KATANGA...

"of the white stains on the cards where one had written these strange words: "problem suni leones" - "here, there are some lions"

How a region as vast (496.965 km²) that France, big as sixteen times Belgium and judicious to overflow with gold and other fabulous treasures, could she/it so long remain mysterious?
Recessed in full heart of the continental block, the Katanga is by nature of a difficult access. Where that one turns of it, the nearest coast is distant of 1.500 to 2.000 km... as the crow flies!
It is a wild and arid country of where sometimes emerges, such of the antediluvian monsters, of enormous red thermitières to the bizarre shapes.
The Katanga is entire situated in the southern hemisphere, between the 5th and the 14th parallel. He/it is understood between the 22nd and the 31st meridian is from Greenwich. His/her/its southern border is constituted by the line of sharing of the basins of the Zambèze and Congo, and it is only to some kilometers of Elisabethville, to the foot of the Musofi mount, to 1.550 m of altitude, that, under the name of Lualaba, is born the big national stream.
The Katanga is a country of savannas: grassy savannas and wooded savannas. In the valleys one meets the marshes, the "dembos", and of the grassy plains. Fauna is abundant and varied. The antelopes are common and numerous; they make good household with the zebras, the buffalos, the giraffes, the rhinoceroses, the elephants, the warthogs,. The monkeys are rarer, except in the savanna afforested of the type clear forest. One finds most there also carnivorous: let's bind, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, jackals. The bugs and the birds swarm: notably the aquatic birds and the birds of prey. Let's mention the reptiles again: lizards, chameleons and snakes.
The lakes and the rivers are very fishy. With the swamps, they shelter the hippos and the crocodiles.
The landscape of the High Katanga would not be quite himself without the termites, of which adores a curious mammalian: the pangolin.
This country so rich in resource plant, animal and mineral was, until has little, a country very poor in men. In 1900, the Katanga counted again only there an inhabitant to the square kilometer and a newborn on two perished, taken away by the endemic illnesses.

Extrait du "Marabout Scope" - Katanga pays du cuivre - Fernand Lekime