--Major Machado, who has been at Pretoria with Portuguese engineers to make the plan of the railroad upon the Territory of Transvaal, has received orders from Lisbon to proceed to Lorenzo-Marquez to confer with the engineers sent by the Portuguese Government, to the end that they may commence the work from the Bay of Delogoa to the frontier of Transvaal. --The _Bulletin of Colonial Inquiry_ announces that ten army surgeons from Africa have formed an association for the establishment of French colonies in the district of Saida, 171 kilometers to the south of Oran. Each shareholder will furnish a capital of 6,000 francs, and the society will be conducted in an economical manner, but with the best conditions for starting. --According to the Arab journal _Noussret_, the Negous has ordered the Governor of Axoum to hold ready provisions, and beasts of burden, as also ammunition, so that they may have means of passage with the army to the coast to take possession of the territories which Egypt has laid open to them. THE CHINESE. --The Baptist Chinese Mission, Portland, Oregon, has over two hundred Chinese connected with it, several of whom are women and children. Seventy different Chinese have been connected with the school at Santa Cruz, Cal. Five of the pupils have been baptized and received to the Congregational Church. Two more will soon be baptized. This little company of Chinese Christians is full of life, of prayer and of eager liberality. --About forty Chinamen are under instruction in Philadelphia in connection with the Sunday Schools of the Episcopal Church. They have undertaken to send thirty dollars annually to endow a bed in the hospital at Wuchang, China. --The Chinese Young Mens' Christian Association in Oakland, Cal., co-operates in preparing converted Chinamen for church membership. Converts in the Sunday-schools are referred to the officers of the Association, who are themselves Chinamen. After six months' probation the candidates are brought before the Church Committee by the Y. M. C. A. and the officers of the Sunday-school, and, if report is favorable, they are received into the Church. --"As to the yellow races," says the _Spectator_, "who ought to be just lazier than Europeans, they beat them altogether. We suppose there are indolent Chinese, but the immense majority of that vast people have an unparalleled power of work, care nothing about hours, and, so long as they are paid, will go on with a dogged steady persistence in toil for sixteen hours a day such as no European can rival. No English ship-carpenter will work like a Chinese, no laundress will wash as many clothes, and a Chinese compositor would be very soon expelled for over-toil by an English 'chapel' of the trade." THE INDIANS. --At some points the Government has issued to Indians what are called scholars' rations, in order to assure school attendance, accompanying teaching with gifts of loaves and fishes almost literally.