LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Congo: Congo River
built 228 days ago
The land of the Congo River reflects the Congo’s true capacity to change the land. Rain forests have taken control over most of the land. The Tropical region of the river contains thick coverings of greens. The name that is given to this area is the Congolese forest. This forest is actually split into several layers, the first being low lying branches of large evergreen trees. The next level contains smaller trees and plants. Under that level lies bushes and ferns.
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In 1482, Diogo Cão, a Portuguese navigator, became the first European to visit the Congo when he reached the mouth of the Congo River and sailed a few miles upstream. Soon thereafter the Portuguese established ties with the king of Kongo, and in the early 16th cent. they established themselves on parts of the coast of modern Angola, especially at the court of the king of Ndongo (a vassal state of Kongo). The Portuguese had little influence on the Congo until the late 18th cent., when the African and mulatto traders (called pombeiros), whom they backed, traveled far inland to the kingdom of Mwata Kazembe.
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These stereo glass-plate photographs were taken during a scientific expedition up the Congo, Ubangi and Chari Rivers to Lake Chad. Setting off from Antwerp in February 1908, the expedition reached Lake Chad eight months later, and arrived back in France the following March. The expedition was organised and funded by Robert Hottot (1884-1939) with the endorsement of the French government and the support of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, which was to receive objects collected along the way. Three other men accompanied Hottot on the expedition: Albert Guinard, who fell ill and returned home almost immediately; Léon Poutrin, an army doctor who provided medical assistance and later published several contributions to African ethnography; and Georges Barbat, who had earlier spent seven years in French Indochina but who did not survive the expedition.
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In precolonial times, the region now called the Republic of Congo was dominated by three kingdoms: Kongo (originating about 1000), the Loango (flourishing in the 17th century), and Tio. After the Portuguese located the Congo River in 1482, commerce was carried on with the tribes, especially the slave trade.
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Eleven years ago, thousands of children and adults were left stranded by the Ulindi river as the conflict sparked by the Rwandan genocide spilled over into Congo. Ruaridh Nicoll returns to a country he left in 1996, to meet the innocent survivors of Africa’s first continent wide war.
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One of the major rivers of Central Africa, the Ubangi is the largest right-bank tributary of the Congo, or Zaire, River. With the Uele River, its headstream, the Ubangi flows for more than 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) before it empties into the Congo.
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