no word went over the wires; navigation on the
rivers ceased. The country was paralyzed. Happily for me it was settled
before I left Bulawayo.

Late at night I crossed the Congo border and stopped for the customs at
Sakania. At once I realized the potency that lay in my royal credentials
for all traffic was tied up until I was expedited. I also got the
initial surprise of the many that awaited me in this part of the world.
In the popular mind the Congo is an annex of the Inferno. I can vouch
for the fact that some sections break all heat records. The air that
greeted me, however, might have been wafted down from Greenland's icy
mountain, for I was chilled to the bone. In the flickering light of
the station the natives shivered in their blankets. The atmosphere was
anything but tropical yet I was almost within striking distance of the
Equator. The reason for this frigidity was that I had entered the
confines of the Katanga, the most healthful and highly developed
province of the Congo and a plateau four thousand feet above sea level.

[Illustration: LORD LEVERHULME]

[Illustration: ROBERT WILLIAMS]

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. One was the group of
American engineers who have developed the technical side of mining in
the Katanga as elsewhere in the Congo; the other was a contact with the
industry which produces a considerable part of the wealth of the Colony.

There is a wide impression that the Congo is entirely an agricultural
country. Although it has unlimited possibilities in this direction, the
reverse, for the moment, is true. The 900,000 square miles of area (it
is eighty-eight times the size of Belgium) have scarcely been scraped by
the hand of man, although Nature has been prodigal in her share of the
development. Wild rubber, the gathering of which loosed the storm about
King Leopold's head, is nearly exhausted because of the one-time
ruthless harvesting. Cotton and coffee are infant industries. The
principal product of the soil, commercially, is the fruit of the palm
tree and here Nature again does most of the ground work.

Mining is, in many respects, the chief operation and the Katanga, which
is really one huge mine, principally copper, is the most prosperous
region so far as bulk of output is concerned. Since this area figures so
prominently in the