The ruthless treatment of the local people by SAB agents inspired Joseph Conrad to write his 1899 novel Heart of Darkness.

[5] Its purpose was defined as commercial, industrial, mining and other operations, within the broadest limits, throughout the country and especially in the territory of the Independent State of Congo.

[6] On 8 August 1887 Thys and Louis Valcke directed transport of five carts weighing 1,500–3,500 kilograms (3,300–7,700 lb) to Stanley Pool, which took hundreds of local laborers a month to achieve.

[8] The heavily loaded carts carried spare parts for the Roi des Belges and Ville de Bruxelles boats.

[10] The steamer "Brugmann" was built by the John Cockerill shipyard in Hoboken, Antwerp, for SAB (Société Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo), April 1898.

The CCCI and CFC lands were mostly grouped into the Bloc de la Busira-Momboyo, created in 1901, along the Busira and Momboyo rivers.

By 1935 it had sold shares to the SAB in exchange for a 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) plot in the Manghay region where it was cultivating coffee and cocoa trees.

In the first half of November 1889 Conrad went to Brussels to meet Albert Thys, then the deputy director of SAB, to discuss employment in Africa.

[20] After Johannes Freiesleben, Danish master of the steamship Florida, was murdered by Congo tribesmen on 29 January 1890, Conrad was appointed by Thys' company to take his place.

On 10 May 1890, at Bordeaux, he boarded the SS Ville de Maceio to begin what Zdzisław Najder calls "the most traumatic journey of his life.

"[21] En route to the Congo, near Grand-Popo, Benin, Conrad saw a French man-of-war, Le Seignelay, shelling a native camp hidden in the jungle.

[22] Conrad reached Boma on 12 June 1890 and went on to Matadi, where he met Roger Casement, who later wrote a 1904 report on atrocities perpetrated against the native Congolese population.

[25] At Stanley Falls on 6 September 1890 he was temporarily given command of Roi des Belges for the return journey while its captain recovered from a sickness.

[26] During this journey Georges-Antoine Klein, who had recently been appointed the company's commercial agent at Stanley Falls, died of dysentery.