tactless raid--the poverty of the country, the decline of business in the city, the exodus of the Australians, and the prospects of a deficit in the Treasury, etc., etc. CONTACT BRINGS CONVICTION. I wish that I could have taken down verbatim all that was said to me, for the spokesmen were of undoubted ability, fluent in speech, and full of facts, not a tithe of which I can remember. As I fear I cannot do justice to what was urged with such vehemence and detail, you must be content with the broad sense of their remarks only. These men have stories to say which should be said to shorthand writers. I have read many books and articles on South African politics, but I was never so interested or convinced as when these men told their stories straight from the heart. JOHANNESBURG EARLY LAST MONTH. I then turned an inquiring attention to the Johannesburg newspapers, and from a heap of them obtained their opinions on the gloom prevailing in the "Golden City." There were columns of allusions to the general distress, of the unemployed becoming numerous, of tradespeople unable to find custom. Clergymen had been interviewed, who said that "poverty was rampant," that shopkeepers were almost distracted through fear of insolvency, that the country's credit was going and almost gone, that Australians were leaving in such numbers that sufficient berths on steamers could not be found, and that the inaction of the Government was driving skilled and willing workmen away. EFFECTS OF BAD TIMES. My hotel-keeper, a bright sociable man, was induced to give me his own opinions on the depression. He acknowledged that his own hotel was doing fairly well, but the other hotels were mostly empty. Tradesmen he knew were bitterly lamenting the want of custom, buildings in course of erection were stopped because the owners did not think themselves justified in proceeding with the structures, rents were hard to collect from tenants, the upper storeys were already empty, reductions had been made on the lower floors, and still there were no permanent tenants; goods stored in bonded warehouses had to be auctioned, as the proprietors had not the means to take them away, etc., etc. One Man's View--