about We were hardly safe under shelter again when a tremendous thunderstorm broke over the forest-vivid lightning and a deluge of rain. One could not hear the sound of the falls. & flock of great as at Niagara, is still flew past us immense; the height of the fall is more than twice as great; and the way in which the river is split up by wooded islands and rooks adds much to the beauty of the picture. So does the contrast between the calm broad reach above and the sudden plunge and thunder of the chasm. So do the far rising columns of smoke. Perhaps at some time long ago Niagara may have been as beautiful as the falls of the Zambesi. To my mind it is certainly not so now. As I sat smoking in the verandah that Christmas night, thinking over all that I had seen of natural wonders in my life, by sea and mountain and desert, it seemed to me that only once before had I felt so deeply awed and touched So ended my Christmas Day. One is often asked by South Africans how the Victoria Falls compare with Niagara. To my mind the Victoria Falls are far the more beautiful. It is true that the volume of water at Niagara is greater. The broad rushing river above the cataract, and the fierce speed of the heaped-up narrows below, impress one with a sense of tremendous power. But "man marks the earth with ruin." Some of the surby the mingled grandeur roundings of Niagara are dis- and beauty of God's works. tressing to the eye. The tame, Twenty years ago, after the cultivated country, the electric- Tibetan War, I had been sent power works, the crowded to negotiate a crowded to negotiate a treaty with hotels, the artificial gardens, the Chinese; and the place the flaring advertisements, all combine to spoil one of nature's grandest works. In Africa there is nothing of the kind. The work of nature is left almost untouched. There is a railway bridge, but it is from most points invisible, and it is nowhere a great disfigurement. The unbroken forest stretches away on all sides just as God made it. You may wander for hours about the falls and never see a human being or a trace of a trace of man's handiwork. Then the body of water, though not so where I was to meet them was near the Tibetan frontier, just below the watershed of the Himalayas. On the last day of my journey, the 24th of December, I had to ride up the mountain - side, some thousands of feet, by a road through dense bamboo jungle. As we rode, in heavy rain and mist, the air grew colder and more rarefied, and our pace slower, with constant rests to breathe our animals. All at once the grey dripping mist above us seemed to turn to a dull blue; and as I was wondering what it meant, we came out suddenly into a patch of dazzling sunlight. We rode on a few yards, up a bare rocky hillside, in alternate sunshine and drifting cloud, and then found ourselves in the open near the summit of an isolated peak which the cloud did not reach. Pulling up, we sat in our saddles and looked about us, and I can never forget the sight that met our eyes. Around us, as far as we could see, cutting us off from the world of men, lay a vast canopy of white cloud. Near our feet it was moving slowly, stirred by faint eddies of air. Farther away it looked still and solid, as if one could ride over it. But breaking up through the cloud-alone and towering into the deep blue sky, rose the gigantic mass of Kinchinjunga, sixteen thousand feet of rock and snow and ice- field glittering in the midday sun. The two scenes were very different, but the remembrance of my Christmas on the Zambesi always brings back to me now that earlier Christmas on the borders of Tibet. And those two memories are among my most treasured possessions. XIV. THE GRAVE OF CECIL RHODES. For one who never knew him in life, it is not easy to form a clear conception of the character of Cecil Rhodes. One hears in South Africa some hard things said about him, and, on the other hand, one hears him spoken of with almost unbounded enthusiasm. During the later part of his life, after the Jameson raid, he was for a time regarded by the Dutch population as their greatest enemy, and it is said that the desire to capture him had much to do with the obstinate persistence of the Boers in the siege of Kimberley. Some of them have not forgiven him yet. Nor is it only the Dutch who speak evil of him. Conan Doyle in his history of the war criticises Rhodes severely, and Conan Doyle only says what many others say. But whatever his faults may have been, there can be no doubt that he was a man of vast thought and powerful will, who loved the country of his adoption, and always had before his eyes the ideal of a great united South Africa. Nor can there be a doubt that while he was in one sense an Africander of the Africanders, with the deepest goodwill for the Dutch, he was intensely loyal to England, and regarded the interests of South Africa as bound up with those of the Empire. We may surely be content to forget his reputed shortcomings, and to remember him only as a great and patriotic Englishman, whose aims were as high as his courage. Rhodes was fond of getting away at times from the stress and worry of his daily life to the solitude of the forest, which seemed to soothe and refresh him as nothing else could do. He felt the need of solitude to think out his big thoughts; and it is in the forest, on the summit of a rocky hill, which he chose out during his lifetime, that he now lies at rest. It is easy for any one visiting Buluwayo to see his grave, which has become one of the places of pilgrimage in South Africa. The journey to the heart of the Matabele country can now be made in a motorcar. The road is not, though much trouble has been taken with it, what would be regarded 88 a good motoring road in England; but in spite of some rough bits, and occasional divergences into the bush, the drive is pleasant enough. Passing slowly through a stretch of mimosa forest, golden in the morning sun, and leaving behind one or two farmhouses of corrugated iron, one arrives after an hour or so at a wayside bungalow used as a hotel. It stands above a valley where Rhodes carried out one of his innumerable projects throwing & dam across between two hillsides to make a lake, from which a large farm is now irrigated. A few miles farther on, after passing at long intervals two or three small olusters of native huts, one comes to some fine craggy hills overgrown with forest the Matoppos. At the end of a gorge in these hills the road ceases, and one has to go the rest of the way on foot. We got out of our car willingly enough, and began the ascent to the grave. It is an easy walk, first along a grassy valley among the rooks, and then up a stone slope to the top of the hill. At the top there is an irregular platform of rock, one end of it lower than the other. At the lower end is a fine monument erected over the graves of Alan Wilson and the men who fell with him. Their memory deserves every honour their countrymen can bestow; but it might have been better, unless Rhodes himself wished them to lie near him, to give the monument a site of its own. Standing where it does, it seems in some measure to strike a false note, to divert the mind from its main object, the grave of the man who chose that lonely hill as his resting-place. Perhaps the desire was to let Rhodes have about him some of his comrades, the men who died to carry out his orders and win Rhodesia for the Empire; but however that may be, it would, I think, have been more in keeping with the spirit of the place to let Rhodes lie there by himself, alone in death with the hills and the forests, as he loved to be in his life. And their death was so noble that it should surely be treated as a thing apart, a memory to which men might give themselves up altogether, undisturbed by a different train of thought. The top of the hill is bare, with some weatherworn boulders at the higher end. Among these is the a flat slab bearing the inplain rook-hewn tomb, with scription HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF CECIL JOHN RHODES. On the surrounding rock are small patches of sulphurcoloured lichen. As we stood by the grave some white butterflies fluttered past us down wind, and a lizard ran in little jerks, a few inches at a time, slowly over the stone. There was no other life in sight. The "World's View," as it is called, cannot be compared with many mountain views elsewhere; but it is fine-a farstretching wilderness of hills intermingled with forest, their rocky summits carved by the hand of time into a great variety of forms. Many of the rocks are rounded, but some have taken the shape of turrets and battlements, or are balanced one upon another. Here and there one saw a little smooth green patch, showing where cultivation had been; and there was one deserted kraal, a mile or more away, a little thatched hut surrounded by a rough fence of cut branches. Perhaps Lo Bengula, conquered and betrayed, lies in some hill cave not far from his great enemy; but the Matoppos keep his secret well. (To be continued.) BENJIE AND THE BOGEY MAN. BY STEPHEN REYNOLDS. THE change of weather foretold by Benjamin Prowse came, just as he had predicted, during the night with the turn of the tide. First a little billow rolled in from the sou'south-east; then the wind dropped out to that quarter. The sea began to make. A misty cloud hid the setting moon, filled the sky, and oloaked the tops of the cliffs in vapour. of the evening before, when Benjie had put to sea, was replaced by several broken lines of surf flowing in across the flat sand, fading westward into the loom of Steep Head, and filling the whole bay with a reechoed plaintive rattle. Gulls, looking nearly twice their size, stalked about in the shallow water after sand-eels. By and by a boat became visible suddenly, just outside At peep of day Benjie's the broken water. Prawn-nets nephew crept round the foot were piled up high on the of West Cliff towards Western stern. One man was sheaving Bay. So long as his feet-standing up with bent back sorunched companionably on and rowing forwards—whilst the narrow strip of shingle the other man pulled in the between the cliff and Broken ordinary manner, seated face Rocks he continued talking to astern. himself. ""Tis full o' it," he complained, glancing at the cloud and mist. "Benjie won't never stay down along therejust when he'd better to for once. Who'd ha' thought this fellow'd ha' turned up here this time o' day? Never see'd the like o' it!" Arrived at the bay, Bill Prowse sat down and waited silently, peering along to the westward, and at intervals looking above his head to make sure that the soft red oliff was not falling out upon him. It was one of those very grey dawns, when there seems to be plenty of light long before any object can be made out distinctly. The white calm "That's ol' Benjie, right enough," observed Bill Prowse. He got up, walked to the water's edge, and, putting his hands funnel-wise to his mouth, shouted as if he did not want to be overheard. "Bogey man! Bogey man to beach! 'Spector! Bide here a bit.' The rowing ceased. A word like "What?" came from the |