This southern boundary of the Transvaal has always been marked clearly enough, but on every other side there are and have been doubts and claims which are great difficulties to the administrator of the new Colony. To the west are the Zulus who are, at this moment, claiming lands which we also claim. Then above them, to the north-west are the Portuguese who are not perhaps likely to extend their demands for inland territory, but who are probably quite as much in doubt as we are as to any defined boundary between them and the natives.[1] To the north I think I may say that no one yet knows how far the Transvaal goes. The maps give the Limpopo river as a boundary, but I think Sir Theophilus Shepstone will own that Great Britain cannot, should she wish to do so, make good her claim to lordship over the native races up to the Limpopo without a considerable amount of ---- arrangement with the tribes. And yet the matter is one that must be settled with accuracy because of the hut tax. From the natives living under the protection of the British Crown in the other colonies of South Africa a direct tax is levied,--10s. or 14s.,--on each hut occupied, and it is indispensable to the Government of the new Colony that the same system shall be introduced there. We cannot govern the country without a revenue, and from our black subjects this is the only means of collecting a revenue,--till we begin to make something out of their taste for strong drinks. It was inaccuracy as to their northern and north-eastern boundaries which brought the South African or Transvaal Republic to that ruin which induced us to seize it;--or, in other words, the lands which the Dutch claimed the natives claimed also, and these claims were so ambiguous, so progressive, so indefinite, that to have yielded to them would have been to give up the whole country. Sicocoeni who was the Chief most specially hostile to the Republic in its last days claimed even the site on which stood Pretoria the capital, where the Volksraad or Parliament of the Republic sat. In dealing with the Natives as to boundaries nothing can be got by yielding. Nor does it seem possible to trust to abstract justice. Between Sicocoeni and Mr. Burgers, the last President of the Republic, it would have been impossible for abstract justice to have drawn a true line so confused had the matter become. It can only be done by a strong hand, and can only be done well by a strong hand guided by a desire equally strong to do what is right. As an Englishman I feel sure that we shall have the one, and, again as Englishman, I trust that we shall have the other. The habitations of hundreds of thousands of Natives are concerned. I find that the coloured population of our new Colony is variously stated at numbers ranging from 250,000 to 800,000. It is all guess work;--but there is no doubt that the multitude of human beings concerned is very great. Were we to annex