Africa

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Many of the native routes have been superseded by the improved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 for wheeled 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 fromDar-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 theAfrican 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

Lourenco 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

Niger had reached 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 lastnamed is the railway

(completed in 1905) from Port Sudan on the Red Sea to the Nile a little

south of Berber, thus placing the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan within easy reach of

the markets of the world. A west to east connexion across the continent by

rail and steamer, from the mouth of the Congo to Port Sudan, was arranged

in 1906 when an agreement was entered into by the Congo and Sudan

governments for the building of a railway from Lado, on the Nile, to the

Congo frontier, there to meet a railway starting from the river Congo near

Stanley Falls. A railway of considerable importance is that from Jibuti in

the Gulf of Aden to Harrar, giving access to the markets of southern

Abyssinia.

Besides the railways mentioned there are several others of less

importance. Lines run from Loanda and other ports of Angola towards the

Congo State frontier, and from Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam on the coast of

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