Chap. XXII. FRUIT-TREES. 431 



inserted, to produce laceration and pain, more than would be 

 effected by the single wound. Frequently while sitting on the 

 ox, as he happened to tread near a band, they would rush up 

 his legs to the rider, and soon let him know that he had dis- 

 turbed then* march. They possess no fear, attacking with equal 

 ferocity the largest as well as the smallest animals. When any 

 person has leaped over the band, numbers of them leave the 

 ranks and rush along the path, seemingly anxious for a fight. 

 They are very useful in ridding the country of dead animal 

 matter, and, when they visit a human habitation, clear it entirely 

 of the destructive white ants and other vermin. They destroy 

 many noxious insects and reptiles. The severity of their attack 

 is greatly increased by then vast numbers, and rats, mice, lizards, 

 and even the python natalensis, when in a state of surfeit from 

 recent feeding, fall victims to then fierce onslaught. These ants 

 never make hills like the white ant. Their nests are but a short 

 distance beneath the soil, wliich has the soft appearance of the 

 abodes of ants in England. Occasionally they construct galleries 

 over then path to the cells of the white ant, in order to secure 

 themselves from the heat of the sun during their marauding 

 expeditions. 



January 15th, 1855. — We descended, in one horn*, from the 

 heights of Tala Mungongo. I counted the number of paces 

 made on the slope downward, and found them to be sixteen 

 hundred, which may give a perpendicular height of from twelve 

 to fifteen hundred feet. Water boiled at 206° at Tala Mungongo 

 above, and at 208° at the bottom of the declivity, the ah* being 

 as . 72° in the shade in the former case, and 94° in the latter. 

 The temperature generally throughout the clay was from 94° to 

 97° in the coolest shade we could find. 



The rivulets which cut up the valley of Cassange were now 

 dry ; but the Liu and Luare contained abundance of rather 

 brackish water. The banks are lined with palm, wild date-trees, 

 and many guavas, the fruit of which was now becoming ripe. A 

 tree much like the mango abounds, but it does not yield fruit. In 

 these rivers a kind of edible muscle is plentiful, the shells of which 

 exist in all the alluvial beds of the ancient rivers, as far as the 

 Kuruman. The brackish nature of the water, probably enables it 

 to exist here. On the open grassy lawns, great numbers of a 



