blood of the wandering Scot in his veins, and in 1878, at the age of twenty-five, having entered into partnership with a Dr. Prince, of Kimberley, he set sail for South Africa.
At this date Kimberley was a great diamond-mining camp, where a large number of independent diggers worked their individual claims, and sold the stones which they found, each man for himself. Jameson found there a restless, busy, light-hearted, cosmopolitan, gambling community, where money was made, spent, or lost with equal rapidity. He made his way rapidly, helped alike by great professional skill and daring and by a ready wit, an infectious gaiety, and an irresistible personal charm. It was not long before he was known in Kimberley as ‘The Doctor’—‘Dr. Jim’ was a later invention of the English press. But he was destined to throw up his practice, to abandon an assured professional career, and to start afresh on a very different road, as the result of the close friendship which he formed with Cecil John Rhodes [q.v.]. Rhodes, of the same age as Jameson, was already in the early 'eighties the outstanding figure on the diamond fields, and had entered the parliament of the Cape Colony in 1881. After the death (1886) of Neville Pickering, who until then had been Rhodes's most intimate confidant, Jameson took and kept till Rhodes's death the first place in his affection.
It was to Jameson that Rhodes now began to develop his ideas and to unfold his dreams for the expansion of British civilization northwards through South Central Africa to the great lakes and onwards until it should extend from the Cape to Cairo. The first step necessary was to obtain a foothold in Matabeleland and Mashonaland, now known as Southern Rhodesia, but then the territory of Lobengula, chief of the Matabele. By the end of 1888 Rhodes had amalgamated in the hands of one great company, De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, all the diverse interests in the Kimberley diamond fields; and could command ample funds for the prosecution of his objects. He had also obtained through his emissaries a concession from Lobengula of the mineral rights in that chief's territory, which was to form the original basis of the British South Africa Company, Rhodes's instrument for the expansion of the British Empire north of the Transvaal. But there were signs that Lobengula was repenting of his grant, and it was necessary to send up to him a trusted friend of Rhodes's to restore him to good humour, to keep him to his bond, and to defeat the designs of rival would-be concessionaires at his elbow. Asked by Rhodes to undertake this perilous mission, Jameson without a moment's hesitation left his patients in Kimberley to the care of a partner and, accompanied by Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, afterwards secretary to the British South Africa Company, started through the wilderness to Bulawayo, arriving there 2 April 1889.
This was the first of three such visits paid by Jameson to Lobengula between April 1889 and May 1890. The effect on the chief's mind of Jameson's winning personality was excellent; Jameson's medical skill relieved the pain of the gout from which Lobengula suffered; and, as a special mark of favour, the chief made him an ‘induna’ of one of his Matabele regiments. But, when Jameson was not actually by his side, Lobengula was prone to listen to those who warned him that in admitting the white men to dig for gold he would be giving away his country. He actually put to death the induna whom he held responsible for having advised him to grant the mineral concession; and it was not until Jameson's last interview with him (2 May 1890) that he definitely ‘gave him the road’—that is, undertook to admit into his dominions those whom Rhodes should send up to work the concession. The concession meanwhile had been acquired by the British South Africa Company, incorporated by royal charter dated 29 October 1889, and the Company's preparations for sending into Mashonaland an expedition of 200 pioneers and 500 mounted police were well advanced. This expedition, which Jameson, coming south from Bulawayo, joined in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, crossed Lobengula's border at the beginning of July 1890, guided by the well-known big-game hunter Frederick Courteney Selous [q.v.], and accompanied by Archibald Ross Colquhoun, who was designated as the first administrator of Mashonaland. Jameson was not in command of the expedition, but went with it as the personal representative of Rhodes, and inspired it with his own spirit of cheerful audacity. There was constant danger that Lobengula's authority might not suffice to restrain the Matabele from falling on the column upon its way; but the danger was averted. The column avoided entering Matabeleland proper. Marching in a north-easterly direction to the plateau of Mashonaland, it safely reached its objective and planted the
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