Chap. XLVIII. DECAY OF BAGl'RMI. 
341 
but the poor natives, like the inhabitants of other 
countries in the case of the locust, do not fail to 
take their revenge, for when the insect has grown fat 
and big at their expense, they devour it themselves, 
— a habit which may be one of the numerous relies 
of their former pagan existence, it being still a general 
custom with the Sokoro to eat a large species of beetle 
called " dernana." 
Of other species of worms I shall have occasion to 
speak further on ; but with the white and black ants I 
myself waged repeatedly a relentless but unsuccessful 
war during my residence in the country. Already, the 
second day of my stay in Bakada, I observed that the 
white ant (termes fatalis) was threatening my couch, 
which I had spread upon a very coarse mat, or " sig- 
gedi" as the Kamiri, "laba" as the Bagirmi people 
call it, made of the thickest reed, with total de- 
struction. I therefore, for want of a better protection, 
contrived an expedient which I thought would gua- 
rantee my berth against the further attacks of those 
cruel intruders, placing my couch upon three very 
large poles ; but I soon had cause to discover that 
those ferocious insects were not to be deterred by 
such means, for two days afterwards, I found that 
they had not only built their entrenchments along 
the poles, and reached the top, but had eaten through 
both the coarse mats, finished a large piece of my 
Stambuli carpet, and destroyed several other articles. 
And during my further stay here I had the greatest 
trouble in preventing these insects from destroying 
z 3 
