This Tarquah railway is estimated to cost £5,000 per mile. It is to be financed by a loan, raised by the Crown Colony Agents, of £250,000. We have ample reason to believe that this £5,000 per mile will not represent one-third of its final cost from demonstrations by the Uganda, Congo Belge, and Senegal railways; more particularly are we so assured from the knowledge that the railway's construction will be in the hands of nominees of the Crown Agents, whose method of arranging for the construction of these railways is curious. They do not invite tenders for material or freight in the open market, and they do not give the taxed people in the country itself any opportunity for contracting for the supply of as much local material as possible—things it would be alike fair and business-like to do. Exceedingly curious, moreover, is the fact that the nominees of the Crown Agents' employers are not subject to the control of the local governmental authorities on the Coast, their sole connection with the affair apparently being confined to the passing of ordinances, as per instruction from the Colonial Office, authorising loans for the payment of the debt incurred by making the railway.
There is no doubt that any Gold Coast railway which is ever to pay even for its coal must run through a rich bit of the local gold reefs. Similarly, there is no doubt that the gold mines of the Gold Coast have been terribly kept back by lack of transport facilities for the machinery necessary to work them; but there is, nevertheless, evidently much that is unsound in the present railway scheme. If the charge for it, as some suggest, were to be thrown on the gold mines, it would be as heavy a charge as the old bad transport was, and they would be no less hampered. If, as is most likely, the charge for the railway
