188 



ELEPHANTS— WHITE ANTS. 



Chap. IX. 



Elephants and buffaloes seldom return to the river by the 

 same path on two successive nights, they become so appre- 

 hensive of danger from this human art. An old elephant 

 Avill walk in advance of the herd, and uncover the pits with 

 his trunk, that the others may see the openings and tread 

 on firm ground. Female elephants are generally the victims : 

 more timid by nature than the males, and very motherly 

 in their anxiety for their calves, they carry their trunks up, 

 trying every breeze for fancied danger, which often in reality 

 lies at their feet. The tusker, fearing less, keeps his trunk 

 down, and, warned in time by that exquisitely sensitive 

 organ, takes heed to his ways. 



Our camp on the Sinjere stood under a wide-spreading wild 

 fig-tree. From the numbers of this family, of large size, 

 dotted over the country, the fig or banyan species would seem 

 to have been held sacred in Africa from the remotest times. 

 The soil teemed with white ants, whose clay tunnels, formed 



Tunnels of Ants. 



