The Geology of the Solwezi District, Northern Rhodesia

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Abstract
The Solwezi district lies on the southern side of the Congo-Zambezi divide along the Rhodesian-Belgian Congo border, approximately 100 miles west of N'Changa. It comprises nearly 450 square miles and forms part of the great Central African Plateau. It is a previously unmapped portion of the Northern Rhodesian copper belt, of which the climate, vegetation, and general features are adequately described in many of the works referred to on p. 152. The district is named after the Government post at Solwezi, the officials at which generously gave assistance at numerous times during my investigation of the area. I am greatly indebted to Dr. J. A. Bancroft, who directed the field work in 1929, and to Dr. C. P. Berkey and Professor R. J. Colony, who guided the laboratory work at Columbia University. The Solwezi district forms a small part of an uplifted peneplain now in the youthful stage of dissection by the headwaters of small tributaries of a major branch of the Zambezi river. The average elevation is approximately 4500 feet. Numerous low ridges and scarps and a few isolated hills interrupt an otherwise gently rolling surface, and the present physical features strikingly reflect the character of the underlying rocks. The rocks, a continuation of the complexly folded and faulted Pre-Cambrian formations of Katanga to the north, range from the Basement Series through the Mine Series and part of the Kundelungu, and in this paper are divided into five natural groups, as was done in the field for convenience in mapping