BASWESHWAk. 
20 3 
time to spare, so we pushed on. Ere long we were hypo- 
critically looking about for a spider, or any other excuse to 
stop and collect a little breath ; for now the path led 
straight up the side of the hill at a gradient of I in I. 
Conversation stopped, and we husbanded our breath, like 
wise men, for our real needs. Silence is never more golden 
than when you are climbing a steep hill. 
Everything else was as silent as we, for here there 
were no birds. The trunks of the trees rose like tall 
pillars, sustaining a leafy roof through which the rays ol 
the sun could find no way. The air was cold and still, as 
in a vault. There were no butterflies either, except 
Melanitis ismene , lover of darkness, as its name seems to 
say. It flitted about everywhere, dressed in all the tints 
of the fallen leaves, or, alighting among them, fell partly 
on its side and was one of them. Long columns of the 
Military Ant, the fiercely stinging Lobopelta , crossed the 
path everywhere, bent, without doubt, on marauding raids 
into some populous termite country. They cannot bear 
the sun, and generally return from their excursions when 
the day dawns ; but here the day does not dawn. 
One other notable creature we saw, a gigantic black 
wasp with rusty wings, “of the thickness of a man's 
