MIGRANTS FROM BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25390, 13 January 1948, Page 2

MIGRANTS FROM BRITAIN

OVERLAND JOURNEY TO SOUTH AFRICA 10,000 MILES BY MOTOR CONVOY (Frofh Our Own Correspondent.) NEW YORK, December 30. Over the long, hard road between England and South Africa, hundreds of frustrated Britons are travelling south toward a new promised land (writes A. T. Steele, in a dispatch from Kano, Nigeria, to the “New York Herald Tribune”). More than 400 completed a 10,000mile automobile trip across the width of Europe and the length of Africa during the last dry season. Scores of others gave up discouraged or disgusted, before the goal. And now the movement is in full swing again, with every prospect that last season’s migration will be exceeded in volume. The migration is a sort of streamlined version of the American movement toward California in 1849, and the hardships are scarcely less severe. With air lines crowded and steamships booked for many months in advance, numbers of Britons embarked on the rigorous overland journey to South Africa rather than face the austerity of another winter in England. This dirty Moslem city, in the interior of Nigeria, is an important crossroad point on the long trek from London to the Cape. Here the tired travellers halt for a few days of repairs and rest after the difficult crossing of the Sahara Desert. At Kano, less than half their journey is behind them. A few give up when they get here. Most go doggedly on their way. The emigrants are preponderantly men, but among them are a number of women and children. They arrive in all sorts of conditions and all kinds of vehicles. Many are making the trip in parties organised by promoters at London. Some have discovered too late that they are victims of a racket. They have sunk their savings into an “all expense” motor trip to Softth Africa only to find themselves stranded in the wilds when money and their sponsors run out. Quite a number of the migrant parties are well managed and well financed, and these often go through with a minimum of delay and difficulty. But sickness, mechanical breakdowns. financial destitution and quarrels are so common that British police authorities here have their hands full dealing with them.

Slowed by French Red Tape z Robert Hartley, a young Englishman, who is one of the 50 Britons pausing here on his way south, told me the story of his experiences. It is not an unusual one.

Mr Hartley, an engineer, was attracted by the lure of South Africa. One day he saw an advertisement in a London newspaper offering a trip to South Africa by car, with all essential expenses paid for the equivalent of 600 dollars.

He put up 1200 dollars for his wife and himself. In due course, the patty was organised and Mr and Mrs Hartley soon found themselves travelling southward across France as members of a two-car convoy of 13 men, seven women, and one child.

It took them three months to reach here. The convoy was beset bytroubles from the beginning. First, there was the problem of shipping their cars across the Mediterranean from Marseilles to Algiers. At Algiers, they and scores of others were delayed by French red tape and the problem of obtaining gasoline and supplies for the trip across the Sahara. The French, with some reason, consider the emigrant convoys as a troublesome nuisance, and do little to encourage them. They use up their gasoline and sometimes it is necessary to dispatch rescue parties into the desert to pick them up. At desert stations gasoline sells for more than two dollars a gallon. Wife Becomes Hysterical

“That 700-mile ride across the desert was a very rough experience,” Mr Hartley said. “For days, nothing but sand in every direction. When the wind blew the road was obliterated for miles by shifting sand. We could never have made it were it not for the French Trans-Sahara buses, which are piloted by men who know the desert like a book. Only by following their tracks were we able to keep to the route.

“At one point, we broke down but managed to' make repairs. My wife became hysterical and began screaming. I guess it was just that helpless feeling you have when you are in the middle of nothing. Once we were through it, she was all right, but she didn’t want to go any farther. As for me, I enjoyed it. It was a wonderful adventure.”

Meanwhile, Mr Hartley’s party was divided by quarrels and bitterness was deepened by the discovery that their London promoter had run out of money. The party is breaking up here, but Mr Hartley is determined somehow to reach southern Rhodesia, his objective.

From Kano the road to South Africa cuts across Africa through French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo to Uganda. Kenya, and Tanganyika. and thence southward through northern and southern Rhodesia to the Union of South Africa. By this route it is 12.000 miles from London to Capetown. It is possible, however, to lop a couple thousand miles off this distance by taking the alternative short cut.

The emigrant movement, which started in November, will continue until March, wfien the spring rains will make further- travel impossible until the next dry season.