possible only to light-draught steamers. Roads suitable for
wheeled traffic are few. The first attempt at road-making
in Central Africa on a large scale was that of Sir T. Fowell
Buxton and Mr (afterwards Sir W.) Mackinnon, who completed
the first section of a track leading into the interior from
Dar-es-Salaam (1879). A still more important undertaking
was the ``Stevenson road,'' begun in 1881 from the head of
Lake Nyasa to the south end of Tanganyika, and constructed
mainly at the expense of Mr James Stevenson, a director of the
African Lakes Company--a company which helped materially in
the opening up of Nyasaland. The Stevenson road forms a link
in the ``Lakes route'' into the heart of the continent. In
British East Africa a road connecting Mombasa with Victoria
Nyanza was completed in 1897, but has since been in great
measure superseded by the railway. Good roads have also been
made in German East Africa and Cameroon and in Madagascar.
Railways, the chief means of affording easy access to the
interior of the continent, were for many years after their
first introduction to Africa almost entirely confined to
the extreme north and south (Egypt, Algeria, Cape Colony and
Natal). Apart from short lines in Senegal, Angola and at
Lourenco Marques, the rest of the continent was in 1890
without a railway system. In Egypt the Alexandria and
Cairo railway dates from 1855, while in 1877 the lines open
reached about 1100 miles, and in 1890, in addition to the
lines traversing the delta, the Nile had been ascended to
Assiut. In Algeria the construction of an inter-provincial
railway was decreed in 1857, but was still incomplete twenty
years later, when the total length of the lines open hardly
exceeded 300 miles. Before 1890 an extension to Tunis had
been opened, while the plateau had been crossed by the lines
to Ain Sefra in the west and Biskra in the east. In Senegal
the railway from Dakar to St Louis had been commenced and
completed during the 'eighties, while the first section of the
Senegal-Niger railway, that from Kayes to Bafulabe, was also
constructed during the same decade. In Cape Colony, where
in about 1880 the railways were limited to the neighbourhood
of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, the next
decade saw the completion of the trunk-line from Cape Town
to Kimberley, with a junction at De Aar with that from Port
Elizabeth. The northern frontier had, however, nowhere been
crossed. In Natal, also, the main line had not advanced beyond
Ladysmith. The settlement, c. 1890, of the main lines of
the partition of the continent was followed by many projects
for the opening up of the possessions and spheres of influence
of the various powers by the building of railways; several of
these schemes being carried through in a comparatively short
time. The building of railways was undertaken by the governments
concerned, nearly all the African lines being state-owned. In
the Congo Free State a railway, which took some ten years to
build, connecting the navigable waters of the lower and middle
Congo, was completed in 1898, while in 1906 the middle and
upper courses of the river were linked by the opening of a
line past Stanley Falls. Thus the vast basin of the Congo
was rendered easily accessible to commercial enterprise. In
North Africa the Algerian and Tunisian railways were largely
extended, and proposals were made for a great trunk-line
from Tangier to Alexandria. The railway from Ain Sefra was
continued southward towards Tuat, the project of a trans-Saharan
line having occupied the attention of French engineers since
1880. In French West Africa railway communication between
the upper Senegal and the upper Niger was completed in 1904;
from the Guinea coast at Konakry another line runs north-east
to the upper Niger, while from Dahomey a third line goes to
the Niger at Garu. In the British colonies on the same coast
the building of railways was begun in 1896. A line to Kumasi
was completed in 1903, and the line from Lagos to the lower
Niger had reached Illorin in 1908. Thence the railway was
continued to the Niger at Jebba. From Baro, a port on the
lower Niger which can be reached by steamers all the year
round, another railway, begun in 1907, goes via Bida, Zungeru
and Zaria to Kano, a total distance of 400 miles. A line from
Jebba to Zungeru affords connexion with the Lagos railway.
But the greatest development of the railway systems was in
the south and east of the continent. In British East Africa
a survey for a railway from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza was
made in 1892. The first rails were laid in 1896 and the line
reached the lake in December 1901. Meanwhile, there had been
a great extension of railways in South Africa. Lines from
Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban and Delagoa
Bay all converged on the newly risen city of Johannesburg,
the centre of the Rand gold mines. A more ambitious project
was that identified with the name of Cecil Rhodes, namely,
the extension northward of the railway from Kimberley with
the object of effecting a continuous railway connexion from
Cape Town to Cairo. The line from Kimberley reached Bulawayo
in 1897. (Bulawayo is also reached from Beira on the east
coast by another line, completed in 1902, which goes through
Portuguese territory and Mashonaland.) The extension of the
line northward from Bulawayo was begun in 1899, the Zambezi
being bridged, immediately below the Victoria Falls, in
1905. From this point the railway goes north to the Katanga
district of the Congo State. In the north of the continent
a step towards the completion of the Cape to Cairo route was
taken in the opening in 1899 of the railway from Wadi Haifa to
Khartum. A line of greater economic importance than the last
named is the railway (completed in 1905) from Port Sudan on the
Red Sea to the Nile a little south of Berber, thus placing the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan within easy reach of the markets of the
world. A west to east connexion across the continent by rail
and steamer, from the mouth of the Congo to Port Sudan, was
arranged in 1906 when an agreement was entered into by the Congo
and Sudan governments for the building of a railway from Lado,
on the Nile, to the Congo frontier, there to meet a railway
starting from the river Congo near Stanley Falls. A railway of
considerable importance is that from Jibuti in the Gulf of Aden
to Harrar, giving access to the markets of southern Abyssinia.
Besides the railways mentioned there are several others of
less importance. Lines run from Loanda and other ports of
Angola towards the Congo State frontier, and from Tanga and
Dar-es-Salaam on the coast of German East Africa towards the
great lakes. In British Central Africa a railway connects
Lake Nyasa with the navigable waters of the Shire, and
various lines have been built by the French in Madagascar.
All the main railways in South Africa, the lines in British
West Africa, in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and in Egypt
south of Luxor are of 3 ft. 6 in. gauge. The main lines
in Lower Egypt and in Algeria and Tunisia are of 4 ft.
8 1/2 in. gauge. Elsewhere as in French West and British
East Africa the lines are of metre (3.28 ft.) gauge.
The telegraphic system of Africa is on the whole older than
that of the railways, the newer European possessions having
in most cases been provided with telegraph lines before
railway projects had been set on foot. In Algeria, Egypt
and Cape Colony the systems date back to the middle of the
19th century, before the end of which the lines had in each
country reached some thousands of miles. In tropical Africa
the systems of French West Africa, where the line from Dakar
to St Louis was begun in 1862, were the first to be fully
developed, lines having been carried from different points
on the coast of Senegal and Guinea towards the Niger, the
main line being prolonged north-west to Timbuktu, and west
and south to the coast of Dahomey. The route for a telegraph
line to connect Timbuktu with Algeria was surveyed in
1905. The Congo region is furnished with several telegraphic
systems, the longest going from the mouth of the river to Lake
Tanganyika. From Ujiji on the east coast of that lake there
is telegraphic communication via Tabora with Dar-es-Salaam and
via Nyasa and Rhodesia with Cape Town. The last-named line is
the longest link in the trans-continental line first suggested
in 1876 by Sir (then Mr) Edwin Arnold and afterwards taken
up by Cecil Rhodes. The northern link from Egypt to Khartum
has been continued southward to Uganda, while another line
connects Uganda with Mombasa. At the principal seaports the
inland systems are connected with submarine cables which place
Africa in telegraphic communication with the rest of the world.
Numerous steamship lines run from Great Britain, Germany,
France and other countries to the African seaports,
the journey from any place in western Europe to any
port on the African coast occupying, by the shortest
route, not more than three weeks. (E. HE., F. R. C.)
1 Further conferences respecting the liquor traffic
in Africa were held in Brussels in 1899 and 1906. In
both instances conventions were signed by the powers,
raising the minimum duty on imported spirituous liquors.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Authoritative works dealing with Africa
as a whole in any of its aspects are comparatively
rare. Besides such volumes the following list includes
therefore books containing valuable information
concerning large or typical sections of the continent:--
sec. I. General Descriptions.--(a) Ancient and Medieval.
Herodotus, ed. G. Rawlinson, 4 vols.1 (1880); Ptolemy's
Geographia, ed. C. Muller, vol. i. (Paris, 1883-1901); Ibn
Haukal, ``Description de l'Afrique (transl. McG. de Slane),
Nouv. Journal asiatique, 1842; Edrisi, ``Geographie''
(transl. Jaubert), Rec. de voyages . . . Soc. de
Geogr. vol. v. (Paris, 1836); Abulfeda, Geographie
(transl. Reinaud and Guyard, Paris, 1848-1883); M. A. P.
d'Avezac, Description de l'Afrique ancienne (Paris, 1845);
L. de Marmol, Description general de Africa (Granada,
1573); L. Sanuto, Geografia dell' Africa (Venice, 1588); F.
Pigafetta, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo, &c. (1597);
Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa
(transl. J. Pory, ed. R. Brown), 3 vols. (1896); O. Dapper,
Naukeurige beschrijvinge der afrikaensche gewesten, &c.
(Amsterdam, 1668) (also English version by Ogilvy, 1670, and
French version, Amsterdam, 1686); B. Tellez, ``Travels of
the Jesuits in Ethiopia,'' A New Collection of Voyages,
vol. vii. (1710); G. A. Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, Istorica
Descrittione de tre Regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola (Milan,
1690) (account of the labours of the Capuchin missionaries
and their observations on the country and people); J. Barbot,
``Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea and of
Ethiopia Inferior,', Churchill's Voyages, vol. v. (1707); W.
Bosman, A New . . . Description of the Coasts of North and
South Guinea, &c., 2nd ed. (1721); J. B. Labat, Nouvelle
relation de l'Afrique occidentale, 5 vols. (Paris, 1728);
Idem, Relation historique de l'Ethiopie occidentale, 5
vols. (Paris, 1732). (b) Modern. B. d'Anville, Memoire
conc. les rivieres de l'interieur de l'Afrique (Paris,
n.d.); M. Vollkommer, Die Quellen B. d'Anville's fur seine
kritische Karte von Afrika Munich, 1904); C. Ritter, Die
Erdkunde, i. Theil, 1. Buch, ``Afrika'' (Berlin, 1822);
l. M`Queen, Geographical and Commercial View of Northern and
Central Africa (Edinburgh, 1821 ); Idem, Geographical Survey
of Africa ( 1840); W. D. Cooley, Inner Africa laid open
