THe American Museum Journal 
DECEMBER, 1915 NUMBER 8 
VotumE. XV 
AN EXPLORER’S VIEW OF THE CONGO 
By Herbert Lang 
Illustrations from photographs by the Author 
The history of the Museum’s work in the Congo is well-known to JouRNAL readers.} 
Mr. Herbert Lang, leader, and Mr. James P. Chapin, assistant, have carried the Congo expedi- 
tion successfully through more than six years’ work in Central Africa. The expedition was 
organized in 1909 on a tentative basis of three years’ work and was supported by the contribu- 
tions of the following men of New York: Messrs. John B. Trevor, Charles Lanier, Cleveland H. 
Dodge, J. P. Morgan, Jr., William K. Vanderbilt, A. D. Juilliard, Robert W. Goelet and 
William Rockefeller. An extension of time for the work, in order to complete a zodlogical 
survey of the unexplored territory, was made possible through the Jesup Fund of the Museum. 
Mr. Lang and Mr. Chapin have now returned, and the large and splendidly preserved 
collections with their valuable data, ready for extensive scientific research as well as for the 
construction of habitat groups for exhibition, have reached America and are safely housed in the 
Museum buildings. 
The following article by Mr. Lang on the natives of the Congo, is author- 
tative in that it is based on a six-years’ intimate acquaintance with natives of many tribes and a 
six-years’ first-hand knowledge of conditions in the Congo.— Tur Eprror 
REAT progress in civilization 
unfortunately often seems to 
be accompanied by incidents 
which throw some gloom on the result. 
At the time of the Belgian occupation 
of the Congo Basin no other power 
coveted this particular piece of territory. 
Practically all of its inhabitants were 
cannibals, a large portion had been 
laid waste by Arab slave-traders and by 
the Mahdists, and the country certainly 
deserved its reputation of being one of 
the most unhealthful regions. 
Other European nations had 
plenty of opportunity to carry the torch 
of progress into the swampy regions of 
darkest Africa, but the possession al- 
ready by these colonizing powers of 
really prosperous colonies seems to show 
that political, financial and commercial 
advantages were preferred by them to 
what they probably considered a glori- 
had 
~the internecine warfare which 
ous but venturesome task. The Congo 
was therefore left to the King of the 
Belgians. Nor would it have been 
advantageous to continue to abandon its 
natives to the Arab slavers with their 
indescribable atrocities; to the Mahdists, 
who had already left a large and once 
prosperous section of Africa in a nearly 
desert condition, and to the horrors of 
is the 
inevitable sequel of cannibalism. It 
was well that some power should under- 
take the civilization of the natives even 
though difficulties and misunderstand- 
ings might ensue. 
If there had been (as some critics of 
the government seem to infer there were) 
1The full story of the aims of the expedition 
and its start from New York on May 8, 1909, 
is told in the Journaut for October, 1910; various 
briefvarticles regarding the work in progress have 
appeared at intervals between that date and the 
present. 
379 
