E. Alexander Powell - The New Frontiers of Freedom - From the Alps to the Aegean (WWI Centenary Series)

The unknown lands are almost all discovered. The work of the explorer and the pioneer is nearly finished, and ere long their stern and hardy figures will have passed from the world's stage, never to return. In the Argentine, in Mexico, and in Alaska store clothes and stiff hats are replacing corduroys and sombreros; the pack-mule is giving way to the motor-car. The earth has but one more great prize with which to lure the avaricious and the adventurous: Africamysterious, opulent, alluringbeckons and calls.

The conditions which exist in Africa to-day closely parallel those which were to be found, within the memory of many of us, beyond the Mississippi. In North Africa the French are pushing their railways across the desert in the face of Arab opposition, just as we pushed our railways across the desert in the face of Indian opposition forty years ago. As an El Dorado the Transvaal has taken the place held by Australia, and California, and the Yukon, in their turn. The grazing lands of Morocco and the grain lands of Rhodesia will prove formidable rivals to those of our own West in a much-nearer future than most of us suppose. French and British well-drillers are giving modern versions of the miracle of Moses in the Sahara and the Sudan and converting worthless deserts into rich domains thereby.

The story of the conquest of a continent by these men with levels and transits, drills and dynamite, ploughs and spades, forms a chronicle of courage, daring, resource, and tenacity unsurpassed in history. They are no idlers, these pioneers of the desert, the jungle, and the veldt; they live with danger and hardship for their daily mates; they die with their boots on from snake-bite or sleeping-sickness or Somali spear; and remember, please, they are making new markets and new playgrounds for you and me. Morocco, Algeria, Tripolitania, Equatoria, Rhodesia, the Sahara, the Sudan, the Congo, the Rand, and the Zambezi ... with your permission I will take you to them all, and you shall see, as though with your own eyes, those strange and far-off places which mark the line of the Last Frontier, where the white-helmeted pioneers are fighting the battles and solving the problems of civilisation.

E. Alexander Powell.

For assistance in the preparation of this book I am grateful to many people. To the editors of Collier's, The Outlook, The Review of Reviews, The Independent, The Metropolitan, Travel, and Scribner's my thanks are due for their permission to use such portions of this volume as originally appeared in their magazines in the form of articles. I also desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Right Hon. James Bryce, O.M., for permission to avail myself of certain data contained in his admirable work on South Africa; to Charles K. Field, Esq., editor of The Sunset Magazine, for the title and introductory lines to Chapter V; to the Hon. F. C. Penfield, former American Diplomatic Agent in Egypt, from whose clear and comprehensive Present-Day Egypt I have drawn portions of my account of the complex administration of the Nile country; to J. Scott Keltie, LL.D., F.R.G.S., author of The Partition of Africa and editor of The Statesman's Year-Book, for much valuable information obtained from those volumes; and to Miss Isabel Savory, A. Sylva White, Esq., S. H. Leeder, Esq., C. W. Furlong, Esq., and Francis Miltoun, Esq., for suggestions derived from their writings on African subjects. To the American diplomatic and consular officials in Africa, and to missionaries of many creeds and denominations, I am indebted for innumerable kindnesses and much valuable information. At consulate and mission station alike, from Cape Bon to Table Bay, I found the latch-string always out and an extra chair at the table. I likewise take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the courtesies shown me by H. H. Abbas Hilmi II, Khedive of Egypt; H. R. H. Prince George of Greece, former High Commissioner in Crete; H. H. Ali bin Hamoud bin Mohammed, ex-Sultan of Zanzibar; H. E. the French Minister of the Colonies; H. E. the Belgian Minister of the Colonies; Sir Thomas Cullinan of the Premier Diamond Mine, Pretoria; and to the officers of the Imperial German East Africa Railways; the Beira, Mashonaland and Rhodesian Railways; and the British South Africa Company.

E. A. P.

THE LAST FRONTIER

THE THIRD EMPIRE

Drop Cap W

WE have witnessed one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of the world. In less than a generation we have seen the French dream of an African empire stretching without interruption from the Mediterranean to the Congo literally fulfilled. French imperialism did not end, as the historians would have you believe, on that September day in 1870 when the third Napoleon lost his liberty and his throne at Sedan. The echoes of the Commune had scarcely died away before the French empire-builders were again at work, in Africa, in Asia, in Oceanica, founding on every seaboard of the world a new and greater France. In the two-score years that have elapsed since France's anne terrible