of Cape Town was also realised, and amid all the spite shown it is to his honour that, instead of throwing up the sponge, he persevered, until at last he succeeded in the aim which he had kept before him from the day he had landed in Table Bay.  He restored peace to the dark continent where no one had welcomed him, but where everybody mourned his departure when he bade it good-bye after the most anxious years he had ever known.

When Sir Alfred accepted the post of Governor of the Cape Colony and English High Commissioner in South Africa, he had intended to study most carefully the local conditions of the new country whither fate and his duty were sending him, and then, after having gained the necessary experience capable of guiding him in the different steps he aspired to take, to proceed to the formidable task he had set for himself.  His great object was to bring about a reconciliation between the two great political parties in the Colony—­the South African League, with Rhodes as President, and the Afrikander Bond, headed by Messrs. Hofmeyr (the one most in popular favour with the Boer farmers), Sauer and Schreiner.

In the gigantic task of welding together two materials which possessed little affinity and no love for each other, Sir Alfred was unable to be guided by his experience in the Motherland.  In England a certain constitutional policy was the basis of every party.  At the Cape the dominating factors were personal feelings, personal hatreds and affections, while in the case of the League it was money and money alone.  I do not mean that every member of the League had been bought by De Beers or the Chartered Company; but what I do maintain is that the majority of its members had some financial or material reason to enrol themselves.

In judging the politics of South Africa at the period of which I am writing, one must not forget that the greater number of those who then constituted the so-called Progressive party were men who had travelled to the Cape through love of adventure and the desire to enrich themselves quickly.  It was only the first comers who had seen their hopes realised.  Those who came after them found things far more difficult, and had perforce to make the best of what their predecessors left.  On the other hand, it was relatively easy for them to find employment in the service of one or the other of the big companies that sprang up, and by whom most of the mining and industrial concerns were owned.

[Illustration:  The Hon.  J.H.  Hofmeyr]

When the influence of the De Beers increased after its amalgamation with the other diamond companies around Kimberley, and when Rhodes made up his mind that only a political career could help him to achieve his vast plans, he struck upon the thought of using the money and the influence which were at his disposal to transform De Beers into one of the most formidable political instruments the world had ever seen.