The American Museum Journal 
Worn, 2 OCTOBER, 1910 No. 6 

IN THE HEART OF AFRICA 
THE FIRST PUBLISHED ACCOUNT OF THE MUSEUM'S CONGO EXPEDITION 
Photographs by Herbert Lang 
WO members of the Museum staff, Messrs. Herbert Lang and 
James Chapin, are in the Upper Congo region, that great 
steaming land of equatorial Africa shrouded in jungle. They 
have slowly sailed up the Congo River, one of the three largest rivers 
of the world, and least well-known; they have travelled on foot through 
dense tropical forests proceeding for hours through swamps until, as 
described by one of them, they were dripping and picturesque like the 
mighty jungle trees with innumerable hangings and decorations. They 
have seen strange places and stranger primitive peoples, of whom it is 
time that the world obtain complete scientific record in view of the 
rapid advance that civilization must make in the Congo in the imme- 
diate future. The photographs that they have sent tell a small part 
of the story of their progress into this heart of Africa, giving, however, a 
realization of the inadequacy of cold gray pictures to make vivid a 
and the 

tropical country, the splendid color, the sounds, the life 
heat. It was in regard to the last that Mr. Lang wrote the following 
advice to a friend: ‘While looking at the pictures get into a Turkish 
bath. You will appreciate the country better.” 
The Congo is probably one of the most promising unexplored fields 
for zodlogical work in the world. There has been every reason to 
prevent investigation of the region previously. Civilization has ignored 
the west coast of Africa. The world knows the north, east and south 
coasts, but mystery has been attached to the whole six thousand miles 
of the coast on the west where surf continually thunders. 
The Congo, inland, is cut off from communication with the north by 
the desert of Sahara, from the east and the valley of the Nile by high 
mountain ranges, from the south by trackless jungle and misty swamp. 
It lies in the heat of the equator, inaccessible and inhospitable, a country 
of nearly one million square miles, larger than Europe leaving out 
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