TERMITES. TRAVELLER ANTS 145 
N’Kendju and some men from the hospital to bring 
bucketfuls of water from the river. When they arrive, 
the water is mixed with lysol, and the ground all round 
the house and under it is sprinkled. While we are 
doing this we get very badly treated by the warriors, 
for they creep over us apd bite us vigorously ; I once 
counted nearly fifty on me. They bite themselves so 
firmly in with their jaws that one cannot pull them off. 
If one tries to do so the body comes away, but the jaws 
remain in the flesh and have to be taken out separately 
afterwards. At last the ants move on, leaving thou- 
sands of corpses in the puddles, for they cannot stand 
the smell of the lysol ; and so ends the little drama 
which we have been playing in the darkness, with no 
light but that of the lantern which my wife has been 
holding. Once we were attacked by them three times 
in one week, and Mr. Coillard, the missionary, records in 
his memoirs, which I am just now reading, that he, too, 
suffered severely from them in the Zambesi district. 
The most extensive migrations of these ants take 
place at the beginning and end of the rainy season, and 
between these two periods there is much less reason 
to expect an attack. As to size, these ants are not 
much bigger than our European red ones, but their 
jaws are much more strongly developed, and they 
march at a much greater speed, a difference which I 
have noticed as being common to all species of African 
ants. 
Joseph has left me. Being cut off from Strasbourg, 
the source of my funds, and obliged to contract debts, 
I found myself compelled to reduce his wages from 
