The New Railway.

Considering that we have come all the way from London, 7300 miles away, to celebrate the arrival of the locomotive at Bulawayo, such questions may sound ungrateful, and considering that last night at the banquet every speaker had something favourable to say of the Bechuanaland Railway and its builders, such questions may be supposed to indicate disagreement with the general opinion. There is really no necessity to suppose anything of the kind. Both the builders and the railway deserve praise. The fact that some eight trains have already arrived at Bulawayo, and that every passenger expresses himself warmly as to the condition of the line, and the pleasure derived from the journey, ought to satisfy everyone that the railway is ready for traffic, and will serve for many years, I hope, to connect Bulawayo with Cape Town.

But I want my readers to thoroughly understand what has been done, without prejudice to Bulawayo, the railway, or its builders. I am not so surprised at the railway, as at the length of time people in South Africa were content to be without it. The whole country seems to have been created for railway making. It offers as few difficulties as the London Embankment Hyde Park is extremely uneven as compared with it. For nearly a thousand miles the railway sleepers have been laid at intervals of thirty inches on the natural face of the land; the rails have been laid across these, and connected together; the native navvies have scraped a little soil together, sufficient to cover the steel sleepers; and the iron road was thus ready for traffic. In March, 1896, the railway was but a few miles beyond Mafeking—say, about 880 miles from Cape Town—on November 4, 1897, it is 1360 miles in length from Cape Town, showing a construction of 480 miles in 19 months. There is nothing remarkable in this. The Union Pacific Railway between Omaha and Denver progressed at three, four, even five miles a day, over a much more irregular surface; but then, of course, the navvies were Irishmen, who handled the shovel like experts, and the rails with the precision and skill of master workmen. Natives could not be expected to attain the proficiency and organisation of the American Celts.