However, there was one critical point. How could the mineral, after being mined, be transported to the coast for shipment. The intervening country was among the most sterile to be found in the continent south of the Sahara. The mining companies concerned at once suggested a railway as the only solution of the problem. But they realised very readily, from the reports of their emissaries who had ventured to Otavi, that such an undertaking was beset with difficulties innumerable, while the construction of a line upon the standard gauge would prove ruinously expensive. In order to secure extrication from their plight the companies approached the firm of Arthur Koppel of Berlin. The latter company dispatched a corps of its own surveyors to the country to spy out the desert between the coast and the mines, in order to find the best location and to report generally upon the engineering features of the scheme. When the surveyors returned to civilisation they unhesitatingly recommended a light narrow-gauge railway, such as they had built in several parts of the world where similar conditions prevailed. They advocated the 600 millimetre or two-foot gauge because it not only would meet all traffic requirements for many years to come, but its initial cost would be so much cheaper, and it could be built so much more quickly than a wider or standard gauge. The recommendation was debated at great length, and after discussing the relative estimated capital and operating costs of lines of different gauges, the overwhelming advantages presented by the “toy-line” gauge were found to outweigh any arguments that could be raised against it. The mining companies merely demanded the line as a link between the copper country and the coast for their own purposes. The country lying between the coast and the mines held out no attractions for any economic development, so that all the requisitions likely to be made by the mining companies could be met adequately by such a railway. Consequently the recommendation of the engineers was accepted, and they were entrusted with the completion of the undertaking. [Illustration: BUILDING THE OTAVI LINE THROUGH THE GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICAN BUSH Hereros, Ovambos and Italians working side by side.] When the mining companies expressed their decision they did not anticipate the extraordinary traffic which the railway would be called upon to fulfil a little later. These were duties which not only taxed the capacity of the diminutive railway to a supreme degree, but were of a character which justified the confidence of the engineers and practically saved the colony to the German Empire. [Illustration: THE PASSAGE OF THE FIRST TRAIN, GAILY DECORATED FOR THE OCCASION, OVER THE “TOY-LIKE” OTAVI RAILWAY]