306 SAGACITY OF ANTS. 



deepest portion, and the men, avoiding it, make a new 

 walk by its side. A path, however narrow, is a great 

 convenience, as any one who has travelled on foot in 

 Africa will readily admit. The virtual want of it here, 

 caused us to make slow and painful progress. 



Ants surely are wiser than some men, for they learn 

 by experience. They have established themselves even 

 on these plains, where water stands so long annually, 

 as to allow the lotus, and other aqueous plants, to come 

 to maturity. When all the ant horizon is submerged 

 a foot deep, they manage to exist by ascending to little 

 houses built of black tenacious loam on stalks of grass, 

 and placed higher than the line of inundation. This 

 must have been the result of experience, for, if they had 

 waited till the water actually invaded their terrestrial 

 habitations, they would not have been able to procure 

 materials for their aerial quarters, unless they dived down 

 to the bottom for every mouthful of clay. Some of these 

 upper chambers are about the size of a bean, and others 

 as large as a man's thumb. They must have built in 

 anticipation, and if so, let us humbly hope that the sufferers 

 by the late inundations in France may be possessed of 

 as much common sense as the little black ants of the Dilola 

 plains. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



24th February. — On reaching unflooded lands beyond 

 the plain, we found the villages there acknowledged the 

 authority of the chief named Katende, and we discovered 

 also, to our surprise, that the almost level plain we had 

 passed, forms the watershed between the southern and 

 northern rivers, for we had now entered a district in which 

 the rivers flowed in a northerly direction into the Kasai 

 or Loke, near to which we now were, while the rivers we 

 had hitherto crossed were all runiiing southwards. ^ Hav- 

 ing met with kind treatment and aid at the first village, 

 Katema's guides returned, and we were led to the N.N. W. 

 by the inhabitants, and descended into the very first 



