Mr. Rhodes.

Mr. Rhodes, who has been so prominent during the past few year in connection with schemes for the expansion of British South Africa, is destined to play a leading part in the future. So much has been written regarding him that it is unnecessary to give more than the briefest outline of his career. Finding himself at the age of sixteen in South Africa, where he had gone in search of health, he at first took to farming, and then was in the early rush to Kimberley, where he afterwards made a large fortune. He came to England, and took his degree at Oxford. On his return to South Africa he was, as Deputy-Commissioner in Bechuanaland, largely, instrumental in securing and organising that territory for England. For many years a member of the Cape Parliament, he became Treasurer-General (equivalent to our Chancellor of the Exchequer) at twenty-eight years of age. Gordon met Mr. Rhodes at the Cape, page 85 and asked him to join in the Mission to Khartoum, which circumstances made it impossible to accept. After obtaining the Charter for the British South Africa Company, and organising the Pioneer Expedition for the occupation of Mashonaland, he became Premier of the Cape Colony in 1890.