388
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
18
November 1902 discovered what is now the Roan Antelope Mine, and J. J.
Donohoe, who with Collier on 4 December of the same year discovered
what became the Bwana M'Kubwa Mine. Finally, to complete the story of
fundamental prospecting in this earlier period, it must be added that
in 1910 J. Moffat Thomson, an official of the British South Africa
Company, and subsequently to rise to high office in its administration,
discovered the area subsequently to be famous as the N'Kana claims.
The
mining titles and rights attached to these discoveries did not always
remain in the hands of the exploring companies which had originally
financed the various prospecting parties. Clearly, the Northern Copper
Company had done great work so far as prospecting was concerned. Its
place was taken, from 1902 onwards, by the Rhodesian Copper Company,
originally registered on 31 January 1902, re-registered in the same
name in March 1909, and which emerged in 1911 as the Rhodesian Copper
and General Exploration Company, out of which sprang, in succession,
the Rhodesia Broken Hill Development Company, registered on 31 October
1904, the Kafue Copper Development Company, registered on 30 May
1905—which took over from the Northern Copper Company the claims in the
'Kafue Hook' mentioned above—and the Bwana M'Kubwa Company, registered
on 16 March 1910. The Northern Copper Company was itself absorbed in
1914 by the parent Bechuanaland Exploration Company. The pattern
immediately antecendent to the situation in 1924 was beginning to
emerge; to complete this side of the story, the area in which the
present Roan Antelope Mine is situated was acquired by the Northern
Rhodesia Company Limited from the Bechuanaland Exploration Company,
the Bwana M'Kubwa Company and the Rhodesia Copper and General
Exploration Company. There were two other companies in the Edmund Davis
group which require a passing mention—the Charter-land and General
Exploration Company, registered in 1909 as a reconstruction of a
previous company, and the United Exploration Company, the history of
which goes back to 1905.
There
were two interlocked holding and finance companies, of both of which
Edmund Davis was chairman, possessing some rights which were finally
passed on to the Kasempa Concessions Limited in 1926, when the new
policy of the British South Africa Company was being vigorously
pursued. Finally, outside the base metal complex of the companies,
Edmund Davis was chairman and managing director of the Wankie Colliery
Company Limited, the history of which goes
