of the
district. Wangermee had arrived ahead of time and had not bothered to
change his clothes.

When I rode in a motor car down Elizabethville's broad, electric-lighted
avenues and saw smartly-dressed women on the sidewalks, beheld Belgians
playing tennis on well-laid-out courts on one side, and Englishmen at
golf on the other, it was difficult to believe that ten years ago this
was the bush. I lunched in comfortable brick houses and dined at night
in a club where every man wore evening clothes. I kept saying to myself,
"Is this really the Congo?" Everywhere I heard English spoken. This was
due to the large British interest in the Union Miniere and the presence
of so many American engineers. 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. He spans the whole period of Katanga
development for he first arrived in 1909. Associated with him were
various Americans including Frank Kehew, Superintendent of the smelter,
Thomas Carnahan, General Superintendent of Mines, Daniel Butner,
Superintendent of the Kambove Mine, the largest of the Katanga group,
Thomas Yale, who is in charge of the construction of the immense
concentration plant at Likasi, and A. Brooks, Manager of the Western
Mine. For some years A. E. Wheeler, a widely-known American engineer,
has been Consulting Engineer of the Union Miniere, with Frederick Snow
as assistant. Since my return from Africa Horner has retired as General
Manager and Wheeler has become the ranking American. Practically all the
Yankee experts in the Katanga are graduates of the Anaconda or Utah
Mines.

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. I saw the huge concentrating plant rising
almost like magic out of the jungle at Likasi. Here again an American
was in control. At Fungurume I spent the night in a native house in the
heart of one of the loveliest of valleys whos