An Old Elephant Will Walk In Advance Of The Herd,
And Uncover The Pits With His Trunk, That The Others May See The
Openings And Tread On Firm Ground.
Female elephants are generally
the victims:
More timid by nature than the males, and very motherly
in their anxiety for their calves, they carry their trunks up, trying
every breeze for fancied danger, which often in reality lies at their
feet. The tusker, fearing less, keeps his trunk down, and, warned in
time by that exquisitely sensitive organ, takes heed to his ways.
Our camp on the Sinjere stood under a wide-spreading wild fig-tree.
From the numbers of this family, of large size, dotted over the
country, the fig or banyan species would seem to have been held
sacred in Africa from the remotest times. The soil teemed with white
ants, whose clay tunnels, formed to screen them from the eyes of
birds, thread over the ground, up the trunks of trees, and along the
branches, from which the little architects clear away all rotten or
dead wood. Very often the exact shape of branches is left in tunnels
on the ground and not a bit of the wood inside. The first night we
passed here these destructive insects ate through our grass-beds, and
attacked our blankets, and certain large red-headed ones even bit our
flesh.
On some days not a single white ant is to be seen abroad; and on
others, and during certain hours, they appear out of doors in
myriads, and work with extraordinary zeal and energy in carrying bits
of dried grass down into their nests.
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