effect to has estranged many warm adherents of Liberalism. The Laurier Government is likely to suffer from the feeling that the ideals energetically fought for in the dark days of the Liberal party no longer guide its leaders. The Ontario elector who was told that the national debt would shrink under Liberal rule has seen it enter into the spirit of the growing time. The annual expenditure which, according to Sir Richard Cartwright, Hon. David Mills, and Hon. Wm. Mulock, was ruinously extravagant at $38,000,000, is now millions in excess of the outlay which this eminent trio bewailed. The farmer has not seen the duty disappear from agricultural implements; the gates of the American markets have not opened to him at Sir Wilfrid Laurier's touch. Members of parliament have accepted offices of emolument under the Crown, even as in the days when Liberals characterized this as a disgraceful assault upon the independence of Parliament. Railways which were to cease fattening from the country's resources, fare as well, if not better, under Liberal rule. Perhaps Ontario Liberalism expected too much, but there can be no doubt that the party's failure in power to make good its many promises has subdued much of the enthusiasm which characterized the party in its Opposition days. The approaching battle will not see the Liberal party fighting in such unison and enthusiasm. While they are not likely to change their political faith, many of them will be more or less indifferent as to the result, and indifference is one of the greatest dangers that can beset a party. Conservative expectation from these and other sources must be discounted by the fact that the fates have smiled on the country during the period of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's administration. Prosperity is the friend and adversity the relentless enemy of Governments. Wrath at misdemeanours, which the Opposition leaders are improving every hour to point out, is tempered by the feeling that the country is going ahead.

One other saving influence the Liberal party can depend upon. It will

not have the manufacturers' great power arrayed against it as when the Liberal Government threatened the removal of protective duties. The Laurier Government, by maintaining the high tariff, has shown the manufacturers the folly of their fears, and that important influence will now be directed along more natural lines. Giving due weight to the influences which will determine the result of the contest in Ontario, Conservative hope of gains does not seem to be without substantial basis. A majority of ten seats is not beyond the achievement of Sir Charles Tupper, but such a gain would be the extreme limit of rational expectation.

Quebec was the Province of surprises in the elections of 1896, and Conservatives who know the Province well declare that the result in the coming contest will prove just as pronounced a surprise. They say this in answer to the great Liberal confidence, amounting to almost certainty in Quebec, which confidence, in fact, is shared by men who have no friendship for the Laurier Government. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Frenchman, Liberals assert, will carry Quebec even as Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Frenchman, captured the Province against tremendous odds in 1896. There are strong Conservatives who would place the maximum Bleu victories at fifteen. The Laurier Government in some instances has not pleased the French Canadian electorate. It has done that which would array the Province almost solidly against it were its leader other than an eminent French Canadian. Quebec would be better pleased if more Government officials had been dismissed to make way for faithful Liberals. Quebec is outraged at the thought of contributing Canadian men and money towards the prosecution of Imperial wars, and Quebec is seriously dissatisfied with what the Laurier Government has chosen to call a settlement of the Manitoba School Question. A racial prejudice, or to be milder, a lack of racial enthusiasm abetted by a religious grievance, the

two foregoing influences would accomplish the ruin of any government controlled by other than a French-Canadian Premier. Conservatives who, appreciating the operation of these forces, look for a great secession from the Liberal ranks, forget the almost marvellous influence which the eloquence of Sir Wilfrid Laurier exerts upon the French Canadians. Sir Wilfred Laurier will talk to them in their own tongue; he will talk to them as compatriot to compatriot; as Catholic to Catholic. Sir Wilfrid Laurier's appeal to Quebec on sentimental grounds will do much to offset the feeling which is reflected in the anti-Imperial outbursts of Henri Bourassa, M. P., and Dominique Monet, M.P., and to neutralize the enmity of the hierarchy provoked by an unsatisfactory settlement of the Manitoba School Question. Sir Wilfrid Laurier will do the sentimental part, and Hon. J. Israel Tarte, the brainiest organizer that Canada has seen, will take care that the fruits of his leader's eloquence are not lost. The Laurier Government has, undoubtedly, again to face the hostile influences of the Church. The Roman Catholic hierarchy feels that it has a Majuba Hill to wipe out, and it will not fail to do its utmost for the party in whose behalf it worked in vain in the election of 1896. It is a more dangerous foe than when it last combated the Liberal party. In 1896 Liberal and Conservative alike were solemnly pledged to remove the grievance of the Manitoba minority, a fact which hampered the church in controlling its adherents. The hierarchy is not now commanding, it is arguing, entreating vengeance upon the party which abused the confidence of the French Canadians. The probability is, however, that Sir Wilfrid Laurier will triumph over the church as he did when he encountered its hostility in 1896. Some four or five seats the Conservatives may gain on the ground that Canada should not be drawn into Imperial wars, but there are constituencies held by the Opposition which the Liberals will redeem. Sir Charles Tupper will

do well if he secures twenty followers in Quebec, which leaves the Government with a majority of twenty-five in this Province alone.

New Brunswick holds out no hopes to the Opposition. In this Province. party lines are faintly drawn; the Liberal of to-day may be a Conservative to-morrow. A man changes his political faith sometimes with good reason, but more often without any patriotic motive. The New Brunswick electorate does not hold its representatives to account for their political whims. Some of the most successful politicians in the Province have changed from one party to the other for no other purpose than to be with the governing power. Hon. A. G. Blair was not looked upon as a pronounced Liberal until he went to Ottawa to accept a portfolio in the Laurier Government. Hon. Wm. Pugsley of St. John has been Liberal and Conservative according to the fortunes of the parties since 1873. And Hon. John Costigan, who carried Victoria and Madawaska presumably as a Conservative Minister of the Crown, will now contest the same constituency as a supporter of the Laurier Government with excellent chances of success. New Brunswick reasons that the party to be supported is the party which has the railway subsidies, and the harbour appropriations to dispense. It is the proverbial friend of governments. When every other Province turned against Alexander Mackenzie in 1878, New Brunswick stood by the Administration, but once the Conservative star sparkled in the political firmament it did not fail to send a Conservative contingent to Ottawa. Out of the fourteen seats in New Brunswick nine are now represented by Conservatives, but the undying love of the Province for governments chills Conservative hearts. Hon. A. G. Blair by reason of the great strength which he acquired as provincial administrator at Frederickton is doubly to be feared by the Opposition. In the elections of 1896 he worked in the dark; now with all the combined provincial and federal force he can

summon he is fighting in the open. Hundreds who voted Conservative in federal elections were the most enthusiastic supporters of Blair's Provincial Government. They are still bound to him by many ties and no small number may be expected to renounce the party at Ottawa for the man they so long looked to at the local capital. Mr. Blair is enabled to place very strong candidates in the field; they are backed by the prestige which harbour appropriations and railway subsidies give. Mr. Blair has been fairly generous in his distribution of government moneys to his Province, far moreso than Geo. Eulas Foster whose greatest local weakness as New Brunswick's Cabinet representative in the late Government was due to his failure to raid the Dominion treasury for such sums as the Province thought it deserved. There are not more than two seats which Mr. Foster could carry in New Brunswick to-day, whereas A. G. Blair could successfully contest any one of a dozen seats. New Brunswick will do for the Liberals in the approaching elections as much as it did for the Conservatives in the elections of 1896. And this means for Sir Wilfrid Laurier a majority of five or six

seats.

The Liberal party made a great showing in Nova Scotia in the last general elections, winning twelve of the twenty electoral divisions. That Nova Scotia will send a smaller Liberal contingent to the next Parliament is not to be expected. Hon. W. S. Fielding had the confidence of the Province as its chief administrator at Halifax, and as Minister of Finance at Ottawa he has shown himself to possess an ability which it was impossible to display in the smaller field of provincial politics. Nova Scotia has confidence in W. S. Fielding's integrity and admires his great ability. Many of the old Liberals of the Province are disposed to be severe with the Government for acts which have brought it into disfavour in Ontario, but there is not likely to be any important secession. What gives the Government

great strength is the development of the industries of the Province which has marked the Liberal regime. Conservatives claim that their policy made possible the great boom in the iron industry which is making Nova Scotia's name famous throughout the world. Nova Scotia, however, is contemplating the effect, not the cause, and the effect happens to be coincident with Liberal rule. The Liberal party is

certain of a majority of four in the Province. The probability is that Sir Wilfrid Laurier will fare even better at the hands of the Nova Scotia electorate. Prince Edward Island will be the one exception to Liberal ascendency in the Maritime Provinces. Sir Louis Davies is weak in his own Province, so weak that the most buoyant Liberals concede a majority of one to the Opposition in Prince Edward Island. From the Maritime Provinces, therefore, the Government will secure a majority of between eight and ten

seats.

For the Government the blackest outlook is in the country west of Lake Superior. Of the seventeen constituencies embraced in Manitoba, the Territories and British Columbia it can hardly hope to carry more than five. Proof of the unpopularity of the Administration in the West is to be seen in the revolt of R. L. Richardson, M.P., Frank Oliver, M. P. and W. W. B. McInnes, ex-M. P., three representative Liberals of the West. These men, in breaking with the party they were elected to support, have apparently acted in sympathy with their electors, W. W. B. McInnes' election to the local House, the unanimous endorsation of Frank Oliver by the Liberals of Alberta and Richardson's pronounced successes in his campaign in Lisgar, indicating popular disapproval with many acts of the Laurier Government. The Crow's Nest Pass bargain weakened the Administration throughout the West, the Government's refusal to act in obedience to the clamour for antiChinese legislation has brought it into great disfavour in British Columbia. Manitoba and the Territories are at

war with the Government for its failure to control the elevator monoply, its willingness to permit the C.P. R. to obtain blanket charters which must hamper the country for years and for its weak policy in relation to railways generally. There is not one seat in British Columbia which the Liberal party can hope to win. In the Territories two seats are the limit of the most sanguine Liberal expectation, and if the Laurier Government secures three followers in Manitoba it will do as much if not more than prospects permit them to expect.

The majority of twenty-two seats which Ontario and the West may give the Opposition is more than offset by the prospective Liberal majority in Quebec With three seats in reserve coming ou of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, British Columbia and the Territories, the Laurier Government can rely on a majority of eight or ten in the Maritime Provinces. This estimate, therefore, based on a careful analysis of the conditions in all the Provinces assures the Administration of a second term at Ottawa with a comfortable majority at its back.

OR some reason of scientific exact

eration of Arabic and other extremely foreign languages with written characters utterly unlike English, the ethnologists and philologists prefer to spell the name K-a-f-i-r. Properly, it is only a negative designation. Like "Welsh and "Walloon, both meaning strange," which the English and the Flemings respectively applied to the Celtic races with whom they came in contact, "Kaffir " was the general term, meaning "unbeliever," applied by the Arabs of Africa to the fighting races with whom they came in contact in Southeastern Africa. Nowadays it is limited by the booklearned to the tribes which are scattered about the country, roughly speaking, bounded on the north by the Tekezas, on the west by the Bechuanas and Basutos, and on the south by what is left of the Hottentots. In other words, Kaffraria, ethnologically regarded, includes all Zululand and some of Portuguese East Africa, with the whole of Natal.

But the hunter and the miner of the Rand and of the Karoo are not bookmen as a class, and, aiming at conven

ience rather than exactness or perspicuity, they apply the term "Kaffir" to almost any native in those parts much as the Southern white in the United States calls any one with a dash of negro blood a "nigger." Many of the blacks who go to Kimberley to work in the diamond mines, and are shut up there in the huge inclosures, or barracks to guard against their larcenous proclivities during the terms of their service, are really Kaffirs, and the rest-Bechuanas, Basutos, and so on are of races closely akin to the Kaffir race. Their domestic habits and the tenor of their daily lives at home are all much alike. It is chiefly in his tribal organization that the Kaffir proper, especially the Zulu, differs from and excels his neighbours and congeners.

The home-life of the Kaffir is conducted upon the polygamous system, modified by strict tribal laws and pecuniary facts. The Kaffir young man, when his tribe is not hampered in its internal administration by the interference of white commissioners, is not allowed to marry at all until he has "washed his assegai." No soap known to civilization is fit for this

washing; it must be done with human blood, and the blood of enemies to the tribe. Here, according to the friends of Cetewayo, was that hero's excuse for his outbreak in 1878 and 1879: "I sought no war with the English. The Dutch are our enemies, and my young men clamoured before me for leave to wash their spears." Having washed his spear creditably the young man is allowed by his law to marry a wife, if he can collect enough cattle for the wedding fee, which is paid to her father, who is her owner. The payment and acceptance of this fee, is the essence of the ceremony, but the ceremony once complete the union has a stability, among the Zulus at least, which more civilized tribes elsewhere might well emulate.

This

The bridegroom shaves his head, all but a ring of wool left high up on the crown. The bride shaves her head, except for a tuft left on the top. topknot is their idea of the lovely in matronly coiffure. They have decided ideas of their own as to feminine loveliness, and according to these ideas are keen critics of complexion. One of the signs that the origin of the Kaffirs as a homogeneous race is comparatively recent is the variety of tone in their skins-some few inky black, others varying shades of rich coffee color. They themselves esteem most highly the deepest black with a warm red tone, and this complexion constitutes one of the charms of the Ama Tembu belles, whose prices run as high as forty head of good cattle, while ten head is a good price to pay for a lady of less favoured breed.

When provided with one wife as a basis of housekeeping, the young man goes to work to start an independent kraal (pronounced "crawl"). This word is Dutch, the Kaffir to which it corresponds being umuzi. The hut, which is the centre of the Kaffir umuzi, is a conical or hemispherical wattle affair, with a ground plan from 15 to 20 feet in diameter, and one opening 2 feet high by 18 inches wide, serving as door, window and chimney. Inside, the floor is of hard, smooth clay, hol

the Kaffir and his wife cook and eat their food, which is principally cornmeal (mealie) mush, with the occasional addition of fresh beef. "Kill and eat your cattle" is the conventional Kaffir order for "Break up your kraal and move." They can cook in pots made of finely woven watertight matting, or of thin, hard wood, though several of the northeastern tribes have attained some skill in working iron, mostly for weapons, but the iron pot of the white man has begun to find its Iway into the native home.

One point worth remarking about the domestic arrangements of the Kaffir young couple is that the bride is expected to build the house with her own dark red-toned hands, while the bridegroom fixes the surrounding fences to secure the cattle and keep out the leopards. As a rule, woman's rights are not in a flourishing state among the Kaffirs. The exception, that of the Zulus, among whom the women are better treated than among other divisions of the race, is a strong argument for woman's rights, because the Zulus are the pick of all the Kaffirs. The Zulus are taller, more agile, more intelligent, more good-natured and sociable when well treated, and more formidable in war than any other Kaffirs. They may not make as powerful "hands" in the gold or diamond mines as some of the western and southern natives, not being so thickset, or generally so well fitted to carry heavy loads; but among these people lightness and rapidity of motion-and, it would seem, grace-are more admired in men than what we call sturdiness.

The costume of the Zulu in the domestic circle, if he be a man of rank, is comprised in a leopard skin about his shoulders, a peculiar sort of belt made of strips of ox hide, an anklet or two of brass, and something in the way of a necklace. His wife has a very rainy day skirt, made for her by her