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Show A Clfffl't Electricity Invades the !; SA xjiccii x Lan(J of the AncieBt j Enterprise... 8 Pharaohs. One of the great electrical enterprises enterpris-es of the age is nearing its completion. comple-tion. Seven years have been spent at this business. Three thousand miles of wire are in position and 1,200 more will be necessary to carry the telegraph tele-graph line to its terminus in the land of the Pharaohs. This will cover the entire length of Africa. The cost of the line so far completed has been $5,000,000 and its completion will add $1,000,000 more to the total. The work done has been under almost appalling difficulties. Swamps have been bridged, bridg-ed, mountain chasms crossed, floods waded, the lion and the barbarian faced fac-ed frequently to the point of death.and the miseries of an almost unbearable climate endured. The ant made sawdust saw-dust of the poles and most of the material ma-terial used had to be carried through primeval forests on the shoulders of aborigines. The copper wire was sometimes made into bullets to shoot down intruders and piles of human bones have been left to whiten in the sun, where the cannibal or the beast , of prey had gorged on the remains. The cost has been heavy, but the results re-sults will in the long run be the transformation trans-formation of Africa, as the railway will follow the telegraph line and the products of all nations find one of tha great markets in the future between the Cape of Good Hope and the Egyptian Egyp-tian end of the Nile. |