The last frontier : $b The white man's war for civilisation in AfricaPowell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
History
The last frontier : $b The white man's war for civilisation in Africa
Powell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
Africa; Africa -- Colonization
palm-oil, or other products of the bush, and nothing more.
[Illustration: Warundi warriors. German East Africa.
Illustration: Native infantry. German East Africa. A few years ago
these men were just such savages as those shown above.
THE HAND OF THE WAR LORD IN GERMAN AFRICA.]
However much the administration of the German colonies may be open
to criticism, and however slow they may have been in commercial
development, I have nothing but praise and admiration for the
accomplishments of their railway-builders. From Dar-es-Salam I
travelled inland by railway motor-car nearly to Kilamatinde, a
distance of three hundred and seventy miles, through one of the most
savage regions in Africa, over one of the best graded and ballasted
roadbeds I have ever seen. The line is now being pushed forward from
Kilamatinde toward Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, which it will reach,
so the chief engineer assured me, by the summer of 1914. From Ujiji,
which, by the way, is the place where Stanley discovered Livingstone,
a steamer service will be inaugurated to Albertville, on the Belgian
shore of the lake, whence a line is under construction to the
navigable waters of the Lualaba, which is one of the chief tributaries
of the Congo; while another line of steamers will ply between Ujiji
and Kituta, in northeastern Rhodesia, which point the British
Cape-to-Cairo system is approaching. By the close of 1914, in all
probability therefore, the traveller who lands at Dar-es-Salam will
be able to travel by train, with the passage across Lake Tanganyika
as the only interruption, to the Cape of Good Hope, or by train and
river steamer to the mouth of the Congo, and in perfect comfort and
safety all the way. As Walfish Bay, the only harbour in Southwest
Africa worthy of the name, belongs to England, the Germans, finding
themselves unable to buy it and appreciating that a harbourless colony
is all but worthless, promptly set to work and built themselves
artificial harbours at Swakopmund and at Lüderitz Bay, though at
appalling cost. That Germany is exceedingly anxious to acquire
Walfish Bay, and that she stands ready to make almost any reasonable
concession to obtain it, there is little doubt. The mere fact that
Walfish Bay is owned by England is a source of constant aggravation
to the Germans, for it lies squarely in the middle of their Southwest
African coast-line, its roomy roadstead and deep anchorage being in
sharp contrast to the German port of Lüderitz Bay, which is being
rapidly sanded up, and that of Swakopmund, a harbour on which the
Berlin Government has already thrown away several millions of marks.
Lüderitz Bay is already connected with the inland town of Keetmanshoop
by three hundred and fifty miles of narrow-gauge line, and plans are
now under consideration for pushing this southeastward so as to link
up with the South African system near Kimberley, while from Swakopmund
another iron highway, four hundred miles long, gives access to the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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