When this line is completed, I feel confident that Mashonaland will rapidly go ahead. There are in it all the elements of prosperity; and we may yet live to see the glories of the ancient ruins revived under other auspices, for long centuries have not altered the love of gold inherent in mankind. APPENDICES APPENDIX A NOTES ON THE GEOGRAPHY AND METEOROLOGY OF MASHONALAND By Robert M. W. Swan, Esq. Central Mashonaland consists of elevated granite plateaux, varying in height between 3,000 and 5,000 feet. Through the surface of these plains rise groups of isolated little granite hills which are most remarkable and varied in form, and which sometimes attain an elevation of 1,000 feet above their base, but more frequently they are about 400 feet high. Generally they are composed of enormous broken blocks of granite, but often they are dome-shaped and of one unbroken mass of rock, and suggest the idea of huge bubbles on the surface of a molten mass. The summits of the latter kind of hills are, of course, quite inaccessible. They are not hills left in relief by the denudation of the surrounding country, but, judging from exposed sections of some that I have seen, they have been elevated by a force acting at a comparatively small distance below the present surface, and they are older than the stratified rocks of the country. On the granite plateaux one meets with patches of stratified rock—of quartzites and schists, and rarely some crystalline limestone. Magnesia, too, is sometimes present, notably at Umtali, and in the steatite which occurs near the Great Zimbabwe, of which many of the objects found in the excavations were made. The strike of the strata is generally east and west, and the various patches arrange themselves in several fairly continuous lines running across the country in the same direction as the strike. These semi-continuous deposits or belts of stratified rock are generally two or three miles wide, and in them occur the gold-bearing quartz reefs. The most southerly belt that I know of in Mashonaland proper passes by Fort Victoria, and probably crosses the Sabi River about latitude 20°. The next large one passes by Umtali and the ’Mfuli River, where it crosses the waggon-road, and so on to Hartley Hill. This belt includes Mount Wedsa, the highest mountain in Mashonaland. Next in order comes the Mazoe deposit, which perhaps also includes the Kaiser Wilhelm gold-field. These deposits are all fairly similar in nature, but no fossils have been found in them, and their age has not been determined. They probably represent a continuous sheet of stratified rock, all of which has been denuded away except the above-mentioned belts. They generally present a rugged surface, elevated in mountain ranges, which often rise 1,500 and 2,000 feet above their base, and, although they are nearly always steep, they are rarely precipitous. These mountains are regular and beautiful in