118 (No. 99 ECONOMIC CONDITIONS (c ) Elisabethville . — At the beginning of 1912 this town , of which there was no sign eighteen months previously , covered an area of 560 acres, and had some 20 miles of streets, and a population, according to the census of that year, of 1,132, of whom 519 were Belgians, 228 British, and 385 of other nationalities ?. By March 1912 a collapse of the ' boom ' set in , and a somewhat acute financial crisis was produced. This was com plicated by the action of the Banque du Congo Belge, which, realizing that there were no mortgage laws in force in the country, promptly called in its various loans on land and building property. By 1914, how ever, business had revived and indeed increased , and the original wattle -and -daub huts of the town had been largely replaced by substantial buildings.

(6) FINANCE In 1910 it was estimated that the capital invested in Katanga in connexion with mining, agricultural, and commercial operations, and railway construction amounted to £ 10,000,000. A branch of the Standard Bank of South Africa was opened at Elizabethville in 1919.

1 At the end of 1919 the whole population was estimated at about 1,600 . A. de Bauw, Le Katanga , Brussels, 1920 .