Although I had now advanced an entire degree nearer to the Equator, being now in a latitude of 6° 20´ N., I still found that the landscape around had charms to offer which were not inferior to the winter beauties of the distant north. In the early morning I delighted to see the rimy dew that had fallen on the sprouting grass, and which frequently remained as late as nine o’clock; over the feathery Pennisetum and the Agrostideæ it fell like a white veil, and the bright drops sparkled like diamonds in the sunshine. The slender gossamer, moreover, which stretched itself over the deeps and shallows of the soil, and even over the footprints in the ground, appeared to operate as a conductor of the dew, which congealed till it was like a film of ice which crackles beneath the tread of a traveller in the autumn. [Sidenote: GREAT ANT-HILLS.] Distant four and a half leagues to the south lay Aboo Sammat’s head Seriba, known as Sabby, the name of its Bongo chief. Half-way upon our march we crossed a considerable stream, which was called the Koddy. As we forded its breadth of twenty feet, we found the water rising above our hips. Here again the candelabra-euphorbia seemed to be abundant, after having never been seen since I left the eastern bank of the river Dyoor. An essential feature of the district between the Dyoor and the Kohl is contributed by the small mushroom-shaped ant-hills which, found as they are in many a part of Tropical Africa, here cover the stony surface with their peculiar shapes. Formed exactly like the common mushroom, the separate erections of the _Termes mordax_ are grouped in little colonies. The main difference between the tenements of these ants and those which construct conical domes as tall as a man, consists in this, that they have a definite altitude, which rarely exceeds thirty inches, and immediately that there is no further space they raise new turrets and form fresh colonies. The materials, too, of which this species of Termes constructs its edifice is neither grey nor of a ferruginous red, but is simply the alluvial clay of the place: it is so closely cemented together, that it defies the most violent kicking to displace it, and is hardly less solid than brickwork. The natives are very glad to employ it for the construction of their huts; they break it into fragments with their clubs, and moisten it till its substance yields. By the Bongo it is called Kiddillikoo. [Illustration: Mushroom-shaped white-ant hills.]