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Updated: June 4, 2025
The next afternoon I arrived at Elizabethville, named for the Queen of the Belgians, capital of the province, and center of the copper activity. Here I touched two significant things.
Equally remarkable is the mushroom growth of Elizabethville, the one wonder town of the Congo. In 1910, when the railway arrived, it was a geographical expression, a spot in the jungle dominated by the huge ant-hills that you find throughout Central Africa, some of them forty feet high. The white population numbered thirty. I found it a thriving place with over 2,000 whites and 12,000 blacks.
There are one third as many white people in the Katanga Province as in all the rest of the Congo combined, and its area is scarcely a fourth of that of the colony. The father of Elizabethville is General Emile Wangermee, one of the picturesque figures in Congo history. He came out in the early days of the Free State, fought natives, and played a big part in the settlement of the country.
Monsieur Franck's presence inspired a succession of festivities including a garden party which was attended by the entire white population numbering about seventy-five. There was also a formal dinner where I wore evening clothes for the first and only time between Elizabethville and the steamer that took me to Europe three months later.
Nelson had worked for an Englishman at Elizabethville and acquired his cognomen. I have not the slightest doubt that he now masquerades under mine. Be that as it may, Nelson was a model servant and he remained with me until that September day when I boarded the Belgium-bound boat at Matadi. Nelson reminded me more of the Georgia Negro than any other one that I saw in the Congo.
As a parting gift I gave him more money than he had ever before seen in his life. It only elicited this laconic response, "Now I am rich enough to buy a wife." With these words he bade me farewell. "The Anversville" was another agreeable surprise. She is one of three sister ships in the service of the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo. The other two are "The Albertville" and "The Elizabethville."
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