A few remarks on the future capital of the Mashonaland gold-fields may not be amiss, by way of sharp contrast, in a work more especially devoted to the study of the past. The same motive, namely, the thirst for gold, created the hoary walls of Zimbabwe and the daub huts of Fort Salisbury, probably the oldest and the youngest buildings erected for the purpose by mankind, ever keen after that precious metal which has had so remarkable an influence on generation after generation of human atoms. These remarks on Fort Salisbury will, moreover, have a certain amount of historical value in years to come, when it has its railway, its town hall, and its cathedral, for we were there on the day on which its first birthday was kept, the anniversary of the planting of the British flag by the pioneers on the dreary upland waste of Mashonaland. It seemed to us a very creditable development, too, for so young a place, when it is taken into consideration that Fort Salisbury, unlike the mushroom towns of the Western Hemisphere, has grown up at a distance of 800 miles from a railway, without telegraphic communication, and for months during the rainy season without intercourse of any kind with the outer world, handicapped by fever, famine, and an unparalleled continuation of rain. In the space of twelve months three distinct townships had grown up. One was under the low hill or kopje devoted to business men, where indications of brick houses succeeding daub huts had already manifested themselves; solicitors, auctioneers, and a washerwoman had already established themselves there; bars, restaurants, and a so-called hotel had been constructed. Fort Salisbury had already started its mass meetings and revolutionary elements, for it seems that in all new communities the spirit of evil must always come in advance of the good. An enterprising individual had produced a paper called the Mashonaland Times and Zambesia Herald, and two men had brought billiard-tables with them, one of which was hopelessly smashed on the journey, ensuring for the other a successful and paying monopoly. About half a mile from this busy quarter was the military centre, the fort and the Government stores surmounted by Her Majesty’s flag, forming a little village in itself. A quarter of a mile farther were the huts devoted to the civil administration; and farther off still were the hospital huts superintended by some charming Benedictine sisters and a Jesuit Father. Around all this was the wide open veldt of Mashonaland, studded just then by lovely flowers, and grazed upon by many lean, worn-out oxen, the sole survivors of many well-appointed teams which had struggled up the same interminable road that we had, leaving by the roadside the carcasses of so many comrades, which, in process of decay, had caused us many an unpleasant sensation.