ACROSS AFRICA BY AIR AND RAIL
The airplane has completed the conquest of the Dark Continent. A
two-months’ journey from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope has been reduced
to a possible fifty-two hours of flying, each hour representing one
hundred miles through the skies.
Cecil Rhodes died hoping that one day his countrymen would finish the
greatest of his African projects, an all-British route traversing the
continent. His dreams were based upon steam, and compassed a route of
rail and water transport taking advantage of the Nile and the Great
Lakes. Those dreams are becoming realities, and to-day only a few gaps
remain unfilled on the long way from the north to the south. In the
meantime, aircraft has sprung almost full fledged into the skies, and the
gasoline engine and the airplane have beaten the steam locomotive and its
steel track through the wilds.
The first flight from Cairo to the Cape was made by two officers of
the South African Air Force, Colonel P. Van Ryneveld and Lieutenant C.
J. Q. Brand. Of four competitors who started from Cairo, they were the
only ones to land at Cape Town. They had several accidents and wrecked
two machines on the way. Leaving Cairo on February 10, 1920, they took
twenty-eight days to reach Cape Town, although their actual flying time
was counted in hours. Their nearest competitor covered only half the
distance, while the two others did not succeed in getting across the
desert wastes of the Sudan.
In the airplane of our imagination, let us take the trip they made. We
may be sure of excitement, for even under favourable conditions we are
starting out on one of the most dangerous air journeys known to the
world. But let us first look at a map and pick out our route. It is a
jagged line, extending from north to south, the length of the continent.
It is marked with dots and triangles, each showing a place where we may
land. As we look at the map it seems quite simple and easy, but actual
experience proves its great difficulties.
We shall leave Cairo at dawn and follow the Nile to Khartum. This is a
flight of one thousand miles, but landing places have been prepared along
the entire route at intervals of two hundred miles. We shall stop at one
of these long before noon and spend several hours to avoid the heat of
the day, when gusts of hot air, rising from the sun-baked desert, make it
dangerous to fly at low altitudes. At the start of our flight we shall
rise a mile or more to avoid these treacherous currents, which frequently
take the form of “air spouts,” often visible on account of the dust and
sand they have sucked up with them. Such currents have force enough to
toss our plane about like a leaf in the wind. With these great gusts
of hot air spouting upward are cold currents rushing downward. These
are even more dangerous, as they are always invisible. Consequently, we
shall fly high, to avoid a “bumpy” passage, as our pilot calls it, and in
landing must be careful lest we get caught in an air pocket.
From Khartum we start on the second, longest, and most dangerous leg
of the journey. This covers a distance of twenty-six hundred miles,
extending to Livingstone near Victoria Falls in northern Rhodesia. We
shall follow, in a general way, the Blue Nile to Ehri, and then go almost
due south to Uganda and Lake Victoria, the second largest lake of the
world. We shall skirt the eastern edge of the Sudd, in which there is
hardly a single safe landing place. Except in the main channels, masses
of papyrus completely hide the water, and if we should come down in that
treacherous region we could hardly hope to get out alive. We should be
unable to walk, swim, or float in the dense tangle.
This second leg of our journey takes us into the heart of Africa. The
country is wooded and mountainous. It is very hot, for we are nearing
the Equator, which cuts across the upper edge of Lake Victoria. In fact,
our pilot will not fly after nine in the morning nor earlier than four
o’clock in the afternoon. The air is more “bumpy,” and often terrific
thunderstorms seem to fill the sky with sheets of water. In dodging these
storms, we must be careful not to fly so far off our course as to be
forced to land in the wilds. The country here is a mile or more above sea
level, and if we should fly too high in order to avoid the heat gusts, we
may have trouble with our engines in the rarefied air. Below us are dense
forests and rocky hillsides, and natural landing places hardly exist. As
we go down the eastern shore of Lake Victoria we see new sights. These
are the water-spouts, great spiral columns whirled up from the lake into
the air by the eddying winds.
[Illustration: Swamps, huge anthills, scrub bush, outcroppings of rock;
and stretches of tall, rank elephant grass combine to make natural
landing places exceedingly rare on the second stage of the airplane
journey, which is most difficult and dangerous.]
[Illustration: The flight from Cairo to the Cape takes the aviator over
clusters of native huts, dwarfed to the size of anthills, through which
run the signs of civilization—ribbons of well-constructed road.]
[Illustration: Fuad I, who became the first king when Egypt was declared
a sovereign nation, came of the same family as the khedives of the last
hundred years. He gave Egypt its flag, three white crescents and stars on
a red field.]
Our route from Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, is to the southwest, and we
land at Mwanza, on the south shore. This is one of the outposts of the
white man’s civilization in “darkest Africa,” From Mwanza we continue
southwest across Tanganyika Territory to Abercorn at the lower end of
Lake Tanganyika, and then fly on to Broken Hill in northern Rhodesia,
where once more we see a railroad.
Preparing landing places in this part of Africa was a big job in itself.
Not only were thousands of trees cut down to make clear spaces, but they
were dug up by the roots to prevent them from sprouting again. Many
of the native chieftains take great interest in keeping clear these
airdromes, which would soon be gobbled up by the jungles if left to
themselves. They have also broken up and carried away from these spaces
the giant ant hills that cover the land of Central Africa like freckles
on a boy’s face. These hills, which are often twenty-five or thirty feet
high, and forty or fifty feet thick, are the home of the white ant. To
make one airdrome in northern Rhodesia a force of seven hundred natives
worked five months taking out twenty-five thousand tons of the heavy,
rock-like clay with which the ants, grain by grain, had built their
African apartment houses. Were our airplane to strike an ant hill in
landing, it would surely be wrecked.
From northern Rhodesia down into Cape Colony our flight is not quite
so difficult. The country is lower, and there are more open spaces. At
Livingstone we begin the third stage of the journey, and there cross the
Zambesi, looking down upon its wonderful falls, larger than Niagara. From
Bulawayo, the next important stop, we bear to the east as we go south,
passing over the Transvaal, with its diamonds and gold mines. We stop
at Johannesburg and then fly to the westward on down to Bloemfontein.
Our last flight takes us to Table Mountain, with Cape Town and the
Atlantic Ocean at its foot. We are at the end of the continent, and have
completed our fifty-two hundred miles through the air.
Those who know best the conditions in Africa believe that the
establishment of a regular air service along the Cape-to-Cairo route
will be difficult. During the rainy season dense fogs are common, making
flying uncertain and dangerous, while at times the smoke from forest
fires causes great trouble. On account of the rapid evaporation, the
storage of gasoline in the tropical belt is extremely difficult. Sudden
changes in atmospheric conditions form another serious danger; but with
the development of wireless stations along the route, and the use of the
radio telephone, aviators can be warned while in flight of the weather
conditions ahead and shape their courses accordingly.
Meantime, that all-British line that Cecil Rhodes planned comes nearer to
completion each year.
In thinking of the famous Cape-to-Cairo route most people consider it as
a continuous railway trip, or as an iron track spanning Africa from south
to north. This it will perhaps never be. We shall go by steam from Cairo
to the Cape of Good Hope, but almost one third of the way will be over
navigable rivers and lakes. This was Rhodes’s idea, and it is also that
of every practical engineer who has examined the country and its traffic
possibilities.
The journey from Cairo to the Cape is now made by rail, boat, and ground
transport. These overland gaps are the ones which will one day be filled
with railways, but the water sections will remain as a part of the
completed route.
The railroad from Cairo has been extended two hundred and forty miles
south from Khartum to Sennar, on the Blue Nile, where a great new dam,
which is to furnish more water for irrigating Egypt and the Sudan, is now
under construction. The British have also built a railway from Sennar
west to El Obeid, in Khordofan. This line crosses the Blue Nile at Kosti.
From Sennar, the fourteen hundred miles to Lake Albert is covered by Nile
steamers and by ground transport, which may be automobile, horseback,
or bullock wagon. From the southern shore of Lake Albert is another gap
which must be covered with ground transport to gain the shores of Lake
Victoria, and after Victoria is crossed by steamer, Lake Tanganyika
must be reached overland. From Lake Tanganyika to Broken Hill is a gap
of four hundred and fifty miles which will soon be bridged by railroad
construction. From Broken Hill we have the railway to Cape Town. A
railroad extends northward from Broken Hill to Bukama in the Congo
copper-mining district of Katanga, but it does not fit into the scheme of
an all-British steam route to Cairo.
Another important railway development, also the work of the British,
resulted from the World War. The Turks had organized an army to capture
control of the Suez Canal, and to meet this attack the British pushed
a great expeditionary force into Palestine. They did this by building
a swinging railroad bridge across the canal at Kantara and laying a
railroad two hundred and fifty-six miles through the Sinai and Palestine
deserts to Haifa. During these operations, Kantara, normally a small
garrisoned railroad town, mostly sand and cinders, became the greatest
military base in all history. Besides the soldiers, brought from all
corners of the British Empire, the British organized the Egyptian Labour
Corps, for which more than twelve hundred thousand Egyptian natives were
recruited. This vast army of workers built the railway, and kept the
stream of men and supplies moving on to meet the attack of the Turks.
The Egyptians did not like this service much better than the Children of
Israel liked toiling without wages for the Pharaohs nearly four thousand
years ago.
These operations resulted in the defeat of the Turks and saved the
canal. Moreover, they linked Africa and Asia by rail and one may now go
on comfortable cars all the way from Cairo to Constantinople, and on to
Paris. In reality, three continents have been joined together by the
Kantara bridge and the Palestine Military Railway. This new link in the
chain of the world’s railway systems was part of the Kaiser’s dream of
empire. But he had no part in making it come true, and it now adds to the
glory and strength of the very nations he hoped to conquer.
[Illustration: The mails are carefully guarded on all trains, a soldier
with rifle and sword always being present when the sacks are loaded or
unloaded. Armed guards also travel with the mail on the Nile steamers.]
[Illustration: Far up in the Sudan American engines are found pulling
British trains, while the famous bridge at Atbara, which Kitchener said
he must have in less time than the English could manufacture it, was made
in the United States.]
[Illustration: While the British have established first-class railroad
service from Cairo and lower Egypt up into the Sudan, there also remain
in this region some of the light military railways built during the wars
with the Mahdi.]