CHAPTER XIX ACROSS AFRICA BY AIR AND RAIL HE airplane has completed the conquest of the Dark Continent. A two-months’ journey from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope has been re-JL duced to a possible fifty-two hours of flying, each hour representing one hundred miles through the skies.

Cecil Rhodes died hoping that one day his countrymen would finish the greatest of his African projects, an all-British route traversing the continent. His dreams were based upon steam, and compassed a route of rail and water transport taking advantage of the Nile and the Great Lakes. Those dreams are becoming realities, and to-day only a few gaps remain unfilled on the long way from the north to the south. In the meantime, aircraft has sprung almost full fledged into the skies, and the gasoline engine and the airplane have beaten the steam locomotive and its steel track through the wilds.

The first flight from Cairo to the Cape was made by two officers of the South African Air Force, Colonel P. Van Ryneveld and Lieutenant C. J. Q. Brand. Of four com¬ petitors who started from Cairo, they were the only ones to land at Cape Town. They had several accidents and wrecked two machines on the way. Leaving Cairo on February 10, 1920, they took twenty-eight days to reach Cape Town, although their actual flying time was counted in hours. Their nearest competitor covered only half the 160