The New Era in Rhodesia.

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.