Part 10 (1/2)
N'jube took the hint and thetelegram to the conspirator at Bulawayo:
”Your friend N'jube was divided between love and eirl It is better that he should settle down in Ki a family than to plot at Bulawayo to stab you in the stomach”
This ended the conspiracy, and N'jube lived happily and peacefully ever afterwards
Rhodes was an incorrigible imperialist as this story shows Upon one occasion at Bulawayo he was discussing the Carnegie Library idea with his friend and associate, Sir Abe Bailey, a leading financial and political figure in the Cape Colony
”What would you do if you had Carnegie's money?” asked Bailey
”I wouldn't waste it on libraries,” he replied ”I would seize a South American Republic and annex it to the United States”
Rhodes had great adreatest thing in the world would be the union of the English-speaking people I wouldn't ton were the capital” He believed ilo-Saxon race, and he gave his life and his fortune to advance the British part of it
For the last I have reserved the experience that will always rank first in rave of Rhodes
Most people who go to Rhodesia e of Mr Cook, like Victoria Falls, it is ”one of the things to see” I was animated by a different ed to view the spot that so eloquently syination of the ht miles from Bulawayo, in the heart of the Matopo Hills You follow the road along which the body was carried nineteen years ago You see the native hut where Rhodes often lived and in which the reht on the final journey You pass froreen low-lands to the bare frontiers of the rocky domain where the Matabeles fled after the second war and where the Father of Rhodesia held his historic parleys with them
Soon the way becomes so difficult that you must leave the motor and continue on foot The Matopos are a wild and desolate range It is not until you are well beyond the granite outposts that there bursts upon you an immense open area,--a sort of aht have held their weird ritual Directly ahead you see a battlement of boulders projected by some immemorial upheaval Intrenched between them is the spot where Rhodes rests and which isthe words: ”Here Lie the Remains of Cecil John Rhodes” In his will he directed that the site be chosen and even wrote the simple inscription for the cover
When you stand on this e landscape, you not only realize why Rhodes called it ”The View of the World,” but you also understand why he elected to sleep here The loneliness and grandeur of the environn of human life and habitation, convey that sense of aloofness which, in a reatness exacts
The ages seehteen years Rhodes slept here in solitary state In 1920 the rerave hewn out of the rock and located about one hundred feet from the spot where his old friend rests
It is peculiarly fitting that these two men who played such heroic part in the rise of Rhodesia should repose within a stone's throw of each other
During these last years I have seen sos They included the British Grand Fleet in battle array, Russia at the daybreak of de travail of Verdun and the So on the battlefields of France, Aredy of war, and all the rest of the panora perhaps was rave of Cecil Rhodes Instinctively there ca wrote in ”The Burial”:
It is his will that he look forth Across the world he won-- The granite of the ancient North-- Great spaces washed with sun
When I reached the botto incline onand those sentinel boulders bulked in the dying light They seeht and power of the personality that shaped Rhodesia, and made of it an annex of Empire
[Illustration: A KATANGA COPPER MINE]
CHAPTER IV--THE CONGO TODAY
I
Unfold theover the Equator, reaching down to Rhodesia on the south-east, and converging to a point on the Atlantic Coast Equal in size to all Latin and Teutonic Europe, it is the abode of 6,000 white men and 12,000,000 blacks No other section of that vast empire of mystery is so packed with hazard and hardshi+p, nor is any so bound up with American enterprise Across it Stanley ave it the gla influence
Fourteen nations stood sponsor at its birth as a Free State and the whole world shook with controversy about its administration Once the darkest dohold of the resisting jungle and the last frontier of civilization It is the Belgian Congo
During these past years the veil has been lifted froreater part of Africa We are familiar with life and custouese and one-time German colonies