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.It was only after the British deliberately provoked an incident with a Portuguese gunboat that a treaty led to the start of the construction of the railway and Pauling, fresh from building a line between Pretoria in South Africa and Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in southern Mozambique, was soon appointed as contractor.The line, which was the longest narrow gauge railway in the world at the time used the tiny 2ft gauge.It was also one of those projects with a claim, like the Panama and the Indian railway up the Ghats, to being the deadliest in terms of the toll on its workforce.During the first two years of construction which started in 1892, George Tabor, the historian of the Cape to Cairo, reckons that ‘60 per cent of the white men – about 400 [out of a total of about 650] – died of fever [and] the 500 Indian employees almost all succumbed’.19 The Africans fared only marginally better, with a death rate of around 30 per cent since they were slightly more immune to the malarial mosquitoes.Malaria was, indeed, the main killer as the benefits of quinine were only just being understood, but dysentery, cholera and sleeping sickness also contributed to the high mortality rate, as well as the shortage of fresh food because of the lack of transport which the putative railway was intended to solve.There was, too, the ever present danger from the wildlife, particularly crocodiles and hippopotamuses 20 in the river and lions on the land who quickly realized there were easy pickings at night since the workers mostly slept in the open where they were easy prey: ‘In one month lions scoffed two of our white employees’, 21 Pauling is reported as saying, omitting to mention the numerous native victims of the feline predators.The first fifty miles of construction, in particular, were a nightmare since conditions were little different from those on the murderous Panama Railway built half a century before.There was even the same problem of dispensing with bodies as coffins were in short supply, so the dead were unceremoniously dumped in the river weighed down with stones: ‘Sometimes at night strange gurgling sounds were heard and bubbles appeared, as gas escaped from the fast decomposing corpses.They also had a nasty habit of being washed up after heavy rains on to people’s verandahs.’ 22 It was ‘a monumental few months of misery in the worst fever country in the world’.23The railway had to be built on embankments because of the regular flooding of the Pungwe and Zambezi rivers, which turns the whole area into a lake, and thus progress was slow.All materials had to be brought in from Great Britain by tug up the Pungwe river from Beira with the result that the railway could only be built from that end, since there was no construction material or, labour available in Salisbury.But despite this difficulty and the terrible conditions, the line reached its halfway point to the Mozambique frontier, seventy-five miles from the river, in October 1893, eighteen months after work had started.This hastily assembled railway, built to very low standards on its tiny gauge, was immediately put to use and was deemed a great success.Its little engines carried passengers in open-topped wagons rather like those on a fairground ride with, if they were lucky, a tarpaulin to protect them from sparks, at speeds rarely exceeding 10 mph.The male passengers had to be willing both to help lift carriages back on the track after the frequent derailments and push the train up the zigzags and spurs when a second engine was not available.By 1894, when the line reached Chimoio, nearly 120 miles from the riverhead at Fontesvilla, the rail journey would take anything between fourteen and thirty-six hours depending on the number of delays, in addition to the two-day cart ride to or from Salisbury.At Chimoio, the usual financial difficulties and the obstacle of a mountain range, which had to be crossed at Umtali 24 on the border between Mozambique and Rhodesia nearly 4,000 feet above sea level, brought construction to a halt.Eventually, with a workforce numbering up to 12,000, the line was completed to Salisbury, 200 miles from Umtali, in 1899 and, as befitted such an important railway, its gauge was widened to a far more manageable 3ft 6ins [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.It was only after the British deliberately provoked an incident with a Portuguese gunboat that a treaty led to the start of the construction of the railway and Pauling, fresh from building a line between Pretoria in South Africa and Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in southern Mozambique, was soon appointed as contractor.The line, which was the longest narrow gauge railway in the world at the time used the tiny 2ft gauge.It was also one of those projects with a claim, like the Panama and the Indian railway up the Ghats, to being the deadliest in terms of the toll on its workforce.During the first two years of construction which started in 1892, George Tabor, the historian of the Cape to Cairo, reckons that ‘60 per cent of the white men – about 400 [out of a total of about 650] – died of fever [and] the 500 Indian employees almost all succumbed’.19 The Africans fared only marginally better, with a death rate of around 30 per cent since they were slightly more immune to the malarial mosquitoes.Malaria was, indeed, the main killer as the benefits of quinine were only just being understood, but dysentery, cholera and sleeping sickness also contributed to the high mortality rate, as well as the shortage of fresh food because of the lack of transport which the putative railway was intended to solve.There was, too, the ever present danger from the wildlife, particularly crocodiles and hippopotamuses 20 in the river and lions on the land who quickly realized there were easy pickings at night since the workers mostly slept in the open where they were easy prey: ‘In one month lions scoffed two of our white employees’, 21 Pauling is reported as saying, omitting to mention the numerous native victims of the feline predators.The first fifty miles of construction, in particular, were a nightmare since conditions were little different from those on the murderous Panama Railway built half a century before.There was even the same problem of dispensing with bodies as coffins were in short supply, so the dead were unceremoniously dumped in the river weighed down with stones: ‘Sometimes at night strange gurgling sounds were heard and bubbles appeared, as gas escaped from the fast decomposing corpses.They also had a nasty habit of being washed up after heavy rains on to people’s verandahs.’ 22 It was ‘a monumental few months of misery in the worst fever country in the world’.23The railway had to be built on embankments because of the regular flooding of the Pungwe and Zambezi rivers, which turns the whole area into a lake, and thus progress was slow.All materials had to be brought in from Great Britain by tug up the Pungwe river from Beira with the result that the railway could only be built from that end, since there was no construction material or, labour available in Salisbury.But despite this difficulty and the terrible conditions, the line reached its halfway point to the Mozambique frontier, seventy-five miles from the river, in October 1893, eighteen months after work had started.This hastily assembled railway, built to very low standards on its tiny gauge, was immediately put to use and was deemed a great success.Its little engines carried passengers in open-topped wagons rather like those on a fairground ride with, if they were lucky, a tarpaulin to protect them from sparks, at speeds rarely exceeding 10 mph.The male passengers had to be willing both to help lift carriages back on the track after the frequent derailments and push the train up the zigzags and spurs when a second engine was not available.By 1894, when the line reached Chimoio, nearly 120 miles from the riverhead at Fontesvilla, the rail journey would take anything between fourteen and thirty-six hours depending on the number of delays, in addition to the two-day cart ride to or from Salisbury.At Chimoio, the usual financial difficulties and the obstacle of a mountain range, which had to be crossed at Umtali 24 on the border between Mozambique and Rhodesia nearly 4,000 feet above sea level, brought construction to a halt.Eventually, with a workforce numbering up to 12,000, the line was completed to Salisbury, 200 miles from Umtali, in 1899 and, as befitted such an important railway, its gauge was widened to a far more manageable 3ft 6ins [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]