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Nor was he working in the dark. Late in the nineties he had sent George Grey, a brother of Sir Edward, now Viscount Grey, through the present Katanga region on a prospecting expedition. Grey discovered large deposits of copper and also tin, lead, iron, coal, platinum, and diamonds.
They do not lose much by remaining away, for a little ivory and slaves are all that Casembe ever can have to sell. Gold is also found at Katanga, and specimens were lately sent to the Sultan of Zanzibar. As we come down from the watershed towards Tanganyika we enter an area of the earth's surface still disturbed by internal igneous action.
Clearly to understand the scope and purpose of the Forminiere you must know that it is one of the three companies that have helped to shape the destiny of the Congo. I encountered the first the Union Miniere the moment I entered the Katanga. The second is the Huileries du Congo Belge, the palm-oil producers whose bailiwick abuts upon the Congo and Kwilu Rivers.
The Union Miniere is now the leading industrial institution in the Katanga and its story is really the narrative of a considerable phase of Congo development. Within ten years it has grown from a small prospecting outfit in the wilderness, two hundred and fifty miles from a railway, to an industry employing at the time of my visit more than 1,000 white men and 15,000 blacks.
It weighed twelve pounds. Stanleyville has a significance for me less romantic but infinitely more practical than the first contact with the Congo River. After long weeks of suffering from inefficient service I sacked Gerome and annexed a boy named Nelson. The way of it was this: In the Katanga I engaged a young Belgian who was on his way home, to act as secretary.
The ores are of a very high grade and since the Union Miniere owns more than one hundred mines, of which only six or seven are partially developed, the future seems safe. Copper is only one phase of the Katanga mineral treasure. Coal, iron, and tin have not only been discovered in quantity but are being mined commercially.
When I have found them, I shall return by Katanga to the underground houses of Rua. From the caverns, ten days north-east will take me to Lake Kamolondo. I shall be able to travel from the lake, in your boat, up the River Lufira, to Lake Lincoln. "And how long do you think this little journey will take you?" "A year and a half, at the furthest, from the day I leave Unyanyembe."
25th December, 1868, Christmas Day. We can buy nothing except the very coarsest food not a goat or fowl while Syde, having plenty of copper, can get all the luxuries. We marched past Mount Katanga, leaving it on our left, to the River Kapéta, and slaughtered a favourite kid to make a Christmas dinner. A trading-party came up from Ujiji; they said that we were ten camps from Tanganyika.
Hamees reports that though the strangers had lost a great many people by small-pox, they had brought good news of certain Arabs still further west: one, Seide ben Umale, or Salem, lived at a village near Casembe, ten days distant, and another, Juma Merikano, or Katata Katanga, at another village further north, and Seide ben Habib was at Phueto, which is nearer Tanganyika.
The real pioneer of development in the Katanga is an Englishman, Robert Williams, a friend and colleague of Cecil Rhodes, and who constructed, as you may possibly recall, the link in the Cape-to-Cairo Railway from Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia to the Congo border. He has done for Congo copper what Lord Leverhulme has accomplished for palm fruit and Thomas F. Ryan for diamonds.
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