Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/336

 far I have seen no great number of pretty women, who always distinguish a dull town, but possibly they have been kept in by a rain which began falling soon after my arrival. Work is in progress here on a government building which would do credit to a state capital in America, but this not the capital of Rhodesia; that honor belongs to Salisbury, three hundred miles away. The new building will be occupied by officials of the British company which owns Rhodesia, and the post-*office When the Union Pacific Railway was built, in the days immediately following the Civil War, the government gave the company a strip of land on both sides of the track, as a reward for developing the country. In like manner, the English government gave Rhodesia to certain capitalists, except that in this case the capitalists govern the country; they collect taxes, try criminals, hang them when necessary, collect customs, and otherwise administer public affairs. The police and militia of Rhodesia serve the Rhodesia company; when a man buys public land, he buys it of the Rhodesia company; but back of the Rhodesia company, John Bull is a silent but powerful figure, and nothing can be done without his approval and consent. India was governed many years by the East India company, but finally Victoria was made Empress of India. Rhodesia will eventually become a member of the South-African union, certainly; it may be even closer than that to the British crown Flies and mosquitoes terrorize me in Africa. There is a fly here which gives the dreaded Sleeping Sickness with its bite, and there is a mosquito which gives you typhoid. I strike at both insects as promptly as the average man