the backs of every one. The shops are open, the post office has resumed its work, and now once more accepts telegrams and letters. During the siege there has been but little opportunity to send to the outer world any message of a private character that contained more than a few words. Letters were almost out of the question, and were expensive luxuries even to war correspondents, who were compelled to employ special runners at high prices to carry their despatches to the nearest office. Lately, and when the investment of the enemy was not so close, the intelligence department did manage to pass through the lines small parcels of mail matter. The occasions have been infrequent, and there were so many people who were anxious to write that it became necessary to restrict the general public to a certain limit of space. It does not seem that many letters got through, since now that we have had time to overhaul the laagers of the enemy we have found much correspondence in their waggons. We have also found a number of telegrams, and these provide interesting reading and bear importantly upon the situation. Moreover, it would seem that our estimate of the Boer forces in the field is much exaggerated, for President Kruger complains bitterly to Commandant-General Botha of the paucity of numbers at the command of the State President. The Commandant-General had but fifteen hundred men with him in Natal, while General Snyman mentions the numbers of the various commandos which he has summoned to his assistance, and by which he hopes to secure an additional eight hundred men. But from the telegrams it would seem that, for the most part, the Boers are timorous and tired of fighting. The Field Cornet of Christiana asks what he is to do with twenty men, and states that the Johannesburg Police are bolting. "What, then, am I to do with my men?" At this moment the British troops were within one hour's ride of Christiana. General Snyman has many interesting comments upon the situation on the Molopo, and if President Kruger believed one half of the intelligence that General Snyman telegraphed to him, his knowledge of the situation must have been obscure. From the despatches which passed between this worthy General and the State President, mention is made quite frequently of the desperate assaults upon our lines which General Snyman organised and in some cases personally carried out, and which upon many occasions resulted in the capture of one of our outlying positions. If this be true such positions as were captured must indeed have been outlying, in fact so far beyond the perimeter of our defences as to altogether have escaped the notice of the garrison. But it does not seem that President Kruger believed everything that General Snyman communicated to him. In one message Oom Paul requests immediate information upon the whereabouts of Colonel Plumer. There is a certain pathos in the question of the aged President asking General Snyman,