e long chain of
mountains from which we had emerged stretching in a huge arc from
south-east to north, with some bold outlying peaks flung forward from
the main mass, all by their sharp, stern outlines, in which similar
forms were constantly repeated, showing that they were built of the same
hard crystalline rocks. Beneath, the country spread out in a vast,
wooded plain, green or brown, according as the wood was denser in one
part and sparser in another. It was still low wood, with no sense of
tropical luxuriance about it, and the ground still dry, with not a
glimpse of water anywhere. Here and there out of this sea of forest rose
isolated heights whose abrupt craggy tops glistened in the sunlight. To
the east the plain fell slowly away to an immensely distant horizon,
where lay the deadly flats that border the Indian Ocean. Except where
the iron roofs of the huts at Chimoyo shone, there was not a sign of
human dwelling or human labour through this great wild country, lying
still and monotonous under a cloudless sky. It has been a wilderness
from the beginning of the world until now, traversed, no doubt, many
centuries ago by the gold-seekers whose favourite track went up from the
coast past Great Zimbabwye into what is now Matabililand, traversed
again occasionally in later times by Portuguese traders, but in no wise
altered during these thousands of years from its original aspect. Now at
last its turn has come. A new race of gold-seekers have built a railway,
and along the railway, wherever there are not swamps to breed fever, the
land will be taken for farms, and the woods will be cut down, and the
wild beasts will slink away, and trading-posts will grow into villages,
and the journey from Beira to Bulawayo will become as easy and familiar
as is to-day the journey from Chicago to San Francisco, through a
country which a century ago was as little known as this African
wilderness.

The railway from Chimoyo to the sea had in 1895 one of the narrowest
gauges in the world (two feet), and its tiny locomotives and cars wore
almost a toy air. It has since been widened to the three feet six gauge
of the other South African lines. The construction was difficult, for
the swampy lands along the coast are largely under water during the
rains, but the gain to the country has been enormous. Not only has the
railway abridged the toilsome and costly ox transport of goods from
Beira to the edge of the high country--a transport whose d