A lone plume of smoke stood straight over the vast desert, while the setting sun hung round above the long river. The image did not feel out of place in the Namib Desert of Southwest Africa. As the other trunk railways were completed, East Africa finally began construction on the Walvis Bay Port Railway.
Though it lay right beside the sea, the Namib Desert received none of the Atlantic Ocean's nourishing rainfall. Like Chile and Peru, the local vegetation relied on fog for its main source of water.
"Dehr, was I seeing things? Those were elephants, right?" railway worker Vasily asked, staring dumbfoundedly at a herd of elephants passing along the road beside them.
Walvis Bay Port had a highway running directly to Mang'u City. Naturally, that road had been built deep in the desert, and the Walvis Bay Port Railway was being laid alongside it, meaning it too ran through the desert. Vasily had nearly thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
"Making a mountain out of a molehill. Those are desert elephants, different from the savanna elephants we usually see. I remember there are forest elephants in the Congo Basin too. You really have not seen much," Dehr said, rather smugly introducing them to Vasily.
"This place is nothing but sand. What could they possibly eat to maintain such huge bodies?" Vasily still found it hard to believe. He had seen plenty of elephants on the savanna, but those elephants never lacked food.
"Look closely. Aren't these elephants a little smaller than the ones we usually see? Desert elephants mainly survive on the desert shrubs. Though the Namib Desert is arid, it has heavy fog, and much of its vegetation has relied on that to develop survival methods completely different from plants in other deserts around the