248 In the Heart of Africa 



impoverished and alternating with savannahs in the Congo region, 

 to the great lakes,' etc. Or again, ' The great, gloomy, Equatorial 

 forest, which has no connection with the coastal forests, and 

 which was traversed by Stanley, Emin Pasha, Count Gotzen 

 and a few other travellers, stretches deep into the interior of the 

 Congo territory. It cannot in any way compare, however, with 

 the virgin forests of Brazil or of the Sunda Islands.' 



" Regarding the first quotation, the point at issue is not that 

 of a vast uninterrupted forest in the Congo basin ; it is an 

 accepted fact that broader or narrower strips alternate with 

 savannahs there ; in the second quotation the existence of an 

 Equatorial forest is recognised, but the character of tropical 

 virgin forest and any connection with the woods near the West 

 African coast is not allowed. 



" In contrast to these statements I would like to quote a sen- 

 tence from Stanley : ' Visions of Brazil may be conjured up in 

 the Congo basin ; the river itself is reminiscent of the Amazon, 

 and the Central African forests of the immense forests of 

 Brazil.' 



" From the Cameroons and Gaboon coasts of the Atlantic 

 Ocean, the waves of an African virgin forest surge uninter- 

 ruptedly up to the foot of the Ruwenzori Mountains in the far 

 east ; it is only laced in by savannahs like a narrow strait be- 

 tween the most south-easterly point of the Cameroons and the 

 Ubangi. Now, if we take only the eastern portion of this 

 hemmed in part, the actual Equatorial forest, we perceive an 

 immense mass of forest bounded by the curve of the Congo- 

 Lualaba from Coquilhatville, on the Equator, to Nyangwe ; 

 farther by a line from Nyangwe to the Burton Gulf of Lake Tan- 

 ganjika ; in the east approximately by the western edge of the 

 Central African rift-valley ; in the north by the Uelle-Ubangi ; 

 and in the west by the Ubangi in its lower course. Then comes 

 a junction with the forests of the south Cameroons. This forms 

 a territory in round figures of 600,000 square kilometres, whose 

 connection with the genuine tropical forest is unbroken, either 

 by mountains worthy of the name, or by any strips of pasture 



