tal.
1871. Moves to Kimberley.
1873-81. Intermittent visits to Oxford.
1880. First De Beers Company started.
1880. Member for Barkly West.
1883. Commissioner in Bechuanaland.
1885. Warren expedition: Bechuanaland annexed by British Government.
1887. Acute rivalry between Rhodes and Barnato.
1888. Barnato gives way: De Beers Consolidated founded.
1888. Lobengula grants concession for mining.
1889. British South Africa Chartered Company formed.
1890. Prime Minister of Cape Colony.
1890. Occupation of Mashonaland.
1893. Second Rhodes ministry.
1893. War with Lobengula. Matabeleland occupied.
1895. 'Drifts' question between Cape and Transvaal Government.
1895. Jameson Raid, December 28.
1896. January, Rhodes's resignation. Visit to England.
1896. Rebellion in Rhodesia.
1897. Inquiry into the Raid by Committee of the House of Commons.
1899. D.C.L., Oxford.
1899. Outbreak of Great Boer War.
1902. Dies at Muizenberg, March 26.

CECIL RHODES

COLONIST

The Rhodes family can be traced back to sturdy English yeoman stock. In
the eighteenth century they had held land in North London. Cecil's
father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in
Hertfordshire on the Essex border; he was a man of mark, wealthy,
liberal, and unconventional, with the rare gift of preaching ten-minute
sermons which were well worth hearing. Of his eldest sons, Herbert went
to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5,
1853, was kept at home. He had part of his education at the local
Grammar School, but perhaps the better part at the Vicarage from his
father himself. The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not
fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at home, and at the
age of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had
emigrated to Natal. Cecil said good-bye to his native land for the first
time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater
Britain beyond the seas.

[Illustration: CECIL RHODES

From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]

The brothers had certain points of resemblance, being both original and
adventurous; but they had marked differences. The elder was a wanderer
pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty. He could follow a new
track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and
develop the wealth which he had opened up. The management of the Natal
cotton farm soon fell into the hands of C