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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1610, 7 January 1903, Page 16

The following information regarding the difficulty of getting into the Transvaal is from a Capetown telegram, dated 15th November last: —Many immigrants who have recently landed in Capetown with permits issued in London, and authorising them to proceed to the Transvaal, assert that they have been told by officers m the local permit office that these permits are not worth the paper they are written on, and that they must simply wait their turn before obtaining the necessary permission to proceed to their destination. Even those who before leaving London had obtained a definite position on the Hand find themselves in the same position. The exorbitant cost of living in. Capetown soon diminishes their cash in hand, and they naturally resent detention, which they regard as unnecessary and unreasonable. A deputation of. immigrants wffio are stranded here waited on the Governor, and hjs Excellency expressed his sympathy with them and immediately wired to Lord Milner, urging him to arrange the granting of the necessary permission for these men to proceed to the Transvaal at once. An extraordinary thunderstorm is recorded to have taken plao at Plimmerton last week. A huge black cloud sweirfc over the township at about C o’clock, emitting a flash of lightning of a dazzling and startling character, followed by a tremendous explosion. The inhabitants were very terrified, and for a time there was quite a panic. The sky immediately lightened and the thunder cloud swept across the valley and disappeared. Examination afterwards disclosed that six telegraph posts in the vicinity of the Plimmerton railway station had snapped off short. . It is a remarkable fact that at the time when the storm swept over Featherston, the remainder of the valley was quite free from atmospheric disturbance©.