1919] shorn, The Congo Expedition xxi 



Hall of the Museum the requisite material for habitat groups of the rare 

 Okapi and square-lipped Rhinoceros before their extermination made 

 this impossible On the journey up the Congo River from Leopold ville 

 (July 12, 1909) occasional collecting familiarized us with the more com- 

 mon faunal types. Arriving at Stanleyville August 3, necessary prepara- 

 tions for the porterage and future disposition of loads were made. A 

 month later, the Expedition, with a caravan of two hundred porters, 

 started upon the overland journey through the Rain Forest to Avakubi, 

 on the Ituri River, where, on September 30, we established our perma- 

 nent base. During the next three months, spent in the vicinity of 

 Avakubi, Ngayu, and Bafwabaka, the collections increased satisfactorily. 

 Our greatest efforts, however, were devoted to training a staff of fifteen 

 natives in various methods of collecting and adequately preserving the 

 material gathered, a measure of utmost importance in regions where the 

 destructive effects of the hot, moist climate had to be met. Such an 

 arrangement later allowed us to give more time to a zoological survey, 

 and on many side trips the preparation of collections could be accom- 

 plished with greater facility. 



"From January to October 1910, with a base at Medje, we estab- 

 lished at least forty camps in the uninhabited rain forest south of the 

 Nepoko River. In October we could report that all necessary data and 

 material for an Okapi group had been obtained. Water-color sketches, 

 several hundred correlated photographs, accessories, including parts of 

 trees, lianas, bushes, samples of soil, and leaf moulds, supplemented by a 

 thorough study of the little-known life history, assured an ideal reproduc- 

 tion of such a group. The general collections also were successfully 

 increased, and reached a total of 1054 mammals, 1885 birds, 829 rep- 

 tiles and batrachians, 39 fishes, 15,000 invertebrates, and an ethnographi- 

 cal collection of over 700 specimens. 



"The Museum authorities generously appropriated funds for a 

 continuation of the work in the savannah country of the Upper Uele, 

 where we established base camps at Niangara, Dungu, Faradje, Aba, 

 Vankerckhoven ville, Yakuluku and Garamba, from January 1911- 

 July 1913. The square-lipped Rhinoceros proved fairly numerous here 

 and we were fortunate in obtaining for a habitat group a bull with a 42- 

 inch horn and a female with one 36.25 inches long, records from this 

 region and the largest complete specimens ever collected for exhibition. 

 Short hunting trips were made from Garamba into the Anglo-Egyptian 

 Sudan, with the Sirdar's kind permission, and quite unexpectedly Giant 

 Eland, the largest known antelope, furnished equally splendid material 



