The Savannah morning news., 1900-07-22

victors in a tussle between himself and
them.
Had some exciting sport with sea cows
In a narrow river with very high reeds
on both banks" he writes in his diary.
TO get a shot 1 was obliged to climb the
trees overhanging the river and had one
or two good chances, but the villainous
black ants fell upon me vigorously and in
such countless mullitudes, biting so Sc
vereiy that flesh and blood could not hold
out another second. / was forced to de-
scend, and an old sea COW l had been
lodging for two hours is indebted to the
black ants for her life"
The white ants are exceedingly fond of
raiding the happy homes of the colonists.
They undermine the foundations by eating
through them-a trick well known to the
contingent fEom Australia, where this
creature is as much a pest as he Is in
South Africa. Tommy from the Aus
tralian colonies will rank as an old stager
when dealings with these destructive nui-
sances are being carried on, and will be
able to narrate many a narrowing story
concerning them and their prowess
There are several varieties of the ant
tribe, but they all seem to be fully i'm
pressed with the proverb, I'm union is
strength" A house-mistress will go to
bed happy one evening, and the next
morning when she descends will be con-
fronted with the mangled remains of what
the night before had been her sitting room
carpet. hearty meal has been furnish
ed by it to legions Of ants, who have not
had the honesty to come by day for the
hospitality that they know would be de-
MED them, but have secretly made their
way through the floor-a vast and greedy
! army-and have departed again before
| the household has awakened.
The anthills of South Africa will be q
| revelation TO Tommy" Fancy a mound
80 feet high and 100 feet In circumference
| Fl. Lincoln Tangye, the African travel
| er, refers in his book I'm New South At
RIGA" to the protection these heaps AFFORD
| ed his camp. We made our camp on the
soping sides of a huge anthill, protected
by its mass and the clump of trees grow
ing on it from the bitter southeast wind"
on one hill, he counted twenty trees OF
various sizes growing, the majority OF
them thirty or forty feet in height
Happily there is an ant bear in South
Africa. The Beers call 1t LANDMARK, "
the earth pig. 1t and the ants are dead
by enemies, and both work at night. In
its habit of boring the "aardvaark" is
like the mole, but II is much more ter
rifying creature to come across unex-
pectedly than Is the little brown creature
with which =;nglishmen are familiar.
This busy underground marauder for
gets to fill up the holes 1t makes when II
arrives on the outer crust of the Veldt,
with the consequence that to the rider
these are pitfalls more dangerous than
are the rabbit holes in an English warren
to horsemen here 1t also causes conster-
nation to the nervous by tunneling just
sufficiently high to create a series of con-
vulsive earthquakes as a guide to its sub
terranean promenades. Not guessing
what the cause is. it is alarming to see
the ground ripple all of a sudden, and
mounds of loose earth be thrown up here
and there.
The "aadvaark" is so ugly. and its APP
pearance is so sudden and totally unan-
nounced, that stalwart men have been
known to fee before 1t. A colonist recalls
one story of the war in Zululand when an
ant bear confronted a sentry on guard
one midnight, with the result that
Tommy was so taken aback that he fed
Immediately. startling the camp with the
awful news that 1.-The old gentleman" was
in their midst.