Congo Trek: A Journey Through the Heart of Central Africa

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Congo Trek: A Journey Through the Heart of Central Africa is an interactive and exploratory website from National Geographic.“For 15 months Wildlife Conservation Society biologist J. Michael Fay hiked across central Africa 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) through dense forests and remote villages to Africa’s Atlantic coast. Along the way Fay and his team surveyed the land and wildlife of the Congo River Basin, recording animals and plants that may well become threatened as humans press into the wilds. Using digital cameras and a lightweight computer system, Fay documented his trek through frequent dispatches to this website.”Begin your online adventure by exploring the 360 degree panoramic views and clicking on the animals that you see as you make your way through the Congo. Next journey through the wild by navigating the interactive map then reading the corresponding dispatches from the biologist.Teachers will find a collection of classroom ideas that incorporate materials found on this website in fun activities for their students.Related resouces and links to pertinent websites are all available for further information.

If you have read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, you have some idea of the historic danger and mystery of the Congo region. The facts of exploration are even more powerful than fiction! The chronicle of two naturalists’ explorations in Africa in the early 1900s really comes to life in this digital exhibition from the American Museum of Natural History.In the second decade of the twentieth century, Herbert Lang and his assistant James P. Chapin led an expedition to the Belgian Congo that resulted in a wealth of anthropological objects and zoological records as well as photographs and watercolor sketches. Between 1909 and 1915, Lang and Chapin collected nearly 23,000 vertebrate specimens and more than 100,000 invertebrates. This rich historical and zoological record is made available online at the American Museum of Natural History’s Congo Expedition website. Audio and image-rich introductory materialsand a Flash-enabled itineraryare just the beginning of the journey. Authentic travel logs are available full-text transcripts, with some images of the original documents and some sections dramatized in narrative form in the multimedia presentations. Text of the audio presentation is available also in print transcripts. Additional historical context is provided through excerpts from King Leopold’s Soliloquy by Mark Twain and King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild as well as biographical coverage of both James P. Chapin and Herbert Lang.The expedition’s results were significant in the work of naturalists for years to come. The elusive okapi was observed and collected, as were the already rare square-lipped rhinoceros, also known as the white rhinoceros. In addition, the expedition collected insects including a definitive collection of ants. The biological diversity of the region is reflected in the extensive collection of specimens indexed through this site. The expedition’s findings are all the more imporant as the environmental pressures in Africa reach crisis proportions and threaten the continued existence of animals and plants found there.Much of the multimedia content may be accessed directly through the Galleries. Children’s picture books, historical maps, James Chapin watercolors and other image-rich aspects of the site are listed here by title. There is even a stereographic area, where images taken in anaglyph form have been scanned to maintain their 3-D qualities. A free pair of the red/blue glasses are needed to get the effect email digital@amnh.org for information. Use the index or the search to locate specific information in this extensive collection.