CHAPTER I. 
THE CITY IN THE SHADOWS: THE TERMITES, 
OR WHITE ANTS. 
M. de Prefontaine (cited by Huber, in his 
work on “The Ants”) relates that, when 
travelling in Guiana, he saw a party of negroes 
besieging certain fantastic edifices which he 
calls ant-hills. They did not venture to attack 
them except from a distance, and with firearms; 
having first taken the precaution, moreover, 
to dig a little trench and fill it with water, to 
check the progress of the beleaguered army 
and drown its battalions, if the}^ adventured a 
sortie. 
These edifices are not the habitations of Ants, but of Termites, 
—quite a different species of insect; which are found not only in 
