the north. The further we ascended the Harts River, the more fertile we found the country. Nothing attracted my-attention more than the small plantations of sugar-cane, but I was surprised to hear that the only use to which the natives put the prolific crop is to cut the lower and more juicy section of the stem into morsels that they can chew.
We had now to travel across a plain devoid alike of trees or shrubs, but where I noticed some ant-hills of a peculiar form. Instead of being of the ordinary hemispherical type, about four feet high, and with two or three apertures, such as may be seen by thousands on many of the South African levels, these were open funnels six feet high, with diameters ranging from three to ten inches long, and made of a kind of cement formed by grains of sand agglutinated by the help of the mucous saliva of the ant. Generally they stood in groups of not less than three, and the soil all round them was quite bare for several feet. Outside these, again, were funnels of the same design, but not yet completed, and consisting merely of a conical pile of earth without the aperture at the top.
About noon we made a halt near the river, but were disappointed to find that the only water we could obtain was from the pools, which were rendered disgustingly foul by the cattle driven into them day by day by the natives. It may well be imagined that the food we had to prepare for ourselves with this water did not prove particularly savoury.
In the middle of our meal some Batlapins, from
