hodesia as he had done at Kimberley or at Johannesburg. He was most
careful that outsiders should not hear about what was going on, and took
endless precautions not to expose the companies that worked the old
dominions of poor King Lobengula, to the sharp criticism of the European
Stock Exchanges. Their shares remained in the hands of people on whose
discretion Rhodes believed that he could rely, and no one ever heard of
gambling in scrip exciting the minds of the inhabitants of Buluwayo or
Salisbury to anything like the degree stocks in Transvaal concerns did.

In Rhodesia Rhodes believed himself on his own ground and free from the
criticisms which he guessed were constantly uttered in regard to him and
to his conduct. In the new land which bore his name Rhodes was surrounded
only by dependants, whilst in Cape Colony he now and then came across
someone who would tell him and, what was worse, who would make him feel
that, after all, he was not the only man in the world, and that he could
not always have everything his own way. Moreover, in Cape Town there was
the Governor, whose personality was more important than his own, and whom,
whether he liked it or not, he had to take into consideration, and to
whom, in a certain sense, he had to submit. And in Kimberley there was the
De Beers Board which, though composed of men who were entirely in
dependence upon him and whose careers he had made, yet had to be
consulted. He could not entirely brush them aside, the less so that a
whole army of shareholders stood behind them who, from time to time, were
impudent enough to wish to see what was being done with their money.

Nothing in the way of hampering critics or circumscribing authorities
existed in Rhodesia. The Chartered Company, though administered by a
Board, was in reality left entirely in the hands and under the control of
Rhodes. Most of the directors were in England and came before public
notice only at the annual general meeting, which was always a success,
inasmuch as no one there had ever ventured to criticise, otherwise than in
a mild way, the work of the men who were supposed to watch over the
development of the resources of the country. Rhodes was master, and
probably his power would have even increased had he lived long enough to
see the completion of the Cape to Cairo Railway, which was his last hobby
and the absorbing interest of the closing years of his life.

The Cape to Cairo Railway was one of those vast s