112 THE GREAT COMPANIES 



ability. But these are not in all cases the men to 

 diagnose the disease and prescribe the remedy. It 

 is only the man who has lived upon the spot who 

 sees local needs and knows how to supply them ; 

 the man whose judgment is formed by failure as 

 well as success, who can, after all, come forward 

 and point to the weak spots in the administrative 

 or other machinery, and show how they may be 

 advantageously strengthened. And yet these are 

 the men whose views are seldom or never heard, 

 because, if they were, it is clear that their repre- 

 sentations would go to the root of the matter, 

 and, in their adoption, completely subvert existing 

 methods. None of the great undertakings at 

 present engaged in Africa are in a position seriously 

 to contemplate anything in the nature of a com- 

 plete revision of policy, and yet by that means, and 

 that means only, can the wilderness be made to 

 rejoice, and can individual capital be successfully 

 attracted to the eminently suitable fields for its 

 employment to be found at almost all points of the 

 Zambezi Valley. 



Another thing which is required is railway com- 

 munication between the coast and the frontiers of 

 the Nyasaland Protectorate, and not until this indis- 

 pensable auxiliary is supplied will this splendid 

 region be able to stretch its cramped limbs, and 

 deal with those perhaps unsuspected resources 

 which faulty, and sometimes non-existent, trans- 

 port renders it practically impossible to satisfac- 

 torily develop. 



The amazing fact that across a country not 300 

 miles wide, presenting not one serious engineering 



