At the other end of the continent, in Bulawayo, in the dusty, sun-baked thoroughfare known as Main Street, stands another statue—the bronze image of a short, thick-set, carelessly clad man, his hands clasped behind him, his feet planted firmly apart, as he stares in profound meditation northward over Africa. The name of the dreamer was Cecil John Rhodes, and in his vision he saw twin lines of steel stretching from the Cape of Good Hope straight away to the shores of the Mediterranean; a railway, to use his own words, “cutting Africa through the center and picking up trade all the way.” Though the stupendous project which he envisioned is yet to be completed, it is due to him, more than to any single individual, that the eastern and southern portions of the map of Africa are painted red. No two men were ever more unlike than Lavigerie and Rhodes. Both empire-builders, both apostles of civilization, one gained his ends by tactfulness, the other by ruthlessness; one stood for the mission-station, the other for the machine-gun; one relied on the power of prayer and proselytism, the other on the pick and the pound sterling. The _Pères Blancs_ organized by Lavigerie carried the cross and the tricolor southward to the Ubanghi; the engineers employed by Rhodes carried the railway and the Union Jack northward to the Congo. As far as the poles apart in character and methods, they yet had this in common: both were inspired by deep patriotism, both were possessed of boundless imagination and inexhaustible enthusiasm. Between them they opened up a continent to civilization. * * * * * Whoever had the placing of the great missionary-statesman’s statue in Biskra must have known the man. For the eyes gaze eagerly out into the clean, wind-swept spaces of the desert, while the back is turned in contempt and aversion upon the gaming-houses, the dance-halls, and the brothels of the town. Perhaps because they are so avid for the extremely dubious entertainments which the place has to offer, the thousands of tourists who flock to Biskra every winter find time to bestow on the rapt white figure no more than a cursory glance. To most of these the name of Lavigerie means less than nothing, whereas that of Robert Hichens is familiar to them all!