With the completion of the Cape-to-Cairo trunk line and its subsidiary systems to either coast, with the exploitation of the mineral deposits which constitute so much of Rhodesia's wealth, and with the harnessing of the great falls and the utilisation of the limitless power which will be obtainable from them, this virgin territory in the heart of Africa bids fair to be to the home and fortune seekers of to-morrow what the American West was to those of yesterday, and what northwestern Canada is to those of to-day. A few years more and it will be a developed and prosperous nation. To-day it is the last of the world's frontiers, where the hardy and adventurous of our race are still fighting the battles and solving the problems of civilisation. CHAPTER X THE COUNTRY OF BIG THINGS The most significant thing I saw in South Africa was an old-fashioned gabled, whitewashed house. The name of it is _Groote Schuur_, and it stands in very beautiful grounds on the slopes of Table Mountain, a mile or so at the back of Cape Town. That house was the home of Cecil John Rhodes, who, more than any other man, was responsible for the Boer War and for the resultant British predominance south of the Congo, and in his will he directed that it should be used as the official residence of the prime minister of that South African confederation which his prophetic mind foresaw. The welding of the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State with the British colonies of Natal and the Cape of Good Hope produced the great antipodal commonwealth of which the empire-builder dreamed, but the man who, as prime minister, dwells under _Groote Schuur's_ gabled roof and directs the policies of the new nation is a member of that Boer race which Rhodes hated and feared and whose political power he firmly believed had been broken forever. Fortune never doubled in her tracks more completely than when she made General Louis Botha, the last leader of Boer troops in the field, the first prime minister of a united South Africa.