"FEW EVENTS OF THE CENTURY SURPASS IT IN INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE."
Several hundreds of men, eminent in divers professions, have come from
England, America, the Cape, Orange Free State, Natal, Basuto and Zulu
Lands, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, and Northern Rhodesia, to celebrate
the railway achievement by which this young Colony has become connected
with the oldest Colony in South Africa. In any other continent the
opening of five hundred miles of new railway would be fittingly
celebrated by the usual banquet and the after-dinner felicitations of
those directly concerned with it; but in this instance there are six
members of the Imperial Parliament, the High Commissioner of the Cape,
the Governor of Natal, scores of members of the Colonial Legislatures,
and scores of notabilities, leaders of thought and action, bankers,
merchants, and clergy from every colony and state in the southern part
of this continent. They all felt it to be a great event. Few events of
the century surpass it in interest and importance. It marks the
conclusion of an audacious enterprise, which less than ten years ago
would have been deemed impossible, and only two years ago as most
unlikely. It furnishes a lesson to all colonising nations. It teaches
methods of operation never practised before. It suggests large and
grand possibilities, completely reforms and alters our judgment with
regard to Africa, effaces difficulties that impeded right views, and
infuses a belief that, once the political and capitalist public realises
what the occasion really signifies, this railway is but the precursor of
many more in this continent. In fact, we have been publicly told that
we are to expect others, and that the railway to the Victoria Falls of
the Zambesi is the next on the programme.