An African Adventure

ns, cross seething rivers, traverse scorching deserts, and invade the clouds, but none has so romantic an interest or is bound up with such adventure and imagination as this. The reaso

with grudging Governments, the proje

vidence of his achievement abroad. The route taps civilization and crosses the last frontiers of progress. The South African end discloses an illuminating example of profitable nationalization. Over it still broods the personality of the man who conceived

for some years. Traffic in Central Africa at the moment does not justify it. Besides, the navigable rivers in the Belgian Congo, Egypt, and the

d ran that historic line through it from end to end and said, "It must be all red," he took no cognizance of the extraordinary difficulties that lay in the way. He saw, but he did not heed, the rainbow of many national flags that

and said: "Why didn't you take it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money with which to carry them out?" Here you have the keynote of the whole Rhodes busin

and river scheme permits the consummation of the vision of thirty years ago. The southern end is all-rail mainly because the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia are civilized and prosperous countries. I made the entire journ

ville to Stanleyville on the Congo River. This is the second stage of the Cape-to-Cairo Route and knocks off an additional 890 miles and another twelve days. Here I left the h

ncipal Congo gold fields. A road has been built and motor cars are available. The railway route from Stanleyville to Mahagi, which will link the Congo and the Nile, is surveyed and would have been finished by this time but for the outbreak of t

ves practically a straight ahead itinerary to Cairo. You journey on the Nile by way of Rejaf, Kodok,-(the Fashoda that was)-to Kosti, where you reach the southern rail-head of the Soudan Railways. Thence it is comparatively easy, as most travellers kn

alo, where I stopped, a railroad runs eastward from the river to Albertville, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Rhodes wanted to use the 400-mile waterway that this body of water provides to connect the railway that came down from the North with the line that begins at the

and through Rhodes the British Empire, could establish through communication under the British flag, from one end of Africa to the other

cular provocation for moving about in certain portions of Central Africa until recently. But Germany only afforded one obstacle. The British Government, after the fashion of governmen

ntirely to the courage and tenacity of Robert Williams, who is now constructing the so-called Benguella Railway from Lobito Bay in Portuguese Angola to Bukama. It will be a fe

is for the most part an uncultivated area principally jungle, with scattered white settlements and hordes of untrained natives. The war set back the development of the Congo many years. No