p. 7 | A Steel Highway Through Africa by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 18, 1912

A Steel Highway Through Africa

By W. A. S.

THE pushing forward of the Cape-to-Cairo Railway has already made a great change in African mission enterprise. By a journey of a few days, now, our missionaries reach points that represented many weeks or months of travel by ox-cart but a few years ago. The highway for commerce means also a highway for the gospel herald.

In the Outlook of Nov. 25, 1911, Mr. E. Alexander Powell, of the Royal Geographical Society of England, gives the latest information regarding this great African railway project, launched and pushed by the late Cecil Rhodes. The writer says:—

In February of the present year freight- and passenger-trains were in operation straight through to Elizabethville, in the heart of the Belgian Kongo, 2,316 miles north of Cape Town, and only 280 miles from the southern end of Lake Tanganyika.

Speaking of the route through Barotseland,—which leads past our first Pemba station, from which Elder W. H. Anderson and his associates are pushing onward the chain of out-stations toward the Kongo border,—Mr. Powell says:—

The trip through Barotseland is more enlivening than any circus that ever put up canvas. All along the line are fields of corn—“mealies” they call it in South Africa—with rude towers atop of which a native sits constantly on guard to drive off the herds of wild pigs which raid the crops at night, and the troops of baboons which descend upon them by day. Many of these baboons are six feet high, and weigh two hundred pounds, and there are few more extraordinary sights than seeing a score or more of them slipping away after raiding a farmer’s corn-field and sweet-potato patch, their spoils tucked under their arms, for all the world like so many schoolboys.

Stroll three miles up or down the Zambesi from the railway bridge, and you can see hippos as easily as you can at the zoo in Central Park; in northwest Rhodesia herds of bushbuck, zebras, and ostriches scamper away at sight of the train; and as you lie in your sleeping-berth at night, while the train halts on lonely sidings, you can hear the roar of lions, and see the gleam of the campfires with which the railway employees protect themselves. On one occasion, when our train was lying on a siding south of the Zambesi, the conductor of the dining-car suddenly exclaimed, “Look there, gentlemen, look over there!” His excitement was justified, for from over a screen of bushes,

scarcely a biscuit’s throw away, a herd of five giraffes craned their ridiculous necks, and peered at us curiously. When I was traveling through northwest Rhodesia by the Zambesi Express, some months ago, our engine struck a bull elephant which had decided to contest the right of way. As the train was running at full speed, both engine and elephant were derailed. Returning that way some days later, we noted that the local station-master had scraped the Gargantuan skull to the bone, filled it with earth, and set it on the station platform as a sort of jardinière to hold geraniums.

Doubtless the road has during this year considerably lessened that 280 miles separating it from the southern end of long Lake Tanganyika, which affords steamer transportation northward. And as for the northern division of the railway, being built down from Cairo, the end of 1911 was to see the railroad at El Obeid, within 1,200 miles of the northern end of Lake Tanganyika. About 1,400 miles more of track-laying, and the road can accept passengers from Cairo to Cape Town. And most of the way the road will run through lands altogether unknown fifty years ago. Mr. Powell graphically describes the trip that will soon be possible:—

The traveler who climbs into the Cape-to-Cairo Limited at the Quay Station in Alexandria, in response to the conductor’s cry of “All aboard! All aboard for Cape Town!” can lean from the window of his compartment as the train approaches Cairo and see the misty outlines of the pyramids, those mysterious monuments of antiquity which were hoary with age when London was a cluster of mud huts and Paris was yet to be founded in the swamps beside the Seine; at Luxor he will pass beneath the shadow of ruined Thebes, a city beside which Athens and Rome are ludicrously modern; at Assuan he will catch a glimpse of the greatest dam ever built,—a mile and a quarter long and built of solid masonry weighing a million tons,—holding in check the waters of one of the longest rivers in the world; at Khartum, peering through the blue-glass windows which protect the passengers’ eyes from the blinding sun-glare, he can see the statue of Gordon, seated on his bronze camel, peering northward across the desert in search of the white helmets that came too late; at Entebbe his eyes will be dazzled by the shimmering waters of the Victoria Nyanza, barring Lake Superior, the greatest of all fresh-water seas; at Ujiji he will see the black-and-white standard of Germany floating over the spot where Stanley, emerging from the jungle, lifted his helmet at sight of a gaunt, fever-stricken man, and said, “Dr. Livingstone, I believe?” He will hold his breath in awe as the train shoots out over the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, for there will lie before him the mightiest cataract in the world—an unbroken sheet of falling, roaring, smoking water, as long as from the Grand Central Station [New York] to Union Square, and two and a half times the height of the American Fall at Niagara; at Kimberley he will see the great pits in the earth which supply the women of the world with diamonds; in the outskirts of Johannesburg he will see the mountains of ore from which comes one third of the gold supply of the world. And, finally, when his train has at last come to a halt under the glass roof of the Victoria Terminal in Cape Town, with close on six thousand miles of track behind it, the traveler, if he has any imagination and any appreciation in his soul, will make a little pilgrimage to that spot on the slopes of Table Mountain known as “World’s View,” where another statue of that same bulky, thick-set, shabbily clad man [Cecil Rhodes], this time guarded by many British lions, stares northward over Africa. He will take his stand in front of that mighty memorial and, lifting his hat, will say, “You, sir, were a great man, the greatest this benighted continent has ever known; and if one day it is transformed into a land of civilization, of peace, and of prosperity, it will be due, more than anything else, to the great iron highway, from the Nile’s mouth to the continent’s end, which is the fulfilment of your dream.”

The words of the magazine writer are too strong for us to repeat. We think of Moffat and Livingstone, and others, men and women, whose lives laid upon the altar of Africa did more to open the Dark Continent than ever could be done by gold and steel. But we recognize in the dauntless spirit of the great South African, and in the explorers and the pioneers of commerce, agents of divine Providence that has decreed the opening up of the African continent, with all the rest of the world, in this generation; because the time has come when the last gospel message is to be carried to every tribe and people. We are beholding wonderful things in these last days.

W. A. S.