tion of the town site's geographical advantages.) When he found that his eloquence had not intoxicated his little audience he laid on the colour somewhat thicker winding up: "Not that I have any interest in the matter, I have simply been chosen to lay the situation before you. We have a qualified Recorder here, and if you boys choose to come along with me I'll show you how to stake your claims, and you can have 'em recorded for five dollars each. I'm not urging anybody, I'm only pointing out how any fellow who has any use for a town lot in this" (more colour) "metropolis that is to be, can have it by coming with me and getting his lot fixed before the rush. Now that's all I've got to say, boys; that's all the committee deputed me to say." Voice in the group, "What committee?" Orator stumped. "The-a," he looks vaguely off at the surveyor, then recovering his official command of the situation he spits with sudden energy upon the virgin soil between the mayoral feet, "the committee appointed by those those who have the interests of this place at heart." As every soul on the sand-spit except two or three Englishmen and a handful of natives were in the group, the committee must have wished to remain incog. But the mayor, undaunted, went on, wound up with a little flourish and started off full tilt up the shore, populace at heel. And so is a town born on the borders of the "unexplored region."

nibbling at their bait than if I'd produced a bushel of "white heath clings." Returning to the English camp, where were none of these delusive promises, we were not permitted to join the standing group round camp-fire and stove, dining on their feet, tin plate in hand piled high with smoking-hot beans. "Sure sign of a prosperous camp," says one," when men can't even sit down to their dinner." But for us a box was put in the middle of a tent, one bag laid down for me, and another for my escort to sit upon. It was the only tête-à-tête dinner I ever ate, where there were half a dozen butlers-hosts rather, agreeable men of various nationalities to fly and get you everything you wanted. There was corned beef, and ham, and pork and beans, and fresh bread and butter, biscuits, capital coffee (quite as good as it smelt), and, for any one who wanted it, a chasse of whisky to wind up with. After dinner we went up the shore a bit to where the modest populace, to the number of less than a score, were gathering round the hour-old mayor to listen to his first public and official utterance. He was just beginning as we came up, and he stopped a moment, catching sight of my escort, for the young municipal judge of Nome was not unknown, it seemed, to the middle-aged mayor of Grantley Harbour. He hesitated-and silence and inaction fell upon the first town council, but presently, despite unexpected onlookers in the shape of a Nomite judge and a nomad lady: "I have been chosen by the committee to tell you boys about this new which has just been surveyed "-the mayor looked off to where a man in the distance was still bending over a transit-"is being surveyed, and to let you know under what conditions you can stake lots here. Now, if you boys have come to stay, or to locate and improve, and so hold property here, I can tell you you've got hold of a good thing. You can start up there from the government surveyors' limit-post, and stake as far down the coast as you like. It is a good proposition, boys, for Grantley Harbour has come to stay." (Then followed a rough but picturesque descrip

town

Judge Van Dyck, seeming superior to the charms of town lots, turned to walk back with me toward the tent, which had been put up in our absence, and was now standing forth bravely in all the angular pride of its upright A-ness. But it was too soon to turn in. We walked about, looked at the homes of the Esquimaux, the living and the dead, saw from the height the great harbour full of ships, chiefly whalers, some Government transports and coasting steamers schooner-rigged. There was the Wanderer with the square-built crow's nest of the whaler, the Alexander, first ship in at Nome this year, the John Winthrop, the Karluc, the graceful white-hulled government ship Seward, the Aloha, and our despised diminutive Elk, transformed by the glorious late sunset into a radiant thing of grace and light.

When we get back to camp my tent is ready and furnished, dressing-bag and my few effects arranged beside a bed of our own rugs and furs made on the bonedry gravel. After saying good-night to my hosts and to the Norse cook, here sit I in my new white house, as fine

as any princess, writing to my friends across the sea by the after-glow of the sunken sun at a few minutes to midnight. The Esquimaux dogs are howling at intervals, and all the. time, boom! boom! the surge is beating on the shore a few yards behind me.

As I lay down my pen and begin to think of going to sleep, a voice outside. The Judge is asking if I am warm and all right. "I've just staked two town lots," he says. "Good-night."

A

I am nearly asleep, when other voices arouse me just a little on the left this time, by the camp fire. I hear the clink of the granite cups, and I know that a midnight Kaffee Klatsch is on among the Englishmen's men. good many "By G-ds!" and the infectious laugh of the Irishman Mike. Several times I hear a man's name called : Egerton, Egerton!" and then "Howard!" Another is spoken of as "Seymour;" and sleepily I fall to thinking of the vitality there is in some of the old English names-how their bearers go up and down on the

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earth and the seas, heading still for "regions unexplored," as they did in the days of Drake, making gold and founding cities, and sending the old names sounding lustily down the ages. "I am here with Brandon's outfit," someone was explaining. "My partner is a descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, you know. Do you remember how he got in with the old lady? She didn't know himnever heard of him, and she was on her way to one of the Thames barges. She had to cross a puddle. Well, sir, this chap Raleigh, he offs with his cloak, all over gold and stuff, and, by G-d! he slings it into the puddle for her to step on. He hadn't a penny, and he wasn't anybody; just a fightin' feller, you know, and belonged at that time to-a-I think it was the Duke of Suffolk's outfit." The voices grow indistinct, and soon there is no echo on these shores of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter ; no sound in the day-old town but the beating of the eternal surf and the snarling of the Siwash dogs.

Day by day came the telegrams describing the widespread devastation that had been wrought by the advance of our victorious troops. A quarter of a million trained soldiers having at last, after twelve months' effort, succeeded in breaking down the resistance of 40,000 undisciplined men and boys, the work of avenging the long-drawnout humiliation of the last year was being accomplished with horrible completeness. The sky flared red with the burning homesteads of the country folk, the veldt was dotted with the figures, frozen and starved, of the women and children upon whom we are waging war. What twelve

"It is now

mine. Ten have bleached us both. years winter for us," he said cheerily-but the snows of age have added dignity to a figure always impressive. Anton Lang, the new Christus, a potter only twenty-five, who looks ten years older, is weaker and softer than his predecessor. Mayer, the third time that he took the part, was almost too majestic in his conception of the Son of God. Anton Lang portrays rather the suffering and sympathising Son of Man. In other respects very little has been changed. There is a new Caiaphas and a new Maria, but Judas and John and most of the

the scenes, the grouping of the performers, and the whole stage business is simply marvellous. From: a merely artistic point of view the play is almost as wonderful as it is unique. Madame Patti was one of the audience on September 16th, but not even she had ever seen in any opera house in Europe so vivid and natural a piece of realistic acting as the mustering of the crowd which came together to demand "not this man, but Barabbas." The music, under the direction of Jakob Rutz, in whose house I stayed, is sweetly simple and quaintly pathetic. The strains of some of the melodies haunt the ear long after the chorus has defiled to right and left in their often repeated march from the stage. And more than all else the spirit, the reverence, the simplicity of the people are unchanged. It is almost as strange this, as the miracle of the burning bush. Hither come every week, often twice and sometimes even thrice a week, four thousand

revisited Ober-Ammergau. Ten years had passed since I last spent a week in the village of the Passion Play, but with the exception of the new railway, with its hideous and useless chevaux de frise of electric-wire poles-the line is now worked by steam-nothing seemed changed since 1890. The lofty crag of the Kofel, the clear waters of the swiftflowing Ammer, the picturesque confusion of the streets, the crowded church-all these were as before. Nor did I find much change even in the personnel of the players. Mayer, three times Christus, is the stately central figure of the Chorus. His hair is white, his beard almost as white as