206 SOUTH AFRICA. 



the main arteries of communication which are to 

 supply the wants of the country as regards 

 travellers and merchandise for given centres of 

 business, provision is being made by the approach- 

 ing completion of the railway from Beira and of 

 the projected continuation of the line from British 

 Bechuanaland, but the difficulty of maintaining 

 essential intercourse between the various scattered 

 villages and homesteads still remains to be pro- 

 vided for, not to mention the necessity of providing 

 the means of swift locomotion for the semi- 

 military police force which is an indispensable 

 requisite in such a country as Rhodesia. 



Experience obliges me to assume that the 

 severity of the fatal " horse-sickness " which pre- 

 vails in many parts of South Africa, and with more 

 intensity in tropical South-East Africa probably 

 than anywhere else, precludes the hope that the 

 country can ever be supplied with acclimatised 

 horses or mules at all nearly adequate to the 

 demand. The introduction of unacclimatised 

 animals means a death-rate at short date among 

 them of probably ninety per cent at least, and 

 may be regarded as a fruitless and ruinous 

 expedient. It is true that in the Transvaal a 



