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However, I do not think it is very likely to have gone far, and I have a persuasion that that railroad will not become trans-African in my day; still it has an "immediate future" compared with that which any other West Coast railway can expect; for besides the coffee, Angola is rich in malachite and gum of high quality, and its superior government will attract the rubber from the Kassai region of the Congo Free State.
If you get into your mind the fact that the Imperialists of four nations were dreaming dreams of a trans-African railway which was to tap the resources of the interior, and if you remember that each patriotic dreamer conceived a different kind of railway according to his nationality and that they only agreed upon one point, namely, that the line must point contiguous with the Ochori border, you may understand dimly some reason for the frantic claim that that little belt of territory, two miles wide, was part of the domain of each and every one of the contestants.
Even so masterful a manipulator of men as Cecil Rhodes failed with him. Rhodes sought his aid in his trans-African telegraph scheme but Leopold was too shrewd for him. After his first audience with the Belgian king Rhodes said to Robert Williams, "I thought I was clever but I was no match for him." The only other modern king interested in business was the former Kaiser, Mr. Wilhelm Hohenzollern.
There is a regular steamship communication between Portugal, England and Germany, and Loanda, which port is within sixteen days' steam of Lisbon. There is also a regular service between Cape Town, Lobito and Lisbon and Southampton. The Portuguese line is subsidized by the government. The railway from Loanda to Ambaca and Malanje is known as the Royal Trans-African railway.
The ball which Lady Clansford always gave about the middle of the season is generally a very brilliant affair; but this year it was more brilliant and, alas! more crowded than usual; for Lord Clansford was connected, as everybody knows, with the great Trans-African Company, and, as also everybody knows, that company had recovered from the blow dealt it by the rising of the natives, and was now flourishing beyond the most sanguine expectations of its owners; the Clansford coffers, not to mention those of many other persons, were overflowing, and Lord Clansford could afford a somewhat magnificent hospitality.
Six hundred to eight hundred bags a month were shipped from Ambrizette alone when I was there in 1893, and the amount has since increased and will still further increase when that leisurely, but very worthy little railroad line, which proudly calls itself the Royal Trans-African, shall have got its sections made up into the coffee district.
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