Farming operations in Mashonaland should offer special advantages, owing to the proximity of the various gold-fields, which have always afforded markets at most remunerative rates for all farm produce, and will no doubt continue to do so in the future in an even greater degree. The most important of the deputations above referred to upon inspection estimated that in the parts of the country visited there were at least 40,000 square miles well adapted for colonising purposes. When it is remembered that the area of Mashonaland and Matabeleland is 125,000 square miles, and that not one-half of this extent of country was seen by the deputation, it will be generally conceded that their estimate, large as it is, admits of considerable amplification. It may be incidentally mentioned, dealing with quite another part of the British South Africa Company’s territories, viz. the sphere north of the Zambesi, which amounts to upwards of 500,000 square miles, that most favourable reports of its mineral and agricultural resources have been furnished by such well-known travellers as Joseph Thomson and Alfred Sharpe. GOLD. The attention of the majority of the population has mainly been directed to the exploitation of the gold reefs, and in spite of difficulties arising from want of transport and from ignorance of the country, a great deal of solid development has been achieved. Owing to various causes, it was not until July 1891 that regular workings were commenced. Since that time prospecting has been carried on in a systematic and efficient manner, resulting in the discovery of the gold-bearing districts of Victoria, Manica, Hartley Hill, Mazoe, and Lo Magondas, having a total area of 27,000 square miles. It is believed that the gold-belt starting from Umtali passes through Victoria, and will in all probability connect with the gold-belt stretching eastward from the Tati gold-fields in the western portion of Matabeleland, and on which considerable development work has been done. Fresh discoveries on a large scale have recently been made within 15 miles of Salisbury. The latest cable intelligence states that in these new fields the reefs proved to 40 and 60 feet are as rich and as wide as at the surface. Gold-belts have also recently been discovered at Mt. Darwin, about 80 miles north of Mazoe, at points 120 miles north of Umtali (Manica) and 80 miles south of the same place, and on the Tokwe River about 30 miles west of Victoria. The gold formations at the above places are all very extensive, show visible freely, and give very rich pannings, while they cannot be said to have been developed at all up to the present. Another series of reefs, which are described as being phenomenally rich by the British South Africa Company’s Administrator, have just been discovered in the commonage at Umtali.