The next thing to do was to find out something relating to the precious metal, whose presence in Rhodesia was the immediate cause of the railway. I remember last session having heard in the Smoking Room of the House of Commons the most disparaging views regarding the prospects of Rhodesia and the quality of the reefs. The gold of Rhodesia was said to be "pocket" gold, and that the ancients, whose presence long ago in this land is proved by the multitude of old workings and disused shafts, were too clever to have left any for us moderns. Not knowing how to controvert such statements, I had left them unanswered, half believing that they were true. Sir James Sivewright, in his speech on the first festal night, said that Bulawayo was built upon faith, and the majority of the guests I discovered held the most doubtful views, and I must confess little was needed to confirm the scepticism which had been planted in me in England. But when I heard that there was an exhibition of ores to be seen in the Hall of the Stock Exchange, I felt that the Reception Committee had provided for us something more valuable than banquets--something which should satisfy an anxious mind. Within a well-lighted, decent-sized hall, on an ample shelf ranged around it, a few of the mining companies of Rhodesia had sent various specimens of the ores. Above these shelves hung admirably-drawn maps to illustrate the reefs whence they were taken. I had noticed, as I went in, other specimens of Rhodesian products ranged along the passages--bulky lumps of coal from the Zambesian coal district, a coal that is said to give only from 8 per cent, to 12 per cent, of ash; fine red sandstone blocks, a stone closely resembling that of which most of the houses on Fifth Avenue, New York, are built; blocks of grey sandstone, to which substance I had already been attracted, it being so much used for lintels and doorways of Bulawayan houses; and rough and polished granite blocks, which reminded me of the famous Aberdeen stone, besides several limestone briquettes. PLENTY OF EVIDENCES OF GOLD.