any men have spoken
of him to me, and always with unqualified admiration. I know no man who
occupies such a place in men's thoughts. His absence has given rise to
all kinds of conjectures as to the cause of it. Some say it is due to
the fact that the Cape elections are approaching, and he did not wish to
be forced to a pronouncement of policy; others that it is due to Dr
Jameson's zealous care of his health, as he suffers from heart
complaint; others again say it is due to a wounded spirit, which too
long grieving might easily end in a Timonian moroseness. Whatever the
true cause may be, he has so planted himself in the affections of the
people that no eccentricity of his can detract from his merits. When a
man scatters 200,000 a year on the country out of which he made his
wealth, it covers a multitude of sins in the minds of the recipients of
his gratuitous favours.

"He does mad and fantastic execution
Engaging and redeeming of himself,
With such a careless face and forceless care,
As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,
Bade him win all."

The festivities of the celebration end to-night, or rather to-morrow
morning at 1 a.m., and then Bulawayo will be left to itself to begin its
own proper work of development. We have seen what Bulawayo is as it
terminated the employment of the ox-wagon, and had just emerged out of
the sore troubles caused by war, famine, and rinderpest. The next train
that arrives after our departure will be the beginning of a new era.
The machinery that litters the road will be brought up, and the
ox-wagons drawn by fourteen oxen, and the wagons drawn by twelve mules,
and those drawn by twenty donkeys, will haul it to the mines, and hence
we may hope at the end of a year or so that Rhodesia will have proved by
its gold output its intrinsic value as a gold held. In my next letter I
mean to touch upon this subject.

CHAPTER THREE.

BULAWAYO, NOVEMBER 11, 1897.

THE NEW ERA IN RHODESIA.

The festivities are over, and the guests are departing. For seven days
we have been entertained as well as the resources of Bulawayo would
admit, and the Administrator and Committee have been continuously
unflagging in their attentions to us. Next Monday the trains and
railway will be occupied in bringing stores and machinery and cattle to
supply the needs of the mining industry, and henceforward the traffic
will be ordinary and uninterrupted between Cape Town and Bulawayo. On
Mo