part of a great "Cape to Cairo" railway linking all the British colonies of Africa. Rhodes was as much a capitalist in his motivation as a visionary, and when little gold was found in Mashonaland, he accepted that even the scheme to reach Lake Tanganyika had no economic justification. Railways built by private companies without government subsidies need enough of the type of traffic that can pay high freight rates to recover their construction costs. The agricultural products that fuelled much of Rhodesia's early economic growth could not provide this traffic; large quantities of minerals could. Most early railways in Africa were built by the British government rather than Chartered Companies. The need to raise capital and produce dividends prevented most Chartered Companies from undertaking such infrastructure investments. However, in the early period of railway construction, the BSAC obtained finance from South African companies including Consolidated Gold Fields and De Beers in which Rhodes was a dominant force. BSAC also benefitted from the large, but not unlimited personal fortunes of Rhodes and Beit before their deaths. Development of routes Lord Gifford and his Bechuanaland Exploring Company had won the right to construct a private railway north from the terminus of the Cape Government Railways at Kimberley into Bechuanaland in 1888. Rhodes was initially against this extension, in part because Gifford was a competitor but also for reasons of Cape politics. However, when Rhodes and Gifford joined forces, BSAC had to take on this railway obligation to gain its Charter. Rhodes promised that BSAC would spend £500,000 on building a railway through Bechuanaland, half of BSAC's total initial share capital. The railway reached Vryburg in 1890, stopping there until 1893 because of the poor financial state of BSAC and disappointing reports about gold in Mashonaland and Matabeleland. BSAC remained cautious about railway building until 1896, when African uprisings threatening its investment made railway links to Southern Rhodesia imperative. The line from Kimberley reached Bulawayo in 1897, and a connection to Salisbury was completed in 1902. By then Southern Rhodesia already had a rail outlet to the Mozambican port of Beira. This was completed by the Beira Railway Company, a subsidiary company of the BSAC, as a narrow gauge railway as far as Umtali in 1898. In the next year, a line from Salisbury to Umtali was completed which, like the Kimberley to Bulawayo line, was at the Cape gauge of 3