A HIGH AND MIGHTY GOVERNMENT. $3 compliance with the urgent request contained in their telegram, he started immediately, and reached the Cape in May. This is not the place in which to enter into an account of Gordon's experiences under a government which appears to have acted in the spirit of the lower type of parochialism, and to have treated him much as a pompous board of guardians might treat a minor parish official if they had first asked his advice and then found that it was opposed to some local personal interest which they had not the courage to disturb. He had no sooner arrived there than he found that ministers were apparently under the fear of Mr. Orpen, who was the Administrator of Basutoland, for, though thev did not approve of that gentleman's policy, they thought that it was too popular to be immediately traversed.

If Gordon would for a time take the position of commandantgeneral, which he had previously refused, they would be able to avail themselves by and by of his invaluable counsel and wellknown ability and integrity. He was never careful of his own personal claims, and as he was already sufficiently acquainted with the condition of affairs in Basutoland to have arrived at the conclusion that prompt and decisive measures were necessary, and to believe that the policy which was being pursued was not likely to put an end to the hostility of the natives, he consented to remain, in the expectation that he would shortly be permitted to take some part in the work for which he had been summoned.

In a very short time he had made investigations which convinced him that the primary mistake had been that of transferring Basutoland from the Imperial to the Colonial government without consulting the Basutos themselves, and he proposed that they should be assembled and permitted to discuss the terms of an agreement with the Colonial governor. No reply was made to his memorandum, nor to subsequent representations on the very matters which he had been sent for to examine and advise \\\>un.

He had been requested to examine and report on the Colonial force, and in his reply he showed that by a system of economy — which began by cutting down his own salary one-third — the force of 1600 men might be increased to 8000, and yet £7000 be saved Vol. III. 39