He explained that the work had required some planning out, that the local people had been slow to respond to the calls made upon them by the Chief's representative for food and labour, and that the rains had hindered progress.
I admitted that these were difficulties which required time to overcome, and asked to be shown his working camp.
Bositi led me some distance into the forest. Here I saw a number of men busy with tiny native adzes upon some felled trees, shaping them into wooden rails. In very few instances were the rails in the making as straight as those already laid. It was clear to me that the wheels would somehow have to negotiate very awkward turns and twists in the line, and I wondered how they would do it.
By no amount of questioning and patient explanation could I get Bositi to see the difficulty which lay ahead of him, so I presently continued my journey, encouraged by the promise that when next I passed that way with my canoes I should enjoy a ride on the wooden railway.
That section of the Cape to Cairo railway was never finished. I inspected the abandoned line many months later and found, as I had expected, that the white ants had eaten the rails almost as quickly as they were laid. I also saw that less trouble had been taken in making them. The trees from which they were cut were crooked, so here the rails widened, there they narrowed. Here there was a hump, there a depression.
I made it my business to find out what had become of Bositi. He had not been made a headman of his village nor an induna of his district; but, having failed in his undertaking and squandered all his substance, he had gone south again to live the careless life of the railway camp, where, under the hand of the white man, difficulties seem to disappear as quickly as the morning mist before the rising sun.