NEWS OF THE WEEK.
IT is a time of surprises, all of them unpleasant The British Government had hardly recovered from the American President's Message when it found a civil war breaking out in its South African dominion. The immi- grants into the Transvaal, who number sixty thousand against fifteen thousand Boers, have long been discontented with their treatment, which, in respect to taxation, repre- sentation, and justice, has been most oppressive, and failing to obtain any redress, resolved on an insurrectionary movement. They organised an Association or Union, which it is believed could count on four thousand armed men, but lacking a leader, they applied to Dr. Jameson, Administrator of Matabeleland under the Chartered Company of South Africa, for assistance. Dr. Jameson, a man of singular decision, moved by some im- pulse not yet accurately known, marched with his "troops," that is, seven hundred of his armed police and six Maxim guns, from Mafeking to Johannesburg. He reached Krugers- dorp, fifteen miles from the town, on the let inst. There he was encountered by a hastily raised force of Boers, also pro- vided with Maxim guns, and, under circumstances not yet clearly reported, was defeated, surrounded, and forced to capitulate. The expedition proved, in fact, a blunder as well as a crime.
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