the Boers had no feeling that Sir Alfred was prejudiced against them. Such
a thought was drilled into their minds by subtle and cunning people who,
for their own avaricious ends, desired to estrange the High Commissioner
from the Afrikanders. Sir Alfred was represented as a tyrannical,
unscrupulous man, whose one aim in life was the destruction of every
vestige of Dutch independence, Dutch self-government and Dutch influence
in Africa. Those who thus maligned him applied themselves to make him
unpopular and to render his task so very uncongenial and unpleasant for
him that he would at last give it up of his own accord, or else become the
object of such violent hatreds that the Home Government would feel
compelled to recall him. Thus they would be rid of the presence of a
personage possessed of a sufficient energy to oppose them, and they would
no longer need to fear his observant eyes. Sir Alfred Milner saw himself
surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, and every attempt he made to
bring forward his own plans for the settlement of the South African
question crumbled to the ground almost before he could begin to work at
it. Small wonder, therefore, if he felt discouraged and began to form a
false opinion concerning the persons or the facts with whom he had to
deal. Those who might have helped him were constrained, without it being
his fault. Mr. Rhodes became persuaded that the new Governor of Cape
Colony had arrived there with preconceived notions in regard to himself.
He was led to believe that Milner's firm determination was to crush him;
that, moreover, he was jealous of him and of the work he had done in South
Africa.

Incredible as it appears, Rhodes believed this absurd fiction, and learned
to look upon Sir Alfred Milner as a natural enemy, desirous of thwarting
him at every step. The Bloemfontein Conference, at which the brilliant
qualities and the conciliating spirit of the new Governor of Cape Colony
were first made clearly manifest, was represented to Rhodes as a desire to