CONGO BASIN
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Like Aldo Leopold's tinker, who attempts to repair a watch he does not fully understand, we keep all the pieces of our biological fabric to insure us the full spectrum of possibilities for our future.

ARNOLD NEWMAN
From Tropical Rainforest, The Web of LIfe, Page 50.

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With a total area of about 1,335,000 square miles, the Congo basin [map] consists of a vast shallow depression that rises by a series of giant steps to an almost circular rim of highlands through which the river has cut a narrow exit into the Atlantic Ocean. The present exit is geologically relatively recent, the previous exit being to the north of the present one.

The Congo River is some 2,900 miles in length. Its many waterfalls and rapids cause its valley, like that of the Nile, to lose elevation quickly. The river's course is often constricted by gorges. The best-known are the Boyoma (Stanley) Falls at Kisangani, where the river swings through an arc to flow westward; in fact, the Boyoma Falls are no more than a series of unevenly spaced rapids at no great height, extending along a 60-mile stretch of the river.

Downstream from Kisangani, the Congo is joined first by the Ubangi from the right and then by the Kasai--which rivals the Ubangi in the size of its drainage basin--from the left. Below its confluence with the Kasai, the main river cuts through the Cristal Mountains in a deep gorge, which at one point expands into Malebo (Stanley) Pool, a shallow lake measuring 22 miles in length and 14 miles in width. The Congo enters the sea through a swampy estuary that is about 6 miles wide at its mouth.

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Explore the "back of beyond" with the great explorers of the ages in their bold journeys over the oceans and the continents. A glimpse of that mysterious and inextinguishable fire that burned in the breast of men - the fire that has propelled all those throughout the ages who have been driven to leave behind family and friends for a voyage into the unknown... But the motivation for exploration is not always pure. In his fascination with the new, man often forgets that others have been there before him.		The exuberant pantheon of the tropical reinforest contains fully four-fifths of earth's terrestrial vegetation. It is the largest terrestrial biomass, and contains, inch for inch, more life than the productive oceanic kelp beds, coral reefs, or African savannas. Given that the tropical forests cover only 6% of earth's land surface, yet shelter up to an estimated 30 million species - as much as 90% of our planet's total - we shell see how our lives are immensely enriched by this habitat.
EXPLORATION		RAINFOREST

Nature's opportunism at its best. A seed from an upper-canopy tree, probably deposited in the droppings of a passing animal, has taken root and grown into a natural bonsai version of its species, perched on the broken bough of its host.

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