10 A.M., I found Khalfan’s caravan halted in a large kraal amongst the villages, on the eastern hill above the “brackish water.” They were loading for the march, and my men looked wistfully at the comfortable huts; but their halt had been occasioned by small-pox, I therefore hurried forwards across the streamlet to a wind-swept summit of an opposite hill. The place was far from pleasant, the gusts were furious; by night the thermometer showed 54° F., by day there was but scanty shelter from the fiery sun, and the “Márengá Mk’hali,” which afforded the only supplies of water, was at a considerable distance. Moreover our umbrellas and bedding suffered severely from a destructive host of white ants, that here became troublesome for the first time. The “Chunga Mchwa,” or termite, abounds throughout the sweet red clay soils, and cool damp places, avoiding heat, sand, and stone, and it acts like a clearer and scavenger; without it, indeed, some parts of the country would be impassable, and it is endowed with extraordinary powers of destruction. A hard clay-bench has been drilled and pierced like a sieve by these insects in a single night, and bundles of reeds placed under bedding, have in a few hours been converted into a mass of mud; straps were consumed, cloths and umbrellas were reduced to rags, and the mats used for covering the servants’ sleeping-gear were, in the shortest possible time, so tattered as to be unserviceable. Man revenges himself upon the white ant, and satisfies his craving for animal food, which in these regions becomes a principle of action,--a passion,--by boiling the largest and fattest kind, and eating it as a relish with his insipid ugali, or porridge. The termite appears to be a mass of live water. Even in the driest places it finds no difficulty in making a clay-paste for the mud-galleries, like hollow tree-twigs, with which it disguises its approach to its prey. The phenomenon has been explained by the conjecture that it combines by vital force the atmospheric oxygen with the hydrogen evolved by its food. When arrived at the adult state, the little peoples rise ready-winged, like thin curls of pipe-smoke, generally about even-tide, from the ground. After a flight of a few yards, the fine membranes, which apparently serve to disperse the insects into colonies, drop off. In East Africa there is also a semi-transparent brown ant, resembling the termite in form, but differing in habits, and even exceeding it in destructiveness. It does not, like its congener, run galleries up to the point of attack. Each individual works for itself in the open air, tears the prey with its strong mandibles, and carries it away to its hole. The cellular hills of the termites in this country rarely rise to the height of three feet, whereas in Somali-land they become dwarf towers, forming a conspicuous feature in the view.