Preparing landing places in this part of Africa was a big job in itself. Not only were thousands of trees cut down to make clear spaces, but they were dug up by the roots to prevent them from sprouting again. Many of the native chieftains take great interest in keeping clear these airdromes, which would soon be gobbled up by the jungles if left to themselves. They have also broken up and carried away from these spaces the giant ant hills that cover the land of Central Africa like freckles on a boy’s face. These hills, which are often twenty-five or thirty feet high, and forty or fifty feet thick, are the home of the white ant. To make one airdrome in northern Rhodesia a force of seven hundred natives worked five months taking out twenty-five thousand tons of the heavy, rock-like clay with which the ants, grain by grain, had built their African apartment houses. Were our airplane to strike an ant hill in landing, it would surely be wrecked. From northern Rhodesia down into Cape Colony our flight is not quite so difficult. The country is lower, and there are more open spaces. At Livingstone we begin the third stage of the journey, and there cross the Zambesi, looking down upon its wonderful falls, larger than Niagara. From Bulawayo, the next important stop, we bear to the east as we go south, passing over the Transvaal, with its diamonds and gold mines. We stop at Johannesburg and then fly to the westward on down to Bloemfontein. Our last flight takes us to Table Mountain, with Cape Town and the Atlantic Ocean at its foot. We are at the end of the continent, and have completed our fifty-two hundred miles through the air. Those who know best the conditions in Africa believe that the establishment of a regular air service along the Cape-to-Cairo route will be difficult. During the rainy season dense fogs are common, making flying uncertain and dangerous, while at times the smoke from forest fires causes great trouble. On account of the rapid evaporation, the storage of gasoline in the tropical belt is extremely difficult. Sudden changes in atmospheric conditions form another serious danger; but with the development of wireless stations along the route, and the use of the radio telephone, aviators can be warned while in flight of the weather conditions ahead and shape their courses accordingly. Meantime, that all-British line that Cecil Rhodes planned comes nearer to completion each year. In thinking of the famous Cape-to-Cairo route most people consider it as a continuous railway trip, or as an iron track spanning Africa from south to north. This it will perhaps never be. We shall go by steam from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope, but almost one third of the way will be over navigable rivers and lakes. This was Rhodes’s idea, and it is also that of every practical engineer who has examined the country and its traffic possibilities.