Smeathman, a Dutch
traveler of the last century, with four of his companions, occupied
the top of one of these cones. In the Lounde, Livingstone observed
several of these ant-hills, built of reddish clay, and attaining a
height of fifteen and twenty feet. Lieutenant Cameron has many a time
mistaken for a camp these collections of cones which dotted the plain
in N'yangwe. He has even stopped at the foot of great edifices, not
more than twenty feet high, but composed of forty or fifty enormous
rounded cones, flanked with bell-towers like the dome of a cathedral,
such as Southern Africa possesses.
To what species of ant was due, then, the prodigious style of
architecture of these cones?
"To the warlike termite," Cousin Benedict had replied, without
hesitating, as soon as he had recognized the nature of the materials
employed in their construction.
And, in fact, the walls, as has been said, were made of reddish clay.
Had they been formed of a gray or black alluvian earth, they must have
been attributed to the "termes mordax" or the "termes atrox." As we
see, these insects have not very cheering names--a fact which cannot
but please a strong entomologist, such as Cousin Benedict.
The central part of the cone, in which the little troop had first
found shelter, and which formed the empty interior, would not have
contained them; but large cavities, in close contact, made a number
of divisions, in which a person of medium height could find refuge.
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