An African Adventure

zen and baked, I had swallowed enough dust to stock a small-sized desert. Dawn of the third day broke and with it came a sharp rap on my compartment door. I had been dreaming of

s it?"

nt to know who you are," boom

etween an Arizona cowboy and an Australian overseas soldier. When I proved to his satisfaction that I was neither B

he world can you find a region that combines to such vivid and picturesque extent the romance and hardship of the pioneer age with the push and practicality of today. Here existed the "King

rule is the story of a conflict between share-holder and settler that is unique in the history of colonization. It is the now-famili

a grateful posterity. Rather it is expressed in terms of cities and a permanent industrial and agricultural advance. "Living he was the land," and dead, his imperious and construct

which sprawls over the veldt just like a bustling Kansas community spreads out over the prairie. It is definitely American in energy and

sburg; had met women who wore French frocks, and had heard the possibilities of the section acclaimed by

s happened, to be sure, but it is part of the past. While South Africa still wrestles with a serious native problem, Rhodesia has settled it once and for all. It would be impossible to find a milder

under the greenwood" and sentenced to death. If gout or rheumatism racked the royal frame the chief executed the first passerby and then considered the source of the trouble removed. The only thing that really departed was the head of the innocent victim. Lobengula had sixty-eight wives, which may account

o in 1896)-that any account of the country must at the outset include a brief historical approach to the time of my visit last May. P

the explorer and after him the builder. So too with most of the coast. But the vast central belt, skirted by the arid reaches of Sahara on one side an

and unappropriated country,-a sort of no man's land, rich with minerals, teeming with forests and peopled by savages. Two territories, Matabeleland, ruled by Lobengula, and Mashonaland, inhabited by the Mashonas, who were to all intents and purposes vassals to Lobengula, were the priz

quare miles of African soil and she was reaching out for more. Control of Africa meant for her a big step toward world conquest. Paul Kruger, P

itain was persuaded to annex Bechuanaland as a Crown Colony. Forestalled here, Kruger was determined to get the rest of the country beyond Bechuanaland and reaching to the southern bord

nd spoke the native languages. From the crafty chieftain they obtained a blanket concession for all the mineral and trading rights in Matabeleland for ￡1,200 a year and one thousand rifles. Rhodes now converted this concession into a commercial and colonizing ac

man of colour. Other chartered companies have wielded autocratic power over millions of natives but the royal right to exist and operate, bestowed by Queen Victoria upon the British South Africa Company-the Chartered Company as

motive which was to widen the Empire and keep the Germans and Boers from annexing territory that he believed should be British. This was Rhodes the imperialist at work. The other aspect was

to acquire and develop land everywhere, to engage in shipping, to build railway, telegraph and telephone lines, to establish banks, to operate mines an

ern Rhodesia remains a sparsely settled country-there are only 2,000 white inhabitants to 850,000 natives-and the only industry of importance is the lead and zinc development at Broken Hill. Southern Rhodesia, where there are 35,00

er to alter, amend or rescind the instrument so far as the administration of Rhodesia is concerned. No vital change in the original document has been made so far, but by the time

mpting to run an immense area at long range. With the approval of the Foreign Office the Company names an Administrator,-the present one is Sir Drummond Chaplin,-who, l

d expenditures. More than 40,000 shareholders have invested in the enterprise. Today the fate of the country rests practically on the issue between the interests of these shareholders on one hand and the 35,000 inhabitants on the other. Once more you get the spectacle, so common to American financial hi

HODESIA - Photograph Copyrig