CONGO, in the widest sense of the name, includes all the countries on the w. coast of Africa lying between the equator and lat. 18° s.; but more definitely the name is given to the territory lying between the rivers Dando and Congo, or Zaire.—The great central African river, the Congo, which Stanley has proposed to call the Livingstone, has of late usurped much of the interest formerly reserved for the Nile and its exploration. At its mouth on the Atlantic seaboard the Congo is an immense body of water, near 10 m. wide and over 160 fathoms in depth. Its upper course remained unknown till Mr. Stanley identified the Congo with the Lualaba, and so connected it immediately with the great system of lakes s. and w. of lake Tanganyika, and less directly with Tangan yika (q.v.) itself. The former chain of lakes, examined by Livingstone in the hope that here lie might finally fix the sources of the Nile, were long suspected to drain towards the Congo—a suspicion confirmed by Cameron. But Mr. Stanley and his fol lowers, striking, the Lualaba (known higher up as Chambezi and Luapula) at Nyangwe in Nov., 1S76, followed its course persistently in the face of enormous difficulties, fight ing no less than 32 battles; till in Aug., 1877. he found it, after "changing its name scores of times," reach the Atlantic as Congo, Kwango, and Zaire. The Lualaba-Congo,
interrupted to the n. of Nyangwe by cataracts and rapids, flows northward from the lake region to about 2° n. of the equator (where it is already "a broad stream, from 2 to 10 m. wide, studded with islands"); then its course changes to n.w., w., and finally to s.w. " As the river runs through the great basin which lies between e. long. 26° and e. long. 17°, it has an uninterrupted course of 1400 m., with magnificent afiluents, espe cially on the southern side. Thence, cleaving the broad belt of mountains between the great basin and tlie Atlantic ocean, it descends by about 30 falls and furious rapids to the great river between the falls of Yellala and the Atlantic."—The natives of the country of C. and the bordering lands speak one copious and harmonious negro-language; they are good-natured and hospitable, but very indolent. Their Christianity, early derived from Portuguese missionaries, is of the most superficial kind. The pop. in the interior is supposed to be dense.—See Burton's Two Trips to Gorilla Land (1876); Cameron's Across Africa (1877); and Stanley's Dark Continent (1878).