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Updated: June 19, 2025
She remained there the whole day, sitting alone, like a frightened squirrel, in the silent solitude of the wood, where the rest and stillness is as the calm of death. Butterflies fluttered around her, and close by were several ant-hills, each with its hundreds of busy little creatures moving quickly to and fro.
Pelsart's account runs thus: "On the 16th of June, in the morning, they returned on shore in hopes of getting more water, but were disappointed; and having no time to observe the country it gave them no great hopes of better success, even if they had travelled further within land, which appeared a thirsty, barren plain, covered with ant-hills, so high that they looked afar off like the huts of negroes..."
They had scarcely landed, says Las Casas, who accompanied the expedition, when they all hurried off to the mines, about eight leagues distant. The roads swarmed like ant-hills, with adventurers of all classes. Every one had his knapsack stored with biscuit or flour, and his mining implements on his shoulders.
It had made a lake of the plain where the termite village stood. The cones of twenty ant-hills emerged, and formed the only projecting points on this large basin. The Coanza had overflowed during the night, with the waters of its tributaries swelled by the storm. This Coanza, one of the rivers of Angola, flows into the Atlantic, a hundred miles from the cape where the "Pilgrim" was wrecked.
Cold and dampness cling to you when you walk through them; you climb one of the hills and find yourself surrounded by a network of forking and winding ravines. A short distance from the river-banks the landscape is again quite different. The hills grow smaller and stand separate like great ant-hills.
The guns were so well handed up, that we knocked over the six elephants before they had given us a run of twenty yards, and we all closed up and ran under the tail of the retreating elephant that we had devoted to the ropes. He was going at about seven miles an hour; we therefore had no difficulty in keeping up with him, as we could run between the ant-hills much faster than he could.
We had most of the young men with us, and many of the under-chiefs besides. The country between Linyanti and Sesheke is perfectly flat, except patches elevated only a few feet above the surrounding level. There are also many mounds where the gigantic ant-hills of the country have been situated or still appear: these mounds are evidently the work of the termites.
These hills were generally about eight feet high in the swampy districts, but I have frequently seen them above ten feet. The antelopes make use of such ant-hills as watch towers, from which lofty position they can observe an enemy at a great distance.
Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!
Another arable field just opposite is bounded by the road with iron wire or railing, instead of a hedge, and the low mound in which the stakes are fixed swarmed one summer with ant-hills full of eggs, and a slight rustle in the corn as I approached told where the parent bird had just led her chicks from the feast to shelter.
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