The Chartered Company, though administered by a Board, was in reality left entirely in the hands and under the control of Rhodes.

Most of the directors were in England and came before public notice only at the annual general meeting, which was always a success, inasmuch as no one there had ever ventured to criticise, otherwise than in a mild way, the work of the men who were supposed to watch over the development of the resources of the country.

Rhodes was master, and probably his power would have even increased had he lived long enough to see the completion of the Cape to Cairo Railway, which was his last hobby and the absorbing interest of the closing years of his life.
The Cape to Cairo Railway was one of those vast schemes that can be ascribed to the same quality in his character as that which made him so essentially an Empire Maker.

It was a project of world-wide importance, and destined to set the seal to the paramount influence of Great Britain over the whole of Africa.

It was a work which, without Rhodes, would never have been accomplished.