CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY.
It is more than fifty years since the idea of a continuous line of railway from north to south of the African continent—a distance of more than 5,000 miles in a straight line—was first mooted, and even yet it has by no means been realized. Much has, however, been done towards carrying out the scheme which is associated beyond all others with the great name of Cecil Rhodes, and to-day it is possible to travel by railway, river steamer and motor-car practically the whole way from Cape Town to Alexandria ; there is only a single break of about 90 miles, which normally takes about ten days to achieve by safari, and this will probably be soon. bridged. The sump- tuous work of which Mr. Weinthal has now produced the first three volumes—the fourth is to follow in a month or two— gives a most comprehensive account of the inception and progress of the scheme from 1887 to 1922, with a wealth of illustration comprising portraits of hundreds of men engaged or interested in the work, and photographs of nearly every picturesque place or object on the route. A large number of specialists have collaborated in the book, which, as General Smuts justly observes in his short foreword, " in its profusion of-good things, of complex problems and tangled interests, is a veritable epitome of the Continent it treats of." At any rate, it is a useful encyclopaedia of the specific problems, economical, financial and mechanical, hanging from the long ribbon of steel which is expected to link the gentle tides of the Mediter- ranean with the long rollers of Agulhas by the year 1950. Twelve excellent maps in a special ease,-on scales of 50 miles to an inch and upwards, by Mr. Alfred Clevely, add to the usefulness of this monumental collection of monographs.
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