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The Baris considered that our sentries would be under cover, or would most likely not expect an attack; they therefore resolved to attempt a surprise. Their advanced scouts approached warily in the dark, but long before they had reached the sentries, they passed within a few feet of a party of guards concealed behind a white-ant hill. A shot from a musket stretched one Bari dead.
A favourite set target is the bulbous formicary of the white ant which disfigures so many of the trees of the forest. Along tracks where the spears are readily available there are few white-ant nests untormented by two or three.
Out of forty-eight officers and men, I had only fifteen who could be called real hitters; the others were only shooters. The great difficulty was to instruct them in distances. I frequently took them away from camp and made them guess the distance in paces from some particular object, such as a tree, or white-ant hill.
As it resists the white-ant, an insect that destroys oak and every other kind of wood, and is never subject to the dry-rot, it is invaluable for building purposes. Boats constructed of it, which have been in the water during the whole of this period, and entirely unprotected by paint, are still as sound as they were when first launched.
Each hut was surrounded by a small court composed of cement made from the clay of the white-ant hills mixed with cow-dung and smeared with ashes: these courts were always kept scrupulously clean.
Higginbotham, who gave me this account, described the excitement of the troops as so intense, that they let their muskets off completely at random: and so thick were the bullets in his direction, that he was obliged to take shelter behind a white-ant hill. I had no time to devote to elephant-shooting, otherwise I might have killed a considerable number in the neighbourhood of Gondokoro.
The west base of the fort was the rock citadel, which commanded the surrounding country. Upon this solid foundation I had built an excellent powder-magazine and store, of solid masonry. This fire-proof building was roofed with a thick cement of clay from the white-ant hills, that had been tempered for some weeks and mixed with chopped straw.
This was very provoking; for all of them being stern shots were not likely to kill, and the jungle was so thick I could not get a front view of them. Presently, however, one with her hind leg broken pulled up on a white-ant hill, and, tossing her horns, came down with a charge the instant I showed myself close to her.
The nets had been arranged with perfect stillness, and the men having concealed themselves, we were placed in positions on the extreme flanks with the rifles. Rifle-shooting was dangerous work, as the country was alive with people, who were hidden in every direction. I took my position behind a white-ant hill in front of a stream which rippled in a hollow about forty yards beneath me.
The white-ant hills which rise to such proportions here and there in the wooded districts remind us that these minute but marvelously industrious creatures are one of the great pests of equatorial regions, and that they are especially destructive in this island.
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