Cushy Ants, 
185 
622. My three Indians, who also must have heard the news, evi- 
dently considered prompt flight to be the safest way of escaping the 
Angel of Destruction, lor when I looked for them next morning not a trace 
of them was to be seen, they not having even asked beforehand for the • 
money standing to their credit. Even (Jaberalli’s people became trouble- 
some and showed no inclination to accompany him further, with the 
result that lie had to exert his whole authority and employ all his arts of 
persuasion to get them to change their minds. 
625. As there was no time yesterday to have a look round the neigh- 
bourhood of the settlement, I did so to-day. The Church, as I have 
already mentioned, served the Missionary at the same time as residential 
quarters. Some Indian houses were situate upon one of the highest rises 
from which one enjoyed, from the East and North, a lovely panorama over 
the broad savannah with its forested hills which seemed to possess a 
peculiar and distinctly restricted vegetation of its own. Besides a 
number of bushy Melastomaceae 1 particularly noticed Posoqueria longi- 
flora Aubl. with its innumerable white dependent blossoms and orange 
coloured fruits, as well as several Euc/enine and dainty legumes like 
Malvaceae, Soloneae, Gommelineae , Acanthrapcae, and Com ■ posit ae which 
adorned the lovely meadow-carpet with the alternating colours of their 
flowers. The large and flourishing coffee-bushes bore sufficient testimony 
to the fertility of the soil and it hardly wanted Er. Cullen's assurance that 
the settlers harvested more beans than they required and could therefore 
sell a considerable proportion. Were there not upon this hill an 
innumerable quantity of ants, and exactly of that kind, Atta ccphalotes 
(Cushy-ant of the Colonists), which is particularly noxious to the 
cassava plantations, 1 could have envied this gentleman his little 
Paradise. These terrible destroyers of the cassava and plantain fields 
have their dwellings underground and increase at such an enormous rate 
that their nests resemble huge mounds of thrown-up earth. A cassava or 
plantain cultivation in which they are nested soon resembles our 
timber areas after the caterpillars have devastated them. In a short 
while the ants eat away the whole of the leaves and drag them into their 
subterranean dwellings. If a field is once visited and robbed by them, 
the destruction of the whole is to be feared. Even when their nests are 
situate quarter of an hour distant they will find the plantation and soon 
clear all the way up to it- one of the most busily occupied paths imagin- 
able. However sad it must be for the owner of a. cassava field thus 
threatened by these pads, they proved extremely interesting for me and 
1 devoted hours at a time in watching them. My readers might therefore 
let me describe in more detail the lives and doings of these intelligent 
and industrious creatures in a cassava plantation. The track is about 
half a foot wide and somewhat depressed, but whether on account of 
the continual communication along it, or for some other reason, 1 am not 
in a position to determine: the rails of a railroad are hardly cleaner and 
smoother. With utmost military precision large numbers of the insects, 
ever on the move, march along it in double column, one towards, the 
other from, the field. Tn the latter column every single individual 
carries a piece of leaf the size of a threepenny bit, holding it erect in its 
