Otavi copper-mining country and will doubtless be extended, in the not far-distant future, to the Rhodesian border, tapping the main line of the Cape-to-Cairo system in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls. [Illustration: Mr. and Mrs. Powell travelling by railway motor-car in German Africa. Illustration: A way-station on the line of the German East African Railway. RAILROADING THROUGH A JUNGLE.] I have laid considerable stress upon the subject of railways, because it seems to me that in them lies the chief hope of the German colonies, for wherever the railway goes there goes civilisation. Throughout the vast and potentially rich regions thus being opened up by the locomotive the imperial government is pouring out money unstintingly in the construction of roads, bridges, and reservoirs, the sinking of artesian wells, the establishment of telegraph lines and postal routes, the erection of schools and hospitals, in furnishing trees to the planters and machinery and live-stock to the farmers, and in assisting immigration. So, if keeping everlastingly at it brings success, I cannot but feel that the day will come when these officers and officials, these soldiers and settlers, these traders and tribesmen, will find their places and play their parts in the Kaiser's imperial scheme of a new and greater Germany over the sea. CHAPTER VIII “ALL ABOARD FOR CAPE TOWN!” In Bulawayo, which is in Matabeleland, stands one of the most significant and impressive statues in the world. From the middle of that dusty, sun-baked thoroughfare known as Main Street rises the bronze image of a bulky, thick-set, shabbily clad man, his hands clasped behind him, his feet planted firmly apart, as he stares in profound meditation northward over Africa. Cecil John Rhodes was the dreamer's name, 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 centre and picking up trade all the way.”