The first flight from Cairo to the Cape was made by two officers of the South African Air Force, Colonel P. Van Ryneveld and Lieutenant C. J. Q. Brand. Of four competitors who started from Cairo, they were the only ones to land at Cape Town. They had several accidents and wrecked two machines on the way. Leaving Cairo on February 10, 1920, they took twenty-eight days to reach Cape Town, although their actual flying time was counted in hours. Their nearest competitor covered only half the distance, while the two others did not succeed in getting across the desert wastes of the Sudan. In the airplane of our imagination, let us take the trip they made. We may be sure of excitement, for even under favourable conditions we are starting out on one of the most dangerous air journeys known to the world. But let us first look at a map and pick out our route. It is a jagged line, extending from north to south, the length of the continent. It is marked with dots and triangles, each showing a place where we may land. As we look at the map it seems quite simple and easy, but actual experience proves its great difficulties. We shall leave Cairo at dawn and follow the Nile to Khartum. This is a flight of one thousand miles, but landing places have been prepared along the entire route at intervals of two hundred miles. We shall stop at one of these long before noon and spend several hours to avoid the heat of the day, when gusts of hot air, rising from the sun-baked desert, make it dangerous to fly at low altitudes. At the start of our flight we shall rise a mile or more to avoid these treacherous currents, which frequently take the form of “air spouts,” often visible on account of the dust and sand they have sucked up with them. Such currents have force enough to toss our plane about like a leaf in the wind. With these great gusts of hot air spouting upward are cold currents rushing downward. These are even more dangerous, as they are always invisible. Consequently, we shall fly high, to avoid a “bumpy” passage, as our pilot calls it, and in landing must be careful lest we get caught in an air pocket. From Khartum we start on the second, longest, and most dangerous leg of the journey. This covers a distance of twenty-six hundred miles, extending to Livingstone near Victoria Falls in northern Rhodesia. We shall follow, in a general way, the Blue Nile to Ehri, and then go almost due south to Uganda and Lake Victoria, the second largest lake of the world. We shall skirt the eastern edge of the Sudd, in which there is hardly a single safe landing place. Except in the main channels, masses of papyrus completely hide the water, and if we should come down in that treacherous region we could hardly hope to get out alive. We should be unable to walk, swim, or float in the dense tangle.