The festivities are over, and the guests are departing. For seven days
we have been entertained as well as the resources of Bulawayo would
admit, and the Administrator and Committee have been continuously
unflagging in their attentions to us. Next Monday the trains and
railway will be occupied in bringing stores and machinery and cattle to
supply the needs of the mining industry, and henceforward the traffic
will be ordinary and uninterrupted between Cape Town and Bulawayo. On
Monday morning also every Bulawayan intends to resume his own proper
work, and I suppose that should be the real date of the beginning of the
new era in Rhodesia.
What is Rhodesia?
And here, it seems to me, is a fitting place to ask: What is Rhodesia,
about which so much has been said and written? What are its prospects?
I cannot help but wish I were more qualified by local and technical
knowledge to describe the country; but as I have been at some trouble in
soliciting the judgment of experienced men, conscientiously weighing the
merits of what was told me, and carefully considering what I have
personally seen, I can only hope the following summary may have some
value to those interested in Rhodesia.
The Land to the North.
I have been asked by my fellow guests at Bulawayo how the face of the
country appeared as compared with the tropical regions further north
with which I am more familiar. With regard to the superficial aspect of
Rhodesia, I see but little difference between it and East Central
Africa, and the southern portion of the Congo basin. Indeed, I am much
struck with the uniformity of Inner Africa on the whole. Except in the
neighbourhood of the great lakes, which mark the results of volcanic
action, where great subsidences have occurred, and the great plains have
been wrinkled up or heaved into mountains of great height, the body of
Inner Africa away from the coasts is very much alike. The main
difference is due to latitude. From the Cape Peninsula to north of
Salisbury, or the Victoria Falls, the whole country is one continuous
plain country. Between the tops of the highest hills and the highest
grassy ridge in the Transvaal the difference of altitude seems solely
due to the action of the rain. In the Zambesi basin you have a great
shallow basin, and directly you cross the river and travel northward the
ascent is being made to reach the crest of the watershed between the
Zambesi and the Congo, which is but little higher than the highest
grassy ridge in the neighbourhood of Salisbury. From thence a gradual
descent is made to reach the central depression of the Congo basin.
Northward of the Congo watershed, you gain the average altitudes of the
grassy ridges of South Africa, and then begin a descent into the basin
of the Tchad Lake, and from thence to the Mediterranean the same system
of great land waves rolling and subsiding continues.