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The natives in the interior believe that the elephant never touches grass, and I never saw evidence of his having grazed until we came near to Tete, and then he had fed on grass in seed only; this seed contains so much farinaceous matter that the natives collect it for their own food. This part of the country abounds in ant-hills.
But suddenly noticing that the gateway is not clear, he crouches, and is concealed by the grass. Some distance farther there is a stile, sitting upon which the view ranges over two adjacent meadows. They are bounded by a copse of ash stoles and young oak trees, and the lesser of the meads is full of rush bunches and dotted with green ant-hills.
The earth used in their construction is the subsoil, brought up from a considerable depth, as the ant-hills are yellow, while the surface soil is black. The earth is first swallowed by the insect and thus it becomes mixed with some albuminous matter which converts it into a cement that resists the action of rain.
Equally remarkable is the mushroom growth of Elizabethville, the one wonder town of the Congo. In 1910, when the railway arrived, it was a geographical expression, a spot in the jungle dominated by the huge ant-hills that you find throughout Central Africa, some of them forty feet high. The white population numbered thirty. I found it a thriving place with over 2,000 whites and 12,000 blacks.
Within three days' journey of the gulf of Carpentaria, the box-tree flat was studded with turreted ant-hills, either single sharp cones, three to five feet high, or united in rows and forming piles of remarkable appearance. Their arrival at the gulf of Carpentaria, which occurred on the 5th July, was a joyful event to the wanderers.
The cities are scattered over the world like ant-hills: Every one of them is full of trouble and toil, And their makers run to and fro within them. Abundance of riches is laid up in their store-houses: Yet they are tormented with the fear of want, The cry of the poor in their streets is exceeding bitter.
This leading us to speak of natural history, as it relates to animals who live in societies, we recalled in succession the ingenious labours of the beavers and the marmots; the not less marvellous constructions of the bees, the wasps, and the ants; and I mentioned particularly those immense ant-hills of America, of which the masonry is finished with such skill and solidity that they are sometimes used for ovens, to which they bear a resemblance.
And distracted by gusts of the wind, they thought, 'Are the heavens falling down; or the earth and the mountains being rent? And afraid of the wind, they felt about with their hands and took shelter under the way-side tree and ant-hills and in caverns. Then holding his bow and supporting Krishna the mighty Bhimasena stood under a tree.
To make a still finer flooring, they procured a quantity of the material of which the ant-hills are composed; which, being of a glutinous nature, makes a mortar almost as binding as Roman cement. After the main building had been finished off, Swartboy erected a platform for himself, and one for Totty in another part of the ample nwana.
Half a dozen men cut and levelled several ant-hills, and marking off a square patch of ground, four of us I won't say who were placed, one at each corner, while the ball, a football, was put in the middle of the square. Our innocent horses stood quietly there till the signal was given to start. Then each cavalier essayed to reach the ball first.
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