COLOSSAL PROJECT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 20, 6 January 1912, Page 6

COLOSSAL PROJECT.

LONGEST RAILWAY IN THE WORLD. ALGERIA TO THE CONGO. There lias originated in France a great .scheme 1 which will rival other colossal undertaking, the Suez; which is quit forward by H. Andre Borthelot,. proposes the construction of , a great'French railway right across the centre of lAfrica from Algeria until it joins up with the Cape-to-Cairo line in Belgian Congo. M. Berthelot points out that Africa, like Asia and America, can only be properly exploited by means of railways. Along the whole coast, what ports there are,seem to bo either inadequate or dangerous to health. And then the rivers, how little adapted they are for commerce, compared with the Mississippi, the Yangtse-Kiang, the Ganges! It is only by transporting steamers piecemeal up the railway that they can be of any use for navigating the inner waterways. The lie of the land, too, is all in favour of a railway from the north to the south, for the mountains are either in the textrme north-east—the Atlas Mountains—or in the east, where Ronvenzoi towers up above the great rift in the continent. A line running from Algeria across the Sahara, down through the French Congo—what is left of it after the present negotiations—and on through the Congo to railhead of the Cape to Cairo line at Katanga, would not have to climb any hill or plateau more than 2200 feet high. WILL THE RAILWAY PAY? Then there is the practical and financial side of the project. Deducting the already constructed, the Algerian and Cape-to-Cairo and some bits in the Congo, there remains some 3700 miles to cover. The Siberian railway is that length, and it was carried across marsh and lake, through trackless forest, and over frozen steppe in nine years, at the rate of seven miles a day. We cannot enter into further details as to costs, but the writer asserts that the carriage of from forty to fifty passengers per diem over the system would cover all expenses. Practicable or not, it is a fascinating project. It would be the longest railway in the world. The Bedouins of the desert, the pigmies of the tropical forest, the “gentle Masai,” and the belligerent Kikuyu might soon taste the delights of travel. The great unknown land would become the known. Scenes of cruelty would vanish. Instead of the slave gang, the railway truck! Instead of Congo horrors, blessings cast o’er a smiling land!