under
which he is said to have sat when he sorted out the wash from his first
claim. When digging didn't pay, Rhodes turned his hand to other ways of
earning his living. He sold ice cream. He peddled water when water was
still desirable and not a menace. He was a man bound to turn his
surroundings to advantage, and as it happened he got his first real
start over the encroaching water. By 1874 he had acquired a certain
amount of money that would have seemed very respectable for such a
young man to have earned at home in England, and when he went into
partnership with two other young Englishmen, Charles D. Rudd and
Wallace Alderson, they were able to put up the capital for the pump
project out of their own pockets. It wasn't easy, but finally Rhodes
found a steam-engine pump for sale in Africa, at Port Elizabeth. He
wrote to Rudd:
"I
had to give £900 and a bill at four months for £100. . . . Wallace used
to wake up fancying himself an engine. I wake up fancying myself
meeting various little bits of paper ranging over 3, four and five
months with my blessed signature at the bottom."
It
was a story with a happy ending, up to a point. The pump paid off to
such good effect that it might be called the foundation of Rhodes's
famous fortune, and was thus indirectly responsible for his swift,
fantastic career, which did so much to expand the British Empire. The
pump was hired out everywhere to diggers who still believed they could
carry on as they had done before, working their own claims and beholden
to no man. Rhodes and his partners formed a proper company around it,
and sent for better pumps and spare parts from England. Soon they had
enough capital to branch out pretty widely.
Even at that time, Rhodes had visions of a grandiose com-
