t
lap of what is in many respects the most picturesque journey in the
world. Other railways tunnel mighty mountains, cross seething rivers,
traverse scorching deserts, and invade the clouds, but none has so
romantic an interest or is bound up with such adventure and imagination
as this. The reason is that at Capetown begins the southern end of the
famous seven-thousand-mile Cape-to-Cairo Route, one of the greatest
dreams of England's prince of practical dreamers, Cecil Rhodes. Today,
after thirty years of conflict with grudging Governments, the project is
practically an accomplished fact.

Woven into its fabric is the story of a German conspiracy that was as
definite a cause of the Great War as the Balkan mess or any other phase
of Teutonic international meddling. Along its highway the American
mining engineer has registered a little known evidence of his
achievement abroad. The route taps civilization and crosses the last
frontiers of progress. The South African end discloses an illuminating
example of profitable nationalization. Over it still broods the
personality of the man who conceived it and who left his impress and his
name on an empire. Attention has been directed anew to the enterprise
from the fact that shortly before I reached Africa two aviators flew
from Cairo to the Cape and their actual flying time was exactly
sixty-eight hours.

The unbroken iron spine that was to link North and South Africa and
which Rhodes beheld in his vision of the future, will probably not be
built for some years. Traffic in Central Africa at the moment does not
justify it. Besides, the navigable rivers in the Belgian Congo, Egypt,
and the Soudan lend themselves to the rail and water route which, with
one short overland gap, now enables you to travel the whole way from
Cape to Cairo.

The very inception of the Cape-to-Cairo project gives you a glimpse of
the working of the Rhodes mind. He left the carrying out of details to
subordinates. When he looked at the map of Africa,--and he was forever
studying maps,--and ran that historic line through it from end to end
and said, "It must be all red," he took no cognizance of the
extraordinary difficulties that lay in the way. He saw, but he did not
heed, the rainbow of many national flags that spanned the continent. A
little thing like millions of square miles of jungle, successions of
great lakes, or wild and primitive regions peopled with cannibals, meant
nothing. Money and energy w