Notwithstanding these successive disasters the Chartered Company and the settlers had done much during those few troublous years to develop the country. The rinderpest and the native rebellion made it all the more urgent to complete the railway system that was to open communication with the coast. The Company hurried on the construction. In November 1897 the line had been extended from Mafeking to Bulawayo, and in 1899 the line from Salisbury to Beira was completed. Then the line from Bulawayo to Salisbury was pushed on; this connection has just been completed, and one can now travel by rail without changing carriage from Capetown to Beira _viâ_ Bulawayo and Salisbury. Another line is being constructed through the Wankie coalfields which will cross the Zambesi near the Victoria Falls. How short a time ago it seems since the man who had visited the Falls was regarded as a great explorer! Other branches, too, will shortly open communication to the various goldfields. [Illustration: MACHECKIE RAILWAY BRIDGE ON THE SALISBURY LINE, MASHONALAND RAILWAY] It is worthy of notice that Rhodesia, though the most remote from the coast, was the one State in South Africa whose industries were kept going during the war, so that the conclusion of peace found her ready for an immediate expansion of her trade. This was due to the wise policy of the Company. Early in 1900 it was represented to the Administration that unless communication, which had been interrupted at the commencement of the war, was soon restored, work could not proceed on the mines; the native labourers would have to be discharged, and the mines would have to be closed down. The Administration realised that it would not only be disastrous to throw so many Europeans and natives out of work, but that the closing down of the mines would convince the Matabele that there was truth in the report which the Boer agents were diligently spreading to the effect that the English were being driven out of the country, and that the opportunity for rebellion had arrived. The Administration therefore came to the assistance of the mining community by making arrangements for the importation of sufficient necessaries for six months through Beira, at a fixed transport rate of £25 per ton from Port Elizabeth. The Company found itself about £5 a ton out of pocket by this arrangement, but great distress was saved. At the opening of the war the price of grain and meal rose 100 per cent.; but the Hon. Sir Arthur Lawley, the then Administrator of Matabeleland, warned the Chamber of Commerce at Bulawayo that if the cost of necessaries rose too high he would open the Government Stores--in which a large reserve of supplies had been laid up at the outbreak of the war--and sell to white men at a reasonable rate. This had the desired effect for a time, but later on the merchants took an unfair advantage of the situation, whereupon the Administrator carried out his threat, and so brought prices sharply down again.