Malouet, in visiting the forests of Guiana, of which he has spoken in his travels into that part of the globe, perceived in the midst of a level savanna, as far as the eye could reach, a hillock which he would have attributed to the hand of man, if M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him, had not informed him that, in spite of its gigantic construction, it was the work of black Ants of the largest species (most probably of the genus _Ponera_). He proposed to conduct him, not to the Ant-hill, where both of them would infallibly have been devoured, but to the road of the workers. M. Malouet did not approach within more than forty paces of the habitation of these insects. It had the form of a pyramid truncated at one-third of its height, and he estimated that its elevation might be about fifteen or twenty feet, on a basis of from thirty to forty. M. de Prefontaine told him that the cultivators were obliged to abandon a new establishment, when they had the misfortune to meet with one of these fortresses, unless they had sufficient strength to form a regular siege. This even occurred to M. de Prefontaine himself on his first encampment at Kourva. He was desirous of forming a second a little farther on, and perceived upon the soil a mound of earth similar to that which we have just described. He caused a circular trench to be hollowed, which he filled with a great quantity of dry wood, and, after having set fire to it in every point of its circumference, he attacked the Ant-hill with a train of artillery. Thus every issue was closed to the hostile army, which, to escape from the invasion of the flames and the shaking and plowing of the ground by the cannon-balls, was obliged to traverse, in its retreat, a trench filled with fire, where it was entirely cut off.[580] The Portuguese found such prodigious numbers of Ants upon their first landing at Brazil, that they called them Rey de Brazil, King of Brazil, a name which they now there bear.[581] Mr. Southey states, on the authority of Manoel Felix, that the Red-ants devoured the cloths of the altar in the Convent of S. Antonio, or S. Luiz (Maranham, Brazil), and also brought up into the church pieces of shrouds from the graves; whereupon the friars prosecuted them according to due form of ecclesiastical law. What the sentence was in this case, we are unable to learn. A similar case, however, the historian informs us, had occurred in the Franciscan Convent at Avignon, where the Ants did so much mischief that a suit was instituted against them, and they were excommunicated, and ordered by the friars, in pursuance of their sentence, to remove within three days to a place assigned them in the center of the earth. The Canonical account gravely adds, that the Ants obeyed, and carried away all their young, and all their stores.[582]