king ahead as well as behind: they felt that his services were
still needed for the establishing of a United South Africa under the
British flag. But in this respect his work was done. The Cape Dutch were
more and more influenced by their sentiment for the Transvaal, and
racial feeling ran high. Rhodes severed himself from all his old Dutch
colleagues and became more of a party leader. Meanwhile Kruger watched
the breach, assured himself of Dutch support, made no concessions to the
Uitlanders, repelled all overtures from Mr. Chamberlain, and steered
straight for war. Rhodes, despite his knowledge of the Dutch, made the
mistake of believing up to the last moment that Kruger would give way
and not fight; but, when the war broke out in 1899, he went up to
Kimberley to take his share of the work and the danger. The siege lasted
about four months, and Rhodes, though he failed to work harmoniously
with the military commandant, rendered many services to the town, thanks
to his wealth, influence, and knowledge of the place. When the town was
relieved in February 1900, he went to Rhodesia and spent many months
there. Though he was urged by his followers to return to politics, Cape
Town saw little of him; when he was not in the north, he was mostly at
his seaside cottage at Muizenberg, half-way between the capital and the
Cape of Good Hope. The heart complaint, from which he had suffered
intermittently all his life, had rapidly grown worse; his last year was
one of great suffering, and in March 1902 he breathed his last at
Muizenberg with Jameson and a few of his dearest friends around him. He
was buried in the place which he had himself chosen amid the Matoppo
hills. On a bare hill-top seven gigantic boulders keep guard round the
simple tombstone on which his name is engraved. After the English
service was over, the natives celebrated in their own fashion the
passing of the great chief who had already been enshrined in their
imagination.

At Kimberley, at Cape Town, in the Matoppos, his work was done before
the nineteenth century was finished, and he had earned his rest. The
complete union of the European races for which he laboured in Parliament
is yet to come. The vast wealth which he won in Kimberley is fulfilling
a noble purpose. By his will he founded scholarships at Oxford for
scholars from the Dominions and Colonies, from the United States and
from Germany--his faith in the Anglo-Saxon race being extended to our
Teutonic