ugh the Congo in 1908 (he was then Prince Albert), when he
covered more than a thousand miles on foot. He said that he was glad
that an American was going to write something about the Congo at first
hand and he expressed his keen appreciation of the work of American
capital in his big colony overseas. "I like America and Americans," he
said, "and I hope that your country will not forget Europe." There was
a warm clasp of the hand and I was off on the first lap of the journey
that was to reel off more than twenty-six thousand miles of strenuous
travel before I saw my little domicile in New York again.

Before we invade the Congo let me briefly outline its history. It can be
told in a few words although the narrative of its exploitations remains
a serial without end. Prior to Stanley's memorable journey of
exploration across Equatorial Africa which he described in "Through the
Dark Continent," what is now the Congo was a blank spot on the map. No
white man had traversed it. In the fifties Livingstone had opened up
part of the present British East Africa and Nyassaland. In the Luapula
and its tributaries he discovered the headwaters of the Congo River and
then continued on to Victoria Falls and Rhodesia. After Stanley found
the famous missionary at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in 1872, he returned
to Zanzibar. Hence the broad expanse of Central Africa from Nyassaland
westward practically remained undiscovered until Stanley crossed it
between 1874 and 1877, when he travelled from Stanley Falls, where the
Congo River actually begins, down its expanse to the sea.

As soon as Stanley's articles about the Congo began to appear, King
Leopold, who was a shrewd business man, saw an opportunity for the
expansion of his little country. Under his auspices several
International Committees dedicated to African study were formed. He then
sent Stanley back to the Congo in 1879, to organize a string of stations
from the ocean up to Stanley Falls, now Stanleyville. In 1885 the famous
Berlin Congress of Nations, presided over by Bismarck, recognized the
Congo Free State, accepted Leopold as its sovereign, and the jungle
domain took its place among recognized governments. The principal
purposes animating the founders were the suppression of the slave trade
and the conversion of the territory into a combined factory and a market
for all the nations. It was largely due to Belgian initiative that the
traffic in human beings which denuded all Centra