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Updated: June 4, 2025
I had cabled to Horner to engage me two personal servants or "boys" as they are called in Africa. When I got to Elizabethville I found that he had secured two. In addition to Swahili, the main native tongue in those parts, one spoke English and the other French, the official language in the Congo.
With Horner I travelled by motor through the whole Katanga copper belt. I visited, first of all, the famous Star of the Congo Mine, eight miles from Elizabethville, and which was the cornerstone of the entire metal development. Next came the immense excavation at Kambove where I watched American steam shovels in charge of Americans, gouging the copper ore out of the sides of the hills.
The original "Elizabethville" was sunk by a German submarine during the war off the coast of France. These vessels are big, clean, and comfortable and the service is excellent. All vessels to and from Europe stop at Boma, the capital of the Congo, which is five hours steaming down river from Matadi.
When I left Elizabethville I bade farewell to the comforts of life. I mean, for example, such things as ice, bath-tubs, and running water. There is enough water in the Congo to satisfy the most ardent teetotaler but unfortunately it does not come out of faucets. Most of it flows in rivers, but very little of it gets inside the population, white or otherwise.
The Katanga is, with the exception of certain palm fruit areas, the bulwark of British interests in the Congo. The American domain is the Upper Kasai district. Conspicuous among the Americans at Elizabethville was Preston K. Horner, who constructed the smelter plant and who was made General Manager of the Union Miniere in 1913.
Speaking of water brings to mind one of the useful results of such a trip as mine. Isolation in the African wilds gives you a new appreciation of what in civilization is regarded as the commonplace things. Take the simple matter of a hair-cut. There are only two barbers in the whole Congo. One is at Elizabethville and the other at Kinshassa, on the Lower Congo, nearly two thousand miles away.
They gave me a genuine American welcome and that night I dined in Robison's grass house off American food that had travelled nearly fifteen thousand miles. I heard the first unadulterated Yankee conversation that had fallen on my ears since I left Elizabethville two months before.
He helped the stewards place my luggage in the ship, which was the first liner he had ever seen. He was almost appalled at its magnitude. I asked him if he would like to accompany me to Europe. He shook his head solemnly and said, "No, master. The ship is too big and I am afraid of it. I want to go home to Elizabethville."
When we left a week later, he could jabber intelligently with any savage he met. On the four weeks' trip from Elizabethville he had picked up enough French to make himself understood. The Central African native has an aptitude for languages that far surpasses that of the average white man.
I left him behind at Elizabethville, for I proceeded to Fungurume with Horner by automobile. He was to follow by train with my luggage and have the private car, which I had chartered for the journey to Bukama, ready for me on my arrival.
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