Before leaving he whispered to a friend the request that the fact of his visit should not be mentioned in Cape Town circles.  This request was naturally repeated at once to Mr. Rhodes, much to the latter’s amusement.  As ill-luck would have it, the cautious gentleman left his umbrella behind, with his name in full on the handle; this remained a prominent object on the hall table till, when evening fell, a trusted emissary came to recover it.

I often used to visit the House of Assembly or Lower House during that session, and it was instructive to note the faces of the Opposition when Rhodesia and its undoubted progress were subjects of discussion, and especially when Mr. Rhodes was on his feet, claiming the undivided attention of the House.  It was not his eloquence that kept people so attentive, for no one could call him eloquent; it was the singularly expressive voice, the (at times) persuasive manner, and, above all, the interesting things his big ideas gave him to say, that preserved that complete silence.  But, as I said before, the faces of his then antagonists—­albeit quondam friends—­hardly disguised their thoughts sufficiently.  They were forced to consider the country of the man they feared—­the country to which he had given his name—­as a factor in their colony; they had to admit it to their financial calculations, and all the time they would fain have crushed the great pioneer under their feet.  They had, indeed, hoped to see him humbled and abashed after his one fatal mistake, instead of which he had gone calmly on his way—­a Colossus indeed—­with the set purpose, as a guiding star ever before his eyes, to retrieve the error which they had fondly imagined would have delivered him into their hands.  Truly an impressive and curious study was that House of Assembly in the session of 1899.

The number of people, more or less interesting, whom we met at Groot Schuurr, seemed to pass as actors on a stage, sometimes almost too rapidly to distinguish or individualize.  But one or two stand out specially in my recollection.  Among them, a type of a fine old gentleman, was Colonel Schermbrucker.  A German by birth, and over seventy years of age, he had served originally in the Papal Guard, and had accompanied Pio Nono on the occasion of his famous flight from Rome.  Somewhere in the fifties, at the time of the arrival of the German Legion, he had settled at the Cape, and had been a figure in politics ever since.  His opinions were distinctly English and progressive, but it was more as an almost extinct type of the courtly old gentleman that he impressed me.  His extreme activity for his years, his old-world manners, and his bright intelligence, were combinations one does not often meet, and would have made him an interesting figure in any assembly or country.  Another day came Judge Coetzee, erstwhile Kruger’s confidant and right hand, but then of a very different way of thinking to his old master.  His remark on the warlike situation was as follows:  “Kruger is only a white Kaffir chief, and as such respects force, and force only.  Send sufficient soldiers, and there will be no fighting.”  This was also Mr. Rhodes’s view, but, as it turned out, both were wrong.  In the meantime the sands were running out, and the troops were almost on the water, and yet the old man remained obdurate.