ambition, whatever may be his ideas on the course of things in the womb of time. He is mildly contented to be President of the Free State, and as long as the Free State has a history to be written he will be spoken of as the man who in the midst of its difficulties made its existence possible and permanent. The Volksraad of the Free State did not sympathise with the views of their President from the Transvaal, and in 1863 he resigned the place. He was soon re-elected President of the Northern Republic and remained in that office till he quarrelled with his own Volksraad or was quarrelled with by them. He struggled hard and successfully to extend the bounds of the Empire, and claimed among other lands that tract of land of which I have already spoken, which is far to the south-west of the Transvaal, but still to the north or north-west of the Vaal, where a tribe of the Griquas, a branch of the vast tribe of the Bechuanas, were living. The question of a boundary in that direction was submitted to Governor Keate as umpire, and his decision, which was hostile to the claims of the Republic, was accepted by the President. But the Volksraad repudiated their President, declaring that he had acted without their authority, and refused to surrender the land in question. Oddly enough after this, it is,--or it is not,--at this moment a portion of British territory. I do not know with what face we can hold it;--but still I feel sure that we shall not abandon it. Pretorius was so disgusted with his Volksraad that he resigned his office. This happened in 1872. Mr. Burgers, the late President, was then elected for a term of five years, and was sworn into office on 1st July of that year.