Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1915 — AFRICAN ROAD A MARVEL [ARTICLE]

AFRICAN ROAD A MARVEL

Capo-to-Cairo Line Reveals a Panorama That Is Without Equal on the Earth. When all the great railroad trunks of the world, have been built, a decade or two hence, four of them will appear upon the map in heavy black, indicating that they surpass all others in importance, writes Lewis B. Freeman in the World's Work. These will be: The Pan-American, from the Arctie wastes of Canada to the Straits of Magellan; the Trans-Siberian, from the Atlantic to the Pacific across northern Europe and Asia; the TransPersian, or some other line, from the southeast of Europe to India; and the Cape-to-Cairo. The Pan-American and the Indo-European rallroada- may surpass the Cape-to-Cairo as commercial arteries, and the Trans-Siberian will doubtless figure more potently as a strategic line; but for the sheer interest of the country traversed —for the picturesque variety and romantic appeal of the panoramas running like double cinematograph films past the car windows —the great African trunk can never know a rival. . . . Six thousand miles, across 66 degrees of latitude; a score of climates and the lands of a hundred different peoples or tribes; the second longest of the world’s rivers and two of its largest lakes; the greatest dam ever built, conserving water for the world’s richest lands; the most imposing and ancient of all temples; the greatest waterfall, and the most Important gold and diamond mines; and finally, one of the last great expanses of real wilderness, the only place In the world where the wild beasts of the jungle may be seen in their primitive state, from a train; all these seen, traversed, or experienced in 12 days! Surely, there can never be another such railroad as this.