Many explorers have commented on the speed with which news travels among savage tribes. A curiou3 observation as to a possible solution of the problem of their methods has been made by the Rev. A. Rideout. who, as a missionary among the Basutos, has noticed their method of sending messages from village to village by means of a signal drum or gourd. This gourd, covered with the dried and stretched skin of a kid gives out a sound which travels and can be heard at distances of from five to eight miles. The transmission and reception of messages on these drums is entrusted to special corps of signallers, some one of whom is always on duty, and who beat on the message in what is practically a Morse alphabet. "On hearing the message, " says Mr. Rideout, " the signaller can always tell whether it is for his chief or for some distant village, and delivers it verbally or sends it on accordingly, and it is thus carried on with surprising rapidity from one village to another till it reaches its destination. King Lerothodi granted me the privilege of sending messages to our missionary workers by his great telegraph system, and never have I known a message sent by it to fail to reach the person for whom it was intended in its proper form. All that took place in the Boer war, victories and reverses in the transvaal and Orange Free State were known to us by gourd line message hours before the news ever reached us by field telegraph. The natives guarded the secret of their code carefully. To my knowledge, messages have been sent a thousand miles by means of it." This is probably one of the earliest forms of wireless telegraphy.