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Updated: June 19, 2025
Banana groves, and orchards bending under the weight of the rich, nutritious fruit, tall cocoanut-trees with half a ton of ripening nuts in each tufted top, ant-hills nearly as high as native houses, rippling cascades, small rivers winding through the green valleys, and flowers of every hue and shape, together with birds such as one sees preserved in northern museums, all these crowd upon our vision as we wander about inland.
For 5 miles they travelled over box and tea-tree flats, full of funnel ant-hills, melon and rat-holes, when they reached a narrow deep sandy creek, the course of which was defined by a line of dark green timber, presenting a strong and pleasing contrast with any previously crossed along the "Levels," where they could never be distinguished from a distance, being fringed with the same kind of timber.
We also passed narrow belts of low sandy loam, covered with Banksias, broad-leafed Melaleucas, and the orange-coloured Grevillea I have before spoken of. On these flats we again met with large ant-hills, six to ten feet high, and eight feet in circumference; the land at the base was of a reddish colour. September 9.
She said she had seen two or three coffins in a day, during cholera times, carried out of that narrow passage into which her door opened. These avenues put me in mind of those which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole makes underground. This fashion of Rows does not appear to be going out; and, for aught I can see, it may last hundreds of years longer.
By the wayside the lonely grave of some traveller or woodman, marked by its simple fence of twigs, gives a touch of pathos to the forest; and among its natural wonders are the giant ant-hills, often 9 feet or more in height. Ants are probably the most destructive of all insects in Burma.
"It was, of course, necessary to keep several tall ant-hills in a line with that upon which the antelope was standing, and to stoop so low that I could only see the horns of the animal upon the sky-line. In some places it was necessary to crawl upon the ground; this was trying work, on account of the sharp stumps of the burnt herbage which punished the hands and knees.
In 1818, Allan Cunningham, when on the west coast of Australia, at the Bay of Rest, took occasion to measure one of these gigantic ant-hills of that coast. He found it to be eight feet in height, and twenty-six in girth.
The scout seemed willing to comply; but, in the hurry of the moment, and in the change of position, he had lost the direction. In vain he turned either cheek toward the light air; they felt equally cool. In this dilemma, Uncas lighted on the furrow of the cannon ball, where it had cut the ground in three adjacent ant-hills.
The white ant-hills, which are built in rows, had, during this stage, a direction from north by west to south by east, and, as I have before mentioned a conjecture that the little builders would expose the narrowest side of their habitation to the weather side, the prevailing winds would be from the north. July 9.
Storms may tear away the support of these poor mollusks, and the waves dash them far out of the reach of the tides, while at low water, crows and gulls use all their ingenuity to get at their toothsome flesh. There are no ant-hills in the sea, but when we turn over a large stone and see scores upon scores of small black shrimps scurrying around, the resemblance to those insects is striking.
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