This question I answer unhesitatingly in the affirmative. I have described Africa as a nation of the unemployed. But the sole reason for the current impression that the African is an incorrigible idler is that at present there is really nothing for him to do. But that he can work and will work when the opportunity and inducement offer has been proved by experiment. The coast native, as all must testify who have seen him in the harbor of Zanzibar, Mozambique, Delagoa Bay, Natal, or the other eastern ports, is, with all allowances, a splendid worker; and though the experiment has seldom been tried in the interior, it is well known that the capacity is there, and wherever encouraged yields results beyond all expectation. Probably the severest test to which the native of Central Africa has ever been put is the construction of the Stevenson road, between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika. Forty-six miles of that road--probably the only thing of the kind in Central Africa--have already been made entirely by native labor, and the work could not have been better done had it been executed by English navvies. I have watched by the day a party of seventy natives working at a cutting upon that road. Till three or four years ago none of them had ever looked upon a white man; nor, till a few months previously, had one of them seen a spade, a pickaxe, or a crowbar. Yet these savages handled their tools to such purpose that, with only a single European superintendent, they have made a road, full of difficult cuttings and gradients, which would not disgrace a railway contractor at home. The workmen keep regular hours--six in the morning till five at night, with a rest at mid-day--work steadily, continuously, willingly, and above all, merrily. This goes on, observe, in the heart of the tropics, almost under the equator itself, where the white man's energy evaporates, and leaves him so limp that he cannot even be an example to his men. This goes on too without any compulsion; the natives flock from far and near, sometimes from long distances, to try this new sensation of work. These men are not slaves, but volunteers; and though they are paid by the fortnight, many will remain at their post the whole season through. The only bribe for all this work is a yard or two of calico per week per man; so that it seems to me one of the greatest problems of the future of Africa is here solved. In capacity the African is fit to work, in inclination he is willing to work, and in actual experiment he has done it; so that with capital enlisted and wise heads to direct these energies, with considerate employers who will remember that these men are but children, this vast nation of the unemployed may yet be added to the slowly growing list of the world's producers.