ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 227 



gorged themselves with blood. At the moment their bites 

 did not hurt, but they left an itching scar. Head-nets and 

 gloves are a protection, but are not very comfortable in 

 stifling hot weather. It is impossible to sleep without 

 mosquito-biers. When settlers of the right type come into 

 a new land they speedily learn to take the measures neces- 

 sary to minimize the annoyance caused by all these pests. 

 Those that are winged have plenty of kinsfolk in so much 

 of the northern continent as has not yet been subdued 

 by man. But the most noxious of the South American 

 ants have, thank Heaven, no representatives in North 

 America. At the camp of the piums a column of the car- 

 nivorous foraging ants made its appearance before night- 

 fall, and for a time we feared it might put us out of our 

 tents, for it went straight through camp, between the 

 kitchen-tent and our own sleeping-tents. However, the 

 column turned neither to the right nor the left, streaming 

 uninterruptedly past for several hours, and doing no dam- 

 age except to the legs of any incautious man who walked 

 near it. 



On the afternoon of February 15 we reached Campos 

 Novos. This place was utterly unlike the country we had 

 been traversing. It was a large basin, several miles across, 

 traversed by several brooks. The brooks ran in deep, 

 swampy valleys, occupied by a matted growth of tall trop- 

 ical forest. Between them the ground rose in bold hills, 

 bare of forest and covered with grass, on which our jaded 

 animals fed eagerly. On one of these rounded hills a num- 

 ber of buildings were ranged in a quadrangle, for the pas- 

 turage at this spot is so good that it is permanently occu- 

 pied. There were milch cows, and we got delicious fresh 



