So much for the war end. Turn to the peace aspect. With Germany eliminated from the African scheme the whole region can enter upon a harmonious development. More than this, the fact that she is now deprived of colonies prevents her from recovering the world-wide economic authority she commanded before the war. A congested population allows her no more elbow room at home. Before she went mad her whole hope of the future lay in a colonization where her flag could fly in public, and in a penetration which cunningly masked the German hand. The world is now wise to the latter procedure.
The new colour scheme of the African map may now be disclosed. The Union of South Africa, as you have seen, has taken over German South-West Africa; Great Britain has assumed the control of all German East Africa with the exception of Ruanda and Urundu, which have become part of the Belgian Congo. Togoland is divided between France and Britain, while the greater part of The Cameroons is merged into the Lower French West African possessions of which the French Congo is the principal one. Britain gets the Cameroon Mountains.
The one-time Dark Continent remains dark only for Germany.
VICTORIA FALLS — Photograph Copyright British South Africa Co.
CHAPTER III—RHODES AND RHODESIA
I
For fifty-eight hours the train from Johannesburg had travelled steadily northward, past Mafeking and on through the apparently endless stretches of Bechuanaland. Alternately frozen and baked, I had swallowed enough dust to stock a small-sized desert. Dawn of the third day broke and with it came a sharp rap on my compartment door. I had been dreaming of a warm bath and a joltless life when I was rudely restored to reality. The car was stationary and a blanketed Matabele, his teeth chattering with the cold, peered in at the window.