Leading economic expert Jim Rogers traveled to 150 countries over 150000 miles in three years - follow his adventures here on FentonReport. In this video Jim and Paige visit Libreville in Gabon. Copyright Jim Rogers - provided as a special contribution to The Fenton Report. www.fentonreport.com Libreville (population 578156 January 1, 2005) is the capital and largest city of Gabon. The city is a port on the Komo River, near the Gulf of Guinea, and a trade center for a timber region. The area was inhabited by the Mpongwé tribe long before the French acquired the land in 1839. In 1846, L'Elizia, a Brazilian ship doing slave trade, was captured by the French navy near Loango. The slaves were freed and founded Libreville (French for "Freetown") in 1848. It was the chief port of French Equatorial Africa from 1934 to 1946 and was the central focus of the Battle of Gabon in 1940. Libreville was named in imitation of Freetown and grew only slowly as a trading post and a minor administrative centre to a population of 31000 on independence in 1960. It only received its first bank branch when Bank of West Africa (BAO) opened a branch in 1930. Since independence, the city has grown rapidly and now houses nearly half the national population.