THE FOUNDATIONS OF FORTUNE It is impossible to speak of South Africa without awarding to Cecil Rhodes the tribute which unquestionably is due to his strong personality.

Without him it is possible that the vast territory which became so thoroughly associated with his name and with his life would still be without political importance.

Without him it is probable that both the Diamond Fields to which Kimberley owes its prosperity and the Gold Fields which have won for the Transvaal its renown would never have risen above the importance of those of Brazil or California or Klondyke.
It was Rhodes who first conceived the thought of turning all these riches into a political instrument and of using it to the advantage of his country--the England to which he remained so profoundly attached amid all the vicissitudes of his life, and to whose possessions he was so eager to add.
Cecil Rhodes was ambitious in a grand, strange manner which made a complete abstraction of his own personality under certain conditions, but which in other circumstances made him violent, brutal in manner, thereby procuring enemies without number and detractors without end.

His nature was something akin to that of the Roman Emperors in its insensate desire to exercise unchallenged an unlimited power.

Impatient of restraint, no matter in what shape it presented itself, he brooked no resistance to his schemes; his rage against contradiction, and his opposition to any independence of thought or action on the part of those who were around him, brought about a result of which he would have been the first to complain, had he suspected it--that of allowing him to execute all his fancies and of giving way to all his resentments.