The coast-railway spoken of by the _Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten_ was to link up German South-West Africa with Angola, in which country, also, the Germans hoped to obtain extensive mining and agricultural concessions, thus forwarding their established policy of peaceful penetration by means of commerce and railways, and establishing economic interests which might be expected to lead to political developments in due course, and so prepare the way for an eventual seizure of "the prize that awaits us." The Germans had also sought to finance the completion eastwards of the Lobito Bay or Benguela Railway, to which reference will be made later on in connection with the development of the Katanga district of the Belgian Congo; but the condition they advanced, namely that the control of the line should be left in their hands, coupled with their adoption of suspicious lines of policy in other directions,[63] led to their railway proposals being declined by the Portuguese, with thanks. GERMAN EAST AFRICA Then, in order to understand the full scope of the aspirations Germany was cherishing towards the African Continent, one must take into account her railways on the east coast no less than those on the west coast, since these, also, formed an essential part of the general scheme. The line which stretches right across German East Africa, from Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of the Protectorate, to Kigoma, on Lake Tanganyika, and north of Ujiji, has a total length of 1,439 miles; and if the economic development of a territory estimated as having a total area of 384,000 square miles had been the sole aim in view, the Tanganyikabahn would have well deserved to rank as a notable enterprise in German colonial expansion, and one calling for commendation rather than criticism. The question arises, however, whether, in addition to the development of German East Africa itself, the railway in question was not intended, also, to facilitate the realisation of Germany's designs against Central Africa as part of her aforesaid scheme for the eventual conquest of the African continent.