The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-06-21
Central Africa's Danger.

Stanley writes that "within the equato-
rial rainy belt of Africa and that vast ex-
tent of country known as Soudan, there
are 100000 of people who only want
a railroad to the sea coast to give the out
side world trade of many millions of
dollars" Now just look at that,wi you?
Just place your optics upon the advance
of civilization into the heart of Africa
Look at these benighted pagans, turning
deaf ears to the consultations of the Cos
pei carried to them by the missionaries,
sitting down in front of their humble
huts, and crying for railroad. Poor, de-
luded, misguided Africans. What has
Mr.. Stanley been telling you2 How
could he impose upon your ignorance and
your childish credulity, and fill your un-
tutored minds with vague, unrestful
yearnings for railroad9 They will want
daily paper next, and then they won't
be satisfied until they have telephone,
system of life insurance, a Beecher scan
dal, Louisiana muddle, signal service
bureau, street commissioner, a ladies'
benevolent society, and three or four jails
and penitentiary and all the other con-
comitants of a healthy civilization. And
then, after they have built their railroad,
and have shipped three or four millions
Of dollars worth of gold dust and ivory
and have built new houses with high
stoops, basement dining-rooms, mansard-
roofs and cut-throat mortgages, they will
organize oranges, and try to legislate
their railroad out of the country, and
will denounce it as fraud, and monop-
DIV and an extortion, and will make it
carry 100000 worth Of ivory and gold
dust two hundred miles, and be response
BILE for the property, as common carrier,
for eighteen mills per hundred miles, and
will sigh for the good old days when they
painted their legs and went naked, and
didn't owe a dollar, (nor a cent? in the
great wide world, and there wasn't rail
road within ten thousand miles of Africa.
And they will pass laws fOrbidding the
running of trains faster than six miles an
hour, and will get on the trains and swear
at the conductor and chaff the brakeman
and growl at the company because they
are not carried from Ubijikowopkocko-
nanji to Wptchichikinikopchatwptchji
siding, distance of forty three miles, in
twenty minutes. And their newspapers
will teach them new slang, and they will
starve all their lives to keep the insurance
companies going, and their wives will
give away all their good summer clothes
in the winter, and all their good winter
clothes in the summer to the Ladies' Be-
nevolent and Foreign Mission societies,
and their sons will run for marshal and
their daughters will run for any man who
wears an eye-glass and parts his hair in
the middle, and they will have more
trouble in week than they now have in
q year. Deluded Pagans, stick to your
idols aud your huts, and when you must
travel, walk, and make your wives carry
the baggage, as your fathers did. But
through your country with a railroad sub
scription. A railroad is a dreadful thing,
and after it has made you rich, it will
take all your time during the remaining
days of your life fighting the railroad and
preventing it also from becoming rich.-
Burlington HaWkeye