CAPE TO CAIRO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12663, 17 September 1904, Page 6 (Supplement)

CAPE TO CAIRO .

Lobd Cromer, who certainly yields to no man. in knowledge of the economic needs of Egypt and the business possibilities of great transportation projects in Africa, is sure that while a complete railroad line from Capetown to Cairo may not be wholly imI practicable : as an engineering problem it is out of the question financially and commercially. The reason he gives is simply that the cost of building a railroad through th vast swamps of the Nile Valley lying between the fifth and tenth parallels of north latitude would be far too great to be justified as an investment, especially when steamers on the river might be substituted for a railroad at a small fraction of the pecuniary outlay. The part of the Nile which Lord Cromer would make the permanent connecting link between the southern and the northern parts of the proposed Cape to Cairo railway is especially favourable for reliable and adequate steamboat service. It is never seriously affected by low water and there its no important natural obstacle to the constant use of the river by vessel*! of sufficient size and power to meet the needs of traffic for generations to come, provided that the "sudd," the remarkable masses of vegetation which sometimes clog and bridge the channel of the Nile, is kept broken and cut up, a matter of comparatively small diificulty or expense. But whether by river and railroad, or wholly by rail, there will probably be,a complete line of Modern steam communication between Capetown and the Nile delta before many years. British pride is enlisted in the project, as well as British commercial spirit, and more than. half the woik is done already.