East Africa's geographical conditions offered no rivers of great shipping value. One reason was the terrain: all major rivers passed through areas with steep drops. Another was the climate, which caused great seasonal variations in the rivers.
Building canals in Central Province avoided both of these problems. The terrain within Central Province was relatively flat, and its natural waterways had navigational value. Although the province's rivers were also seasonal, rainfall remained abundant even during the dry season.
Take the Uluguru Mountains, one of the sources of the Wami River and Little Rhine River. Their average annual rainfall exceeded an astonishing 3,000 millimeters. The Uluguru Mountains were actually the eastern extension of the East African Highlands. The abruptly rising terrain intercepted most of the moisture from the Indian Ocean, which was also why rainfall west of the mountains, in Dodoma city, plunged off a cliff.
The Rufiji River was even more extreme. Its headwaters came from the mountain ranges along Lake Malawi, and it flowed through a vast area. It was further reinforced once in its middle reaches, while rainfall across its downstream catchment was also considerable.
After half a month of marching, the punitive army personally led by Svit—composed of the South Salzburg Province Border Defense Force and some militia units—followed the Luangwa River straight toward Bulawayo, the capital of the Matabele Kingdom.
The Ndebele people along the way were utterly incapable of resisting the menacing South Salzburg Province Border Defense Force. The South Salzburg troops were a strategic force meant to deal with Portuguese forces and secure the corridor linking East Africa to the Tanganyika region and Katanga Plateau. They were regular East African forces, so naturally their combat strength was nothing to scoff at. Calling it using a butcher's cleaver to kill a chicken would not have