What the Railways Have Done 403 



Ashantis waged wars against us in 1875, 1896 and 1901. Two 

 years after the last of these wars the Gold Coast main line 

 of railway was taken up to Coomassie, the capital of Ashanti. 

 To-day the Ashantis carry on strife with us no longer. They 

 work in the gold mines instead ; and the railway that brings 

 the gold down to the coast has paid a five-per-cent dividend 

 from the day it was opened. 1 



Of " Sierra Leone and Its Commercial Expansion " Mr T. J. 

 Alldridge said, in a paper he read before the Royal Colonial 

 Institute on March 21, 1911 (reported in " United Empire," 

 May, 1911) : 



" The extraordinary increase in the revenue of Sierra 

 Leone during the last few years fills one who knows the 

 circumstances of the Colony with amazement. It could never 

 have been achieved had communication by railway into oil- 

 palm belts, formerly quite unworked, not been introduced by 

 the Government. The results have been extraordinary, 

 although as yet hardly more than the fringe of these rich 

 forests has been reached. . . . Only since the putting down of 

 railways into our Protectorate has the Colony of Sierra Leone 

 made such noticeable or commercial progress. The extension 

 in the volume of imported merchandise, the expansion in its 

 export products, and the greatly increased revenue, stand out 

 to-day as an extraordinary revelation of what railway com- 

 munication is capable of effecting in places that were not long 

 since un-get-at-able, but which Nature has lavishly filled 

 with a never-failing store of indigenous wealth." 



Southern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria the former having 

 an area of 77,000 square miles and a population of 6,500,000 

 Africans, and the latter an area of 256,400 square miles and an 

 estimated population of 8,000,000 are both of them countries 

 of enormous natural resources which are being steadily 

 developed by railways already built or in course of con- 

 struction. A writer in " United Empire " for July, 1911, says 

 of South Nigeria: "The trade returns of 1910 have sur- 

 passed even the most optimistic expectations, but there is 

 good reason to look forward to further considerable increases 

 in view of railway developments, harbour improvements, road 



1 See speech by Mr Frederick Shelford at a meeting of the Royal 

 Colonial Institute, May 24, 1910, reported in " United Empire ; the 

 Royal Colonial Institute Journal," for August, 1910. 



