reat spaces washed with sun.

When I reached the bottom of the long incline on my way out I looked
back. The sun was setting and those sentinel boulders bulked in the
dying light. They seemed to incarnate something of the might and power
of the personality that shaped Rhodesia, and made of it an annex of
Empire.

[Illustration: A KATANGA COPPER MINE]

CHAPTER IV--THE CONGO TODAY

I

Unfold the map of Africa and you see a huge yellow area sprawling over
the Equator, reaching down to Rhodesia on the south-east, and converging
to a point on the Atlantic Coast. Equal in size to all Latin and
Teutonic Europe, it is the abode of 6,000 white men and 12,000,000
blacks. No other section of that vast empire of mystery is so packed
with hazard and hardship, nor is any so bound up with American
enterprise. Across it Stanley made his way in two epic expeditions.
Livingstone gave it the glamour of his spiritualizing influence.
Fourteen nations stood sponsor at its birth as a Free State and the
whole world shook with controversy about its administration. Once the
darkest domain of the Dark Continent, it is still the stronghold of the
resisting jungle and the last frontier of civilization. It is the
Belgian Congo.

During these past years the veil has been lifted from the greater part
of Africa. We are familiar with life and customs in the British, French,
and to a certain degree, the Portuguese and one-time German colonies.
But about the land inseparably associated with the economic
statesmanship of King Leopold there still hangs a shroud of uncertainty
as to regime and resource. Few people go there and its literature, save
that which grew out of the atrocity campaign, is meager and
unsatisfactory. To the vast majority of persons, therefore, the country
is merely a name--a dab of colour on the globe. Its very distance lends
enchantment and heightens the lure that always lurks in the unknown.
What is it like? What is its place in the universal productive scheme?
What of its future?

I went to the Congo to find out. My journey there was the logical sequel
to my visit to the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia, which I have
already described. It seemed a pity not to take a plunge into the region
that I had read about in the books of Stanley. In my childhood I heard
him tell the story of some of his African experiences. The man and his
narrative were unforgettable for he incarnated both the ideal and the
adventure of jour