Special Problems in Transportation 233

39. Which is the largest of the interior cities? How does it compare with
the largest of the seaports?
Study the map of the Nile River to account for the location of Cairo.
What three kinds of transportation routes meet at this point?
41. How does primary production combine with transportation to cause the
growth of Cairo? Give another reason for its growth.
How does Khartum communicate with its hinterland and with the lower
Nile ?

Johannesburg, the great gold-mining center on the Witwatersrand
 in South Africa, is also a railroad center.
13. Is this chiefly because its products must be carried out to distant markets,
or because machinery, laborers, food, and clothing must be brought to
it? Explain.
14. If the great Witwaters gold deposits had been located in Central Africa,
would the growth of a city have taken place more or less rapidly than at
Johannesburg? Why?

Fez and Morocco, or Marakesh, like many other great overgrown
villages near the borders of the Sahara, are the collecting points for
wheat, barley, wool, hides, and other local products, and are meeting
 points of caravan routes from the desert. They also, in a primitive
 way, carry on manufacturing, such as tanning leather, making
leather goods, and weaving cotton and woolen cloths.
Other centers, such as Kano and Ibadan in Nigeria, are even larger
than Fez, but are not listed among the African cities because they are
unimportant commercially. Their size is due not so much to transportation
 routes and primary products as to the desire of the natives to
be within the protection of a powerful chief and behind the thick mud
walls that surround the town. The houses are usually one story high
and are made of sun-dried mud.
£5. In developing communication between Algiers and interior towns, as
Timbuktu, what are the advantages or disadvantages of employing
(a) railways; (b) automobiles; (c) airplanes?
Map exercise, continued. Add to your map of African ports the important
 interior centers of population. Put in parentheses under each the
name of the country in which it is. and the European nation that is in
control.
Under each of the names on your map write the approximate length of
(a) the largest railroad running out of or through it, and (b) the internal
waterway on which it is located.
Sum up your conclusions as to transportation and primary production
in Africa compared with North America.

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