Stratford Evening Post With which is Incorporated "THE EGMONT SETTLER" Established 1890. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1931. ACROSS AFRICA BY RAIL

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 214, 19 August 1931, Page 4

Stratford Evening Post With which is Incorporated "THE EGMONT SETTLER" Established 1890. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1931. ACROSS AFRICA BY RAIL

IT is 75 years since David Livingstone completed the first journey made by a white man across Africa, and that journey had taken two years. Now, following broadly Livingston's track from Angola to Mozambique, a very different transcontinental journey is being made. The first train to cross Africa from ocean to ocean left Lobito recently for Beira, a distance of 2,949 miles by the route of the railway. The journey has been rendered possible by, and is in celebration of, the completion of the western section of the route, that from Lobito Bay by the Benguela Railway and its continuation through the Belgian Congo to the Katanga copper field —a field which extends into the adjacent regions of Northern Rhodesia. The change that has come over this land in a single generation is remarkable. As diamonds drew the railway from the Cape to Kimberley, and as gold drew the railway on to the Rand, so copper has drawn the railway to the heart of South Central Africa. Katanga, but yesterday a thousand miles from anywhere, almost unknown to the white man, is now the most highly developed province of the Belgian Congo. It has a considerable white population; its mines have already exported copper to the value of £52,000,000; and in Elisabethville it has an attractive capital which at the moment, is indulging in its first International Exhibition. Across the border, in Northern Rhodesia, there is promise of an almost equal development. And whether in Portuguese, Belgian or British territory the great change has been brought about, mainly by British enterprise and with British capital. This is as it should be, for the opening up of the whole region originated with the British. If to the courage and

persistence of one man in particular, Sir Robert Williams, this change is due, then Livingstone was the true pioneer. It was Livingstone who first kept open the road to the north, and it was the reading of entries in Livingstone's journal that guided Williams, as he has himself said, to his discovery of the immense mineral wealth along the Congo-Zambesi divide. Williams was an early associate of Cecil Rhodes and an ardent believer in the Cape-to-Cairo railway scheme. But neither he nor Rhodes was foolish enough to suppose that a railway from the Cape to Cairo was an economic proposition in itself. The Cape-to-Cairo line was meant as a backbone from which ribs would extend on either side. Two years before his death Rhodes wrote: "The junctions to the east ana" west coasts, which will occur in the future, will be outlets for the traffic obtained along the route of the line as it passes through the centre of Africa." That was written in 1.900, the year in which Williams got his ilr.it mineral concession in Katanga. To-day two great "junction" lines are complete and, as Rhodes foresaw, l hey are taking to the markets of The world "the traffic obtained along the route of the (main Cape-to-Cairo) line." They are

also opening up lands rich in agri cultural and mineral possibilities.