Mr. Rhodes is unmarried, and throughout the country has the reputation of being an avowed hater of women. He believes that a woman is an impediment to a man’s existence until he has attained the object and aim of his life, and has become deserving of luxuries. He not only believes in that himself, but takes advantage of every opportunity to impress the belief upon the minds of those around him. In the summer of 1897 a captain in the volunteer army, and one of his most faithful lieutenants in Mashonaland, asked Mr. Rhodes for a three months’ leave of absence to go to Cape Colony. The captain had been through many native campaigns, and richly deserved a vacation, although that was not the real object of his request for leave. The man wanted to go to Cape Colony to marry, and by severe cross-examination Mr. Rhodes learned that such was the case. "I can not let you go to Cape Colony; I want you to start for London to-morrow. I’ll cable instructions when you arrive there," said Mr. Rhodes, and the wedding was postponed. When the captain reached London, a cablegram from Mr. Rhodes said simply, "Study London for three months." Nowhere in South Africa is there anything more interesting than Groote Schuur, the country residence of Mr. Rhodes, at Rondebosch, a suburb of Cape Town. He has found time amid his momentous public duties to make his estate the most magnificent on the continent of Africa. Besides a mansion which is a relic of the first settlers of the peninsula, and now a palace worthy of a king’s occupancy, there is an estate which consists of hundreds of acres of land overlooking both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and under the walls of Table Mountain, the curio of a country. In addition to this, there are a zoölogical collection, which comprises almost every specimen of African fauna that will thrive in captivity, and hundreds of flowering trees and plants brought from great distances to enrich the beauty of the landscape. The estate, which comprises almost twelve hundred acres, is situated about five miles to the north of Cape Town, on the narrowest part of the peninsula, through which the waters of the two oceans seem ever anxious to rush and clasp hands. It lies along the northwestern base of Table Mountain, and stretches down toward the waters of Table Bay and northward toward the death-dealing desert known as the Great Karroo. From one of the shady streets winding toward Cape Town there stretches a fine avenue of lofty pines and oaks to the mansion of Groote Schuur, which, as its name indicates, was originally a granary, where two hundred years ago the Dutch colonizers hoarded their stores of grain and guarded them against the attacks of thieving natives.