eason. Supposing, in
the event of an outbreak, a scheme were formed by the Boers to cross
over the border and occupy the Bechuanaland Railway, where would
Rhodesia be? Rhodesia would be cut off, unless it was abandoned, which
is improbable. You thus see the necessity of two entrances, one from
the east and one from the south. Supposing Bulawayo, on account of its
two exits, begins to thrive, and the development of the land is
increasing at a great pace, the next thing necessary is to extend its
tentacles in other directions, and get more trade. It will not omit the
Zambesi Coal Fields and the Victoria Falls. There is another object you
have, not only for the tourist to see the Falls, but also the coal
fields lying close to them. You reach the Victoria Falls and you have
Loanda and the Trans-African Railway, which already reaches 160 miles to
the interior; you can either join with that or you can construct a
separate line to Mossamedes. You thus draw another line of country to
increase the trade of Bulawayo. I am speaking now from the point of
view of Bulawayo as a centre of trade. The competition between it and
Salisbury might be compared to that which existed for a quarter of a
century between Saint Louis and Chicago. The former was a very
conservative city; it had its enormous fleet of steamers and the whole
Mississippi tributary to it, and when it had 250,000 of a population,
Chicago had only 50,000. The people of Chicago, however, were
determined to tap every field of trade within reach. They struck off to
California, Denver, Utah, Saint Louis, to the north-west, and down to
New Orleans, so that to-day Chicago has a population of one and a half
millions, and Saint Louis only 500,000. Bulawayo is more favourably
situated for railway expansion than Salisbury, which is inclined too far
to the north-east, whilst Bulawayo is almost as near to Beira as
Salisbury is. It is, moreover, as near to Mossamedes as to the Cape,
and it has the whole Congo State to the direct north of it.
Consequently it would, become a kind of Chicago, drawing the trade of
all those countries, so that as the new white men scattered, some to the
Zambesi, raising a town near the coal fields, and hotels near, the Falls
and Zimbabwe ruins, Bulawayo would feed them all. At the same time,
Cape Town would become the New York of South Africa. If this were
accomplished, then, in any eventuality, Bulawayo and Rhodesia would be
secure in thei