146 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



2. AFRICA 



If we still call Africa the " Dark Continent," 

 it is from force of habit, for this is no longer 

 anything but a courtesy title that has survived 

 from the days of Livingstone and Mungo Park. 

 Africa has long since been brought within 

 reach of the tourist. Ladies even travel alone 

 beyond rail-head in mackillas^ i.e. litters carried 

 by native bearers. The Uganda Railway 

 affords intimate glimpses of the Great Rift 

 Valley and its big game, and it will not be 

 long, at the present rate of development, before 

 we have the Sleeping Car Company running 

 week-end trips to Timbuctoo. Busy cities, 

 with telephone and electric light, stand to-day 

 where, fifty years ago, pioneers camped in the 

 wilderness and heard the lion roaring for his 

 prey. All this opening up of Africa by those 

 who dig for gold or diamonds has not been 

 without its effect on the wild life, which has 

 been driven back, little by little, until, even 

 within the memory of Selous and other living 

 sportsmen, the buffalo and antelopes have for- 

 saken haunts in which, not many years back, 

 they still abounded. Nevertheless, in spite of 

 the inexorable march of civilisation, which, in 

 the New World, swept the buffalo and Red 

 Man off the prairie in order that Americans 

 might grow wheat to cram the elevators on the 



