CONGO 



1534 



CONGO 



formed by the cementing together of pebbles 

 and broken fragments of other rock by lime- 

 stone, iron, silica or some other substance which 

 usually forms the main body of the rock. 

 When conglomerate contains a large number of 

 pebbles it is called pudding stone, from its re- 

 semblance to plum pudding. When a quantity 

 of broken fragments is present it is known as 

 breccia. 



CONGO, kong'go, also spelled KONGO, is the 

 name of two large divisions of equatorial 

 Africa, one under the control of the French, 

 the second annexed to Belgium. The name is 

 taken from the River Congo, which drains prac- 

 tically the whole of the two countries and has 

 a larger volume of water than any other river 

 in the world except the Amazon. 



Belgian Congo, a vast district in Central 

 Africa, formerly known as the Congo Free 

 State, occupying the "darkest" part of the Dark 

 Continent, with a population of about 15,000,000 

 natives and 6,000 Europeans. The country, 



THE CONGO REGION 



first brought to public notice by H. M. Stan- 

 ley, the great explorer, has had an eventful 

 history. On his return to the coast, in 1876, 

 Stanley followed the course of the Congo River 

 to the sea. The attention of King Leopold II 

 of Belgium was directed to the great advan- 

 tages offered by the country, with its vast re- 

 sources, and his name is inseparably connected 

 with the exploitation of a vast Congo domain. 

 The climate is healthful, and abundant 

 crops of fruit, cereals and vegetables can be 

 raised. The mineral resources are vast and 

 have not yet been fully developed. There are 



also great quantities of ivory, but perhaps the 

 most valuable of all resources is the vast 

 supply of rubber, for the Congo forests abound 

 in trees producing this valuable commodity. 

 The rubber plantations were exploited by a 

 syndicate in which the word of Leopold II was 

 law. The powers agreed to hand over this 

 great territory to a company named the Inter- 

 national African Association, controlled by the 

 Belgian government. Belgium also reserved 

 the right to annex the territory, which was 

 eventually done with the consent of the United 

 States and all European powers. In 1908 the 

 Congo Free State became Belgian Congo, gov- 

 erned by the home country, with local govern- 

 ors in charge of various districts. 



By far the greater part of the commerce of 

 the district is conveyed over the waters of the 

 Congo River. At the beginning of the Belgian 

 occupation, when the commerce was first 

 opened up and the natives were driven under 

 dire penalties to produce a certain quantity of 

 rubber, great indignation was aroused through- 

 out the world on account of the cruelties prac- 

 ticed. The natives were in reality slaves, and 

 Leopold of Belgium, who made vast sums of 

 money out of the rubber trade, was forced in 

 self-defense to send a commission to inquire 

 into actual conditions. The commission partly 

 exonerated the king, but it was proved that 

 atrocities had been committed. When Albert I 

 came to the Belgian throne in 1909 he corrected 

 many evils that had arisen in the Congo during 

 the reign of his uncle, Leopold II. 



Within recent years conditions have greatly 

 improved; agriculture is flourishing, and a line 

 of railway, a branch of the Cape-to-Cairo line, 

 has been completed and another is under con- 

 struction from Elizabethville across Angola to 

 the Atlantic coast (see eight-page colored map, 

 in article AFRICA). Telegraph, postal and tele- 

 phone systems have been installed, and internal 

 communications have been considerably im- 

 proved. 



The natives are chiefly of Bantu stock and 

 are united in large tribes, all with a certain 

 amount of self-government and gradually com- 

 ing under the influence of a higher civilization. 

 Being almost entirely inland except for a small 

 strip on the Atlantic coast, where the port of 

 Banana is situated, the country has a warm 

 climate. The days are oppressive, but the 

 nights are cool, the variation in temperature 

 being high, even for the tropics. The great 

 scourge of the country is the tsetse fly which, 

 by the deadly venom of its bite, kills numbers 



