I can but finish by again congratulating you, and by saying that your success has given me great encouragement in the work that I have still to accomplish. Yours, C. J. RHODES. *PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.* Since bringing out the first edition of this book, I have revisited the United States, Australasia, and Argentina in order that I might again compare the difficulties before us in Africa with the difficulties which these new countries have already overcome. I am now more than ever satisfied that its possibilities are infinitely great. Of the fertility and natural resources of the country I had no doubt. But two great stumbling-blocks loomed ahead: they were the prevalence of malaria and the difficulty of initial development owing to the dearth of navigable waterways. The epoch-making studies by Major Ross and other scientists of the influence of the mosquito on the distribution of malaria have shewn that we are within measurable distance of largely minimising its ravages, if not of completely removing it from the necessary risks of African life. A comparison of the death-rates in Calcutta, Hong-Kong, and other malarious regions with the present rates has also proved how immense is the influence of settlement on climate. As to the other obstacle, the question of access, I was amazed to find that in the United States the railways practically have absorbed all the carrying trade of the magnificent waterways, which intersect the whole country east of the Rockies. Naturally, these waterways were of immense assistance in the original opening up of the country, but now that the railways are constructed, they are of little importance. I would also point out to those who still profess mistrust of the practical objects of railway construction in Africa, the object-lesson which the trans-American lines afford. They were pushed ahead of all settlement into the great unknown exactly as the Cape to Cairo line is being pushed ahead to-day. But there is this difference: in America they penetrated silent wastes tenanted by naught else than the irreconcilable Redskin, the prairie marmot, and the bison; while in Africa they pass through lands rich in Nature’s products and teeming with peoples who do not recede before the white man’s march. Another point: when the main railway system of Africa, as sketched out by Mr. Rhodes, is complete, there will be no single point as remote from a port as are some of the districts in America which are to-day pouring out their food-stuffs along hundreds of miles of rail.