TERMITES. TRAVELLER ANTS 143 
would have been much greater ; but the peculiar 
delicate smell, like that of burning, which the termites 
produce, had attracted my attention. Externally there 
was no sign of them ; the invasion had been made 
from the floor through a tiny hole, and from the first 
case they had eaten their way into the others which 
stood by and upon it. They had apparently been 
attracted by a bottle of medicinal syrup, the cork of 
which had got loose. 
Oh, the fight that has to be carried on in Africa with 
creeping insects ! What time one loses over the 
thorough precautions that have to be taken ! And with 
what helpless rage one has to confess again and again 
that one has been outwitted ! My wife learnt how to 
solder, in order to be able to close up the flour and 
maize in tins, but it sometimes happens that you find 
swarms of the terrible little weevils (French charan- 
cons) even in the soldered tins. The maize for the 
fowls they soon reduce to dust. 
Very much dreaded here, too, are small scorpions 
and other poisonpus insects. One learns to be so 
careful that one never puts one’s hand straight into a 
drawer or a box as in Europe. The eyes must precede 
the hand. 
Another serious enemy is the traveller ant, which 
belongs to the genus Dorylus, and from it we suffer a 
great deal. On their great migrations they march 
five or six abreast in perfect order, and I once watched 
a column near my house which took thirty-six hours 
to march past. If their course is over open ground 
and they have to cross a path, the warriors form up 
in several rows on either side and with their large jaws 
form a kind of palisade to protect the procession, in 
