He worked at the Société Belge des Chemins de Fer du Grand Central and was a sergeant in the chasseurs-éclaireurs (scouts) battalion of the Brussels civic guard.

[1] On 7 February 1884 they reached the north Manianga plateau, where Hanssens found a letter from Henry Morton Stanley directing him to come to Léopoldville and Casman to establish a station at Mukumbi, five days by land northwest of Manyanga, near the source of the Mata River, a right tributary of the Congo.

[2] They traveled up the right bank of the Congo to Mpangu, then to the Mata River, Kinkumba, the capital of the Songo district, and finally to Mukumbi's huts which Casman reached on 19 February 1884.

On 3 August 1884 he was visited by Lieutenant Willem Frans Van Kerckhoven who had been relieved of his command at Isangila and was concluding treaties with the tribes around Mukumbi.

On 24 November 1884 they reached Msuata, where Liebrechts stayed, and where they met Giacomo Savorgnan di Brazzà and Attilio Pécile, of the French mission, who were going by canoe to the Alima.