to ask himself if he dreams, or if the Household Brigade, the Bachelors' Club, and the Foreign Office have depleted themselves of their members, and sent them, disguised in broad-brimmed hats and riding-breeches, to hold the capital of Matabeleland. Young men of the most eligible sort are everywhere. Some of them are manifestly youthful, others are well on in the thirties, there is even a sprinkling of men of years; but the mass of the population presents the same aspect of physical fitness, that indefinable something besides, which is perhaps not to be expressed save under the single head of 'race.'" In fact, our authority asserts that nowhere can be found a healthier, shrewder, or friendlier set of men. He believes in them, and in the discipline that has toughened them to meet the real needs of life, and kept them alive to a sense of their political and social importance. He says-- "Buluwayo now possesses a population of 5000, a mayor and corporation, daily and weekly papers, and several public buildings, including banks, clubs, and an hospital built as a memorial to Major Wilson. "The rapid increase in the value of land at Buluwayo is shown by the fact that whilst in 1894 the average price of a town stand was L103, in 1897 it had advanced to L345. By the opening of the railway, in November 1897, it is placed in direct communication with Cape Town, and a still greater increase in value may be anticipated." [Illustration: "TO THE MEMORY OF BRAVE MEN." THE LAST STAND OF MAJOR WILSON ON THE SHANGANI RIVER, 1893. Painting by Allan Stewart. Reproduced by special arrangement with the Fine Art Society, London.] Things in Rhodesia are as yet expensive, but Mr. Boyd thinks that railroads will have a cheapening influence. He quotes some present prices, which would make the hair of a Londoner stand on end! Imagine the feelings of the comfortable cockney who found himself face to face with a breakfast bill for nine shillings! For this modest sum Mr. Boyd was supplied with tea, ham, eggs, marmalade, and toast, in fact, the little commonplace things that we have come to consider as the natural fixtures of the metropolitan table!