AFRICA IN TRANSFORMATION.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2482, 24 May 1909, Page 8

AFRICA IN TRANSFORMATION.

(By Cyrus C. Adams.)

In less than two generations explorers covered Africa with a network of 1400 routes which they had followed through the unknown. They brought the Dark Continent into the light so that all men could see it. Nearly all the large phases of this colossal work were ended twenty years ago; and then tho time was ripe to test Hie capacity of Africa to confer greater blessings upon its native population and the outside world. The progress of this movement is even more wonderful than the great achievements ct pioneer exploration. We do not yet realise the full meaning of this era of development, for it is too near us to bo seen in correct perspective ; but a few illustrations of t-ho now aspects of Africa may give an idea of the wonderful transformation that is coming over the scene. When Stanley wrote that, in a quarter oi a century, a railroad would join Victoria Nyanza with the Indian Ocean many laughed at him as a visionary. Eastmonth appeared a handsome handbook ot tnis Uganda railroad, 584 miles long, completed in 1902 and joining the north-east corner of the lake with the ocean at Mombassa. Speke was a year and Stanley eight months on tho way to the lake, but tourists now make the journey in the daylight hours of two days. It is a common event to pass from the train to a lake steamer, travel around the coasts tf the second, largest of all fresh water seas, touching at every port, and return to the ocean in about a month.

A statesman, opposing this railroad project in the British Parliament, declared that “for every mile of rail laid through the country of tho Masai, you will sacrifice the life of a white man.” But these braves of old go on the warpath no more, and many are police in tho service of the whites. High up on tho western plateau, where the Masai used to stampede the cattle of their enemies, European stock is kept to improve the native breeds, and white ranchmen are herding European sheep, reared for their wool, under the equator, the industry being possible because the lanu stands much over a mile above the sea.

Thirty-five years ago, Mombassa, Tanga, and Dares Salaam were known chiefly as places where miserable gangs of slaves were marched through these coast towns and huddled into filthy dhows, to be sold in Zanzibar or in the Persian Gulf. But Africa is now wholly redeemed, excepting a bit of it in the Soudan, from the shame of Arab slave raiding. These once notorious towns are now thriving young cities, with well-kept streets, public gardens, hospitals, and railroads stretching far into the interior. They are ports of call for several steamship lines, and Tanga is clamoring for more warehouse and wharfage facilities, because the accommodation for the train loads of sisal hemp, cotton, ground nuts, hides, and other commodities are not adequate. Even hundreds of miles from railroads the impulse of the new life of Africa is felt. In Katanga, near the sources of the Congo, is a large area, believed to ce one of the great copper fields of tho world, and rich also in gold. The enterprises developing there cannot wait for tho railroad now extending toward it from Benguela on the Atlantic, or for the branch of the Cape to Cairo line that is to tap this region in the heart of tropical Africa. Every month gou is carried on the backs of nicn or in dug-outs on the streams to far-away Victoria Nyanza, whence it is shipped to the sea, the export for August last amounting to £33,200. “Give us transportation or this country is not worth a penny,” is the cry rising in all parts of Africa, and it is meeting with a wonderful response. There is now continuous steam transportation, by rail and water, from the Nile delta to Gondokoro, within 3000 miles of the equator; and from Capetown to Broken Hill, 1940 miles north, crossing the Zambesi at Victoria Falls, now _ a tourist resort, though not a dozen white men saw them for nearly fifty years after Livingstone told of their existence. Ihe Congo Government is building railroads around every stretch of rapids that impede navigation in the Congo, and in a few years it expects to have steam transportation ou or along the river for 2500 miles. The whistles of locomotives are heard daily in the capitals of Dahomey and Ashanti, once notorious as the scenes of wholesale human butchery. The railroad from Lagos will soon cross the Niger on its way through northern Nigeria, the cotton regions of greatest promise in Africa. These are only the larger enterprises now in construction; a score of others are on tho way. The French have lifted the veil of mystery from the Sahara. On their camels, trained to fleetness, they cross the desert in all directions, travelling lightly laden, for they march fast enough replenish supplies at various oases. They have tamed the desert bandits, made the routes safe, established regular postal service across the desert, and their transSaharan telegraph lino, now advanced a third hf tho way, has been surveyed throughout. Men trained to scientific service go with each expedition, with the result that exact geographical knowledge of no other part of the uncivilised world has advanced so rapidly in tho past ten vears as that of Sahara; and the French are also creating new oases by tapping the ground waters that spread in a wide sheet under the permeable strata of the thirst lands.

All this progress in many lines is splendidly serving the material and moral welfare of millions of the black race. They are learning the primary lesson in human progress that there is blessing in downright hard work. It is the brawn and the trained skill of the black, as well as the directive impulse of tho white race that must uphold and advance the regeneration of the continent.

At a sitting of the Academy of Medicine, Paris, Professor Hallopeau introduced a young man of twenty-seven with a splendid crop of hair. The professor explained that eighteen months ago the young man had been completely bald, but Dr Ohicotot had tried experiments on him with astonishing success. The treatment consisted solely of the alternate use of Xrays and of electric high-frequency currents. Dr Ohicotot claimed no secrecy for his method., and 1 had merely undertaken the experiment to show what wonders couldl be worked by electricity in cases of baldness.