182 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



object of their attack with a crust of earth which shuts out the 

 light, and under this cover they go about their work, whose end 

 and object is always destruction. Things lying on the ground or 

 hung on mud walls are most likely to be attacked. The careless 

 traveller, oppressed by the overpowering sultriness, throws one of 

 his garments on the ground which forms his bed, and finds it in 

 the morning perforated like a sieve and rendered quite useless! 

 The naturalist who is unaware of the ways of the land shuts up 

 his hard-won spoils in a wooden box, and neglects to place this 

 on stones or the like so as to raise it off the ground; in a few 

 days his treasures are gone! The sportsman hangs his rifle on 

 a clay wall, and discovers to his disgust that the destructive 

 insects have covered butt and barrel with their tunnels, and have 

 already gnawed deep channels in the stock. The tree which they 

 select is lost; the woodwork of houses in which they effect a 

 settlement is doomed. From the ground to the highest branches 

 they make their covered ways; they eat through stem, branches, 

 and twigs, and leave but a dead honey-combed skeleton, which be- 

 comes the prey of the first storm, and is scattered abroad in dust. 

 On the earth-walls or on the supporting beams of the houses the 

 termites likewise ascend, riddling the woodwork, and in a short 

 time making a wreck of everything. Even under the firmly 

 stamped floors of the better-class houses they form a maze of 

 branched burrows whence they occasionally break forth in millions 

 bent on destruction. In these and many other ways they work 

 ruin, and are among the most troublesome plagues of the interior 

 of Africa, and especially of the steppe-land. 43 



Did this region offer nought else, were it not one of the most 

 thickly populated and most frequented of animal haunts, the natu- 

 ralist would perhaps avoid it as carefully as does the mercantile 

 traveller, who knows .only its repellent aspects and none of its 

 attractions. 



But he who sojourns here for a time and really explores the 

 region is soon reconciled. For the steppe abounds in life; it is not 

 poor like the desert, but rather rich like the primitive forest For 

 it too shelters a fauna abounding alike in species and in individuals, 



