On 31st December 1909 Henry Farman also held the world's record for distance, with a score of 144 miles, but it now belongs to Tabuteau, who, on a Maurice Farman biplane, last December made a non-stop flight of 363 miles. Most of the speed records had been during the last six months raised most considerably by the various pilots of the Blériot monoplane. However, on almost the last day of 1910, Laurens, accompanied by his wife on a R.E.P. (Robert Esnault Pelterie) monoplane, beat all the speed records of double-seated aeroplanes up to 100 kilometres (62 miles), while competing for the £1000 prize offered by M. Deperdussin for the fastest flight effected in 1910 by a monoplane carrying two persons over a distance of 100 kilometres. The 100 kilometres (62 miles) were covered in 1 h. 16 m. 5 s. The world's altitude record was at the end of 1909 held by Latham, who, on an Atoinette monoplane, had on ist December of that year reached the height of 475 metres (1558 feet). That record had on 27th December 1910 been raised by the lamented Canadian aviator Hoxsey, on a Wright machine, to no less than 3497 metres (11,470 feet). That flight does not, however, seem to have been officially controlled, and doubt is thrown on the correctness of the figure, but the previously well-established world's record created in December by Legagneux at Pau, piloting a Blériot monoplane, was already 3200

metres (10,496 feet). The Lazare Weiller £1000 prize for the longest cross-country flight with two persons, the pilot and a passenger, on a military aeroplane, and reserved for officers, was won by Lieutenant Cammerman, who, with Lieutenant Maillols as passenger, flew on a Henry Farman military biplane from Camp de Chalons to Chaussée Saint Victor, near Blois, and back to his starting point, in 3 h. 15 m., thus covering the distance of 126 miles. The Coupe Femina for the longest distance covered by a lady aviator in a non-stop flight was gained by Mademoiselle Dutrieu on a Henry Farman biplane, with a score of 103 miles. The Automobile Club's great prize of £4000 was on 31st December awarded to Wynmalen, who, with Dufour as passenger on a Henry Farman biplane, had made the stipulated aerial voyage from Paris to Brussels and back to the French capital on 16th and 17th October in 28 h. 36 m. 43 s., the time actually occupied in flight being 11 h. 25 m. The Baron de Forest £10,000 prize reserved for British aviators British machines was won by Tom Sopwith, who flew from Isle of Sheppey to Beaumont in Belgium, a distance of 1743 miles. These and the very numerous performances of the unsuccessful competitors, whose achievements were scarcely less remarkable than those of the prize-winners, together with the marvellous flights made by the military and naval aviation

on all.

pilots during the past year, thoroughly well justified the allusion to the progress of aerial locomotion made by the British Ambassador in Paris and the President of the French Republic on the occasion of the New Year's Day official reception of the Diplomatic Corps at the Elysée. Sir Francis Bertie said: "The year 1910 will be remarkable in history on account of the wonderful progress realised in the navigation of the air, and in that domain France will have marked her place in the first rank of the peoples of the world both by the discoveries of her scientists and by the exploits of her aviators.'

said: "I rejoice with you at the unexpected development of aerial navigation. It is one of the marvels of our time! Everywhere in the two continents we see intrepid men, daunted neither by passing non-success nor by the most terrible catastrophes, and who without hesitation place heroically their lives at the service of the great cause of progress, vieing with one another in sang-froid and courage. France, as you were kind enough to proclaim aloud, and I thank you for doing so, exerts herself to the utmost in order not to be below her destinies, and she brings her stone to the monument which is being

genius."

RHODESIA is not, strictly speaking, in "South Africa "; but the two are so closely connected that a visit to South Africa, however short, would not be complete without a view of the southern part at least of the country which Rhodes saved for the Empire.

It is pleasant to pass from the bare plains of the Transvaal and the long backs of the treeless downs, beautiful as they are in their own way, to the forest countrythe "Bosch Veldt "-through which the train runs for hundreds of miles on the way to Buluwayo. The timber is not fine, not like English timber, nor is the forest thick; but the grassy glades, with their clumps of yellow mimosa and other trees, are very restful to the eye, and there are many wild-flowers. The solitude of it all, and the feeling that even in the modern railway carriage one is surrounded by real nature, bring peace to one's soul.

Here and there, at long distances apart, one comes upon little wayside stations, a shanty or two of the eternal corrugated iron, with perhaps a

VOL. CLXXXIX.-NO. MCXLIV.

few native huts of branches and thatch. The rest is unbroken forest, which looks, and is, ideal game country, though the larger game has mostly disappeared before the inroads of hunters.

Nearly forty-eight hours of

travel from the noise and rush of the Rand gold-mines brings one to Buluwayo, the former capital of the ill-fated chief Lo Bengula, now a flourishing English town of four or five thousand inhabitants.

Although it was midsummer when I arrived, the weather was cool, almost cold, with much rain at times, and a high wind; and the country round looked rather desolate. As far as the eye could see, on all sides stretched the undulating forest; there were no salient features in the landscape, and the impression was one of sameness and monotony.

This impression wears off after a time-particularly if the sun comes out and touches the little fluffy balls of the yellow mimosa. Then the near forest turns into a sheet of gold, as bright as a stretch of Cornish gorse; and farther

M

glad that the sons of those magnificent fighting men will read good school - books, and talk bad English, and spend their lives peacefully grubbing out gold and diamonds, "the two great enemies of mankind," or tilling the fields of the white

man.

You will see them in the white man's hotel at Buluwayo now, doing the rough work, while the tables in the modern dining-room are served by Indian waiters from Natal, who look upon them with scorn as an inferior race.

The Indians have some reason to think highly of themselves, for the white employer in Buluwayo evidently thinks highly of them. It would astonish the Madrassi "boy" in his own country to be told that his kinsmen here were drawing pay at the rate of six or seven pounds a-month, with board and lodging found, or a great deal more if they cook the curries which they have made a standing dish all over South Africa. These are not good, by the way. It passes the wit of man to make a good curry out of India.

There are some fine buildings upon the wide roads of Buluwayo, the signs of a time when it was believed that a second Rand was to be found among the forests of Rhodesia. There

are some good, and expensive, shops; and a public library; and one of the largest drill halls in the world for the Volunteers.

club, looking out through the blossoms of the Bougainvillea at the statue of Cecil Rhodes, who stands at the cross-ways in his sack coat with his hands joined behind him, while the southerly breeze makes the Union Jack on the hotel fly out against the clear blue sky, it is difficult to persuade oneself that only seventeen years ago Jameson and Forbes marched into the place with their little colonial army.

It is a wonderful story, the story of that short campaign. Few finer things have been done by Englishmen. Think of it-seven hundred men marching straight on the capital of a famous chief, master of many thousands of well-trained and hitherto unbeaten warriors 8; sustaining and repelling two fierce attacks; finally driving him away into the forest, with the relics of his shattered regiments about him, shattered but still outnumbering them by ten to one. And then the "Wilson Patrol," thirty-five in all, many of them English public school boys, young still but hardened by some years of colonial life, led by the Scotchman Alan Wilson, riding into the midst of the enemy, with the night coming on, to take the king in his own camp. They failed, and one of the best of South African writers has told us, in the words of the Matabele, how they fought their last fight-how, "when only five or six of the thirty-five were left, they took off their hats, and under fire from all sides sang something as the English do,