From Cape Town to Bulawayo Mr Rhodes Spoken of “With Unqualified Admiration.”

This reminds me that I have not once mentioned Rhodes, though when describing Rhodesia one ought not to omit his name; but the fact is he has preferred to remain in the veld rather than undergo the fatigue of the banquets and ceremonies. From Cape Town here many 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.