PROSPECTS OF E. EQUATORIAL AFRICA . 
551 
plains, and the stations being established in the hills. 
From Ugweno it is a short distance to Kilima-njaro, 
which offers splendid sites for large settlements, and 
has also no scarcity of food. From Kilima-njaro there 
are two routes to be opened up. One, or the most 
important, leads past Mount Meru, another pleasant 
site for a trading station, straight to Speke Gulf, on 
the Nyanza. The other is more or less Thomson’s 
track, leading to Lake Baringo and the north-west. 
This is the richest country for ivory. Hither every 
year come the Swahili caravans, who trade nearly to 
the borders of Abyssinia and the Nile. In all im¬ 
portant districts stations might be founded after 
Stanley’s style along the Congo, and these would, in 
time, become centres of civilization, cultivation, and 
trade. Although there is no doubt that a railway, 
under British auspices, made to connect the Victoria 
Nyanza with the coast, would give the entire trade of 
Eastern Central Africa into our hands, yet such an 
enterprise seems at present utterly impossible. British 
capitalists, shipowners, and manufacturers have lost 
the spirit of (t merchant adventurers,” and now regard 
every venture that does not immediately joromise 
interest on preliminary outlay, with pardonable 
timidity. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there 
are still young energetic men in our country who love 
a roving life, and who do not shrink from entering the 
wild regions of Africa because there is no railway to 
take them. Such as these flock year after year into 
the unpleasing regions between the Cape Colony and 
the Zambesi, attracted by the love of sport or a sheer 
unreasoning, English desire to pry into new countries. 
Why do not some of them band together, and instead 
of spending their money, time, and energies on barren 
