Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/327

 Beit, one of the bonanza kings of Johannesburg and Kimberley, left six million dollars to be used in completing the gap between the African and Egyptian lines. When the "Cape to Cairo" line is finally completed, it will become as famous as the line from Moscow, in Russia, to a port on the Sea of Japan. This line was built by the Russians, and the distance from Moscow to Japan is now made in comfortable trains in ten days. Think of ten days of continuous travel in the same coaches, in the same train, and on the same railway! Great as is America, it has nothing like it; although we are talking of a line from New York to Buenos Aires, in South America. Thousands of miles of the proposed line are in operation, but there are gaps in Central and South America so difficult that it may never be completed, while the "Cape to Cairo" line may be a reality within the next twenty years Always remember that in South Africa there is no rich, black soil such as you see in Illinois, Iowa, eastern Kansas, and other of our best states. At least, I have not seen any. The soil in Africa is usually thin and red, and stones abound nearly everywhere. No part of Africa has as reliable a rainfall as the best parts of the United States. But nevertheless there is a fascination about this frontier country to an American; were I a younger man, probably the "spirit of the Veldt" would appeal to me more strongly than it does. All sorts of problems, including irrigation and dry-farming, are being worked out here. I have seen little country in Africa that looks any better than Kansas looks two hundred miles from the river, and the trouble is lack of a dependable rainfall. Along the coast there is so