countries was discussed. In 1896 Reitz resigned and accepted the State Secretaryship of the Transvaal--a position analogous in personal power, though not in the matter of responsibility to the people, with that of a Colonial Premier. Mr. M. T. Steyn became President of the Free State and the triumvirate of Kruger, Steyn and Reitz formed, with Mr. W. P. Schreiner and Mr. J. W. Sauer, in the Cape Parliament and Afrikander Bund, a very strong Dutch combination. Just where Mr. Hofmeyr stood it is hard to say now, but the probabilities are that, he was pretty well acquainted with the plots and schemes of these leaders. [Sidenote: Mr. Cecil Rhodes to the Front] Meanwhile Mr. Cecil Rhodes had come to the front in mining, in speculation, in wealth, in financial organization, in politics, and in a great policy of Empire expansion. He had studied South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi as few or no Englishmen have ever been able to do. He understood its Governments, its peoples and its racial complexities with the innate thoroughness of genius or of a woman's intuition. To him the looming menace of the Afrikander Bund was as clear as it had been to President Brand, and, from the time when he entered the Cape Parliament in 1880 and became Premier in 1890 until his retirement from the latter post in 1895, his whole heart and ambition was devoted to preventing Dutch expansion and to checkmating the new Dutch organization with its clever manipulators at Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Cape Town. To this end he founded the famous British South Africa Company, and, by acquiring control over the vast areas of Mashonaland and Matabeleland, effectually checked Dutch expansion to the north of the Transvaal. With this in view he urged upon British statesmen the annexation of Bechuanaland, a huge strip of country to the west of the same Republic; and supported with his influence the annexation of Zululand on the south-east coast, into which many Boers had trekked and for the possession of which they had an intense ambition as opening the way to the sea. His reasons seldom appeared on the surface, and some of them were not fully comprehended in South Africa itself until long after their accomplishment. But there is no doubt that as Mr. Rhodes' power at the Cape became felt, as the great interests of the Chartered Company grew more manifest in their importance to the Empire, and as the wealth and ability of its Chairman became a factor in London as well as in the Colony, so also his influence at the Colonial Office was enhanced. [Sidenote: Rhodes' Policy of Conciliation]