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Rh communication as Africa, and it was only in the last decade of the 19th century that decided steps were taken to remedy these defects. The African rivers, with the exception of the middle Congo and its affluents, and the middle course of the three other chief rivers, are generally unfavourable to navigation, and throughout the tropical region almost the sole routes have been native footpaths, admitting the passage of a single file of porters, on whose heads all goods have been carried from place to place. Certain of these native trade routes are, however, much frequented, and lead for hundreds of miles from the coast to the interior. In the desert regions of the north transport is by caravans of camels, and in the south ox-wagons, before the advent of railways, supplied the general means of locomotion. The native trade routes led generally from the centres of greatest population or production to the seaports by the nearest route, but to this rule there was a striking exception. The dense forests of Upper Guinea and the upper Congo proved a barrier which kept the peoples of the Sudan from direct access to the sea, and from Timbuktu to Darfur the great trade routes were either west to east or south to north across the Sahara. The principal caravan routes across the desert lead from different points in Morocco and Algeria to Timbuktu; from Tripoli to Timbuktu, Kano and other great marts of the western and central Sudan; from Bengazi to Wadai; and from Assiut on the Nile through the Great Oasis and the Libyan desert to Darfur. South of the equator the principal long-established routes are those from Loanda to the Lunda and Baluba countries; from Benguella via Bihe to Urua and the upper Zambezi; from Mossamedes across the Kunene to the upper Zambezi; and from Bagamoyo, opposite Zanzibar, to Tanganyika. Many of the native routes have been superseded by the improved communications introduced by Europeans in the utilization of waterways and the construction of roads and railways. Steamers have been conveyed overland in sections and launched on the interior waterways above the obstructions to navigation. On the upper Nile and Albert Nyanza their introduction was due to Sir S. Baker and General C. G. Gordon (1871–1876); on the middle Congo and its affluents to Sir H. M. Stanley and the officials of the Congo Free State, as well as to the Baptist missionaries on the river; and on Lake Nyasa to the supporters of the Scottish mission. A small vessel was launched on Victoria Nyanza 1896 by a British mercantile firm, and a British government steamer made its first trip in November 1900. On the other great lakes and on most of the navigable rivers steamers were plying regularly before the close of the 19th century. However, the shallowness of the water in the Niger and Zambezi renders their navigation possible only to light-draught steamers. Roads suitable forwheeled traffic are few. The first attempt at road-making in Central Africa on a large scale was that of Sir T. Fowell Buxton and Mr (afterwards Sir W.) Mackinnon, who completed the first section of a track leading into the interior from Dar-es-Salaam (1879). A still more important undertaking was the “Stevenson road,” begun in 1881 from the head of Lake Nyasa to the south end of Tanganyika, and constructed mainly at the expense of Mr James Stevenson, a director of the African Lakes Company—a company which helped materially in the opening up of Nyasaland. The Stevenson road forms a link in the “Lakes route” into the heart of the continent. In British East Africa a road connecting Mombasa with Victoria Nyanza was completed in 1897, but has since been in great measure superseded by the railway. Good roads have also been made in German East Africa and Cameroon and in Madagascar.

Railways, the chief means of affording easy access to the interior of the continent, were for many years after their first introduction to Africa almost entirely confined to the extreme north and south (Egypt, Algeria, Cape Colony and Natal). Apart from short lines in Senegal, Angola and at Lourenço Marques, the rest of the continent was in 1890 without a railway system. In Egypt the Alexandria and Cairo railway dates from 1855, while in 1877 the lines open reached about 1100 miles, and in 1890, in addition to the lines traversing the delta, the Nile had been ascended to Assiut. In Algeria the construction of an inter-provincial railway was decreed in 1857, but was still incomplete twenty years later, when the total length of the lines open hardly exceeded 300 miles. Before 1890 an extension to Tunis had been opened, while the plateau had been crossed by the lines to Ain Sefra in the west and Biskra in the east. In Senegal the railway from Dakar to St Louis had been commenced and completed during the ’eighties, while the first section of the Senegal-Niger railway, that from Kayes to Bafulabe, was also constructed during the same decade. In Cape Colony, where in about 1880 the railways were limited to the neighbourhood of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, the next decade saw the completion of the trunk-line from Cape Town to Kimberley, with a junction at De Aar with that from Port Elizabeth. The northern frontier had, however, nowhere been crossed. In Natal, also, the main line had not advanced beyond Ladysmith. The settlement, c. 1890, of the main lines of the partition of the continent was followed by many projects for the opening up of the possessions and spheres of influence of the various powers by the building of railways; several of these schemes being carried through in a comparatively short time. The building of railways was undertaken by the governments concerned, nearly all the African lines being state-owned. In the Congo Free State a railway, which took some ten years to build, connecting the navigable waters of the lower and middle Congo, was completed in 1898, while in 1906 the middle and upper courses of the river were linked by the opening of a line past Stanley Falls. Thus the vast basin of the Congo was rendered easily accessible to commercial enterprise. In North Africa the Algerian and Tunisian railways were largely extended, and proposals were made for a great trunk-line from Tangier to Alexandria. The railway from Ain Sefra was continued southward towards Tuat, the project of a trans-Saharan line having occupied the attention of French engineers since 1880. In French West Africa railway communication between the upper Senegal and the upper Niger was completed in 1904; from the Guinea coast at Konakry another line runs north-east to the upper Niger, while from Dahomey a third line goes to the Niger at Garu. In the British colonies on the same coast the building of railways was begun in 1896. A line to Kumasi was completed in 1903, and the line from Lagos to the lower Illorin in 1908. Thence the railway was continued to the Niger at Jebba. From Baro, a port on the lower Niger which can be reached by steamers all the year round, another railway, begun in 1907, goes via Bida, Zungeru and Zaria to Kano, a total distance of 400 miles. A line from Jebba to Zungeru affords connexion with the Lagos railway.

But the greatest development of the railway systems was in the south and east of the continent. In British East Africa a survey for a railway from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza was made in 1892. The first rails were laid in 1896 and the line reached the lake in December 1901. Meanwhile, there had been a great extension of railways in South Africa. Lines from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban and Delagoa Bay all converged on the newly risen city of Johannesburg, the centre of the Rand gold mines. A more ambitious project was that identified with the name of Cecil Rhodes, namely, the extension northward of the railway from Kimberley with the object of effecting a continuous railway connexion from Cape Town to Cairo. The line from Kimberley reached Bulawayo in 1897. (Bulawayo is also reached from Beira on the east coast by another line, completed in 1902, which goes through Portuguese territory and Mashonaland.) The extension of the line northward from Bulawayo was begun in 1899, the Zambezi being bridged, immediately below the Victoria Falls, in 1905. From this point the railway goes north to the Katanga district of the Congo State. In the north of the continent a step towards the completion of the Cape to Cairo route was taken in the opening in 1899 of the railway from Wadi Haifa to Khartum. A line of greater economic importance than the last named is the railway (completed in 1905) from Port Sudan on the Red Sea to the Nile a little south of Berber, thus placing the