CHAPTER I.

THE CITY IN THE SHADOWS: THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS.

M. de Prefontaine (cited by Huber, in his work on "The Ants") relates that, when travelling in Guiana, he saw a party of negroes besieging certain fantastic edifices which he calls ant-hills. They did not venture to attack them except from a distance, and with firearms; having first taken the precaution, moreover, to dig a little trench and fill it with water, to check the progress of the beleaguered army and drown its battalions, if they adventured a sortie.

These edifices are not the habitations of Ants, but of Termites,--quite a different species of insect; which are found not only in Guiana, but in Africa, New Holland, and in the prairies of North America.

A host of travellers have described them. But the standard and most instructive authority is that of Smeathman, which now lies before us, enriched with excellent plates. The drawings are taken from the termite-hills of Africa.

Figure to yourself a mound of earth, about twelve feet high (some have been discovered measuring twenty), which, from a distance, might easily be mistaken for a negro's hut. Approach it, and you will at once detect that it is the product of a higher art. Its curious form is that of a pointed dome; or, if you like, of an obtuse and preponderating obelisk. For support, the dome or obelisk has four, five, or six cupolas from five to six feet high; and against these are propped up below some small bell-like structures, nearly two feet in elevation. The whole might well be taken for a kind of Oriental cathedral, the principal spire of which had a double cincture of minarets, decreasing in height; the said whole being of extreme solidity, and composed of a compact clay, which, when burnt, makes the best bricks. Not only may several men stand upon it without injury, but even the wild bull's station themselves on its summit as sentinels to watch, through the high grasses of the plain, that the lion or panther does not surprise the herd.

Nevertheless, this dome is hollow, and the inferior platform which supports it is itself supported by a semi-hollow construction formed by the junction of four arches (two to three feet in span),--arches of a very substantial design, being pointed, ogival, and in a kind of Gothic style. Lower still extends a number of passages or corridors, plastered spaces which one might call saloons, and finally, convenient, spacious, and healthy lodgings, capable of receiving a large population; in brief, quite a subterranean city.

A broad spiral passage winds and rises gradually in the thickness of the edifice, which has no opening, no door, no window; the vomitories are disguised and at a distance, terminating afar in the plain.

It is the most considerable and important work which displays the genius of insects; a labour of infinite patience and of daring art. We must not forget that these walls, which time has hardened, were very friable at first, and always crumbling. To raise this Titanic edifice to such a height, a continuity of effort was absolutely requisite, and a succession of provisional constructions, demolished one after the other when they had served their purpose. The masons commenced with the exterior pyramids, a foot and a foot and a half in height; then with those of the second rank. But the latter being solid and indurated, they intrepidly undermined their base to make room for the passages, the windows, and the spiral staircase. The same operation was carried out beneath the dome, which was excavated with great labour, and in such a manner that the great hollow vault, in conjunction with its lower platform, rested on the narrow vaults of the four arches forming the centre and foundation of the edifice.

Observe that this dome is self-sustaining, and that its substructions, strictly speaking, would amply suffice for its support; the lateral pyramids being only its not indispensable auxiliaries. Here, then, we find the principle of a true, honest, and courageous art, which, relying on itself and its calculations, requires no assistance from external supports, and needs neither props nor buttresses. It is exactly the system of Brunelleschi.

Who has carried the art to such a climax? We must own that it is the supreme of usefulness. The sharpened dome, the belfries or needles, are admirably arranged so as to resist the terrible rain-storms of the tropics. The dome keeps off the water, and assists it to flow away rapidly. If it cracked, the platform on which it leans would throw the water, as from a roof, on to the exterior _enceinte_, which would carry it to the ground. Hollow like a kiln, it quickly gets warmed, and absorbs the heat; duly communicating it to the subterranean passages to hatch the eggs, and promote the comfort of a race which, being wholly naked, prefers an elevated temperature.

* * * * *

It is a masterpiece of art, precisely because it is a masterpiece of utility. The beautiful and the useful admirably harmonize. Now one would wish to know who _are_ these astonishing artists: we hardly dare to confess that they are the objects of our entire contempt.

Various names have been bestowed upon them; among others, that of termites: and again, that of wood-ants,--a designation not very accurate, for the ants are their enemies, and their body, being exceedingly soft, is exactly the opposite of the dry hard body of the ant.

They have been also called wood-lice; and they seem, in truth, a soft and feeble kind of vermin, which are crushed without resistance. Magnificent jest of God, who loves to exalt his humblest creatures! The Memphis, the Babylon, the true Capitol of the insects, is built--by whom? By lice! Though their luxury of jaws, and their four stages of teeth, make them admirable rodents, nevertheless, if we except their _élite_, the soldiers, they have no important weapons. Their teeth, made to gnaw, are powerless in combat. The destiny of the termites is plain; spite of the formidable names which have been given to their species (_bellicosus_, _mordax_, _atrox_), they are simply _workers_.

Every other insect is stronger than they are; or at least harder, better protected, and more completely armed. All, especially the ants, hunt them, and devour them by myriads. Birds greedily pursue them; the poultry-yards absorb them in frightful quantities. All (even man, who cooks them) find them of an agreeable taste; and the negro can never be satiated with them.

They work without seeing their work. They have no eyes, at least none which are visible. Very probably, the darkness in which they live destroys their ocular organs, as is the case with a species of duck found in the subterranean lakes of Carinthia. The rare species of termites which venture forth into the daylight have very conspicuous and perfectly formed eyes.

The darkness and the persecution to which they are exposed under the light, seem to have developed their singular industry. Against that world of day which shows them so bitter a hostility, they have built, as they have been able, this little world of the shadows, in which they exercise their arts. They issue forth only in search of food, and the gum and other substances of which they make their magazines.

Their attachment is extreme for these cities of darkness. They defend them obstinately. The first blow that is given each resists in his own fashion; the workmen plastering the interior with a kind of mortar which closes up the holes, the soldiers attacking the assailants and drawing blood with their sharp pincers, clinging to the wound, and suffering themselves to be crushed rather than let go. A naked man (like the negro) shrinks under these bites, grows discouraged, and is conquered.

If you still persist, if you penetrate, you admire the palace, its circuits, its corridors, its aërial bridges, the halls or saloons where the population lodge, the nurseries for the eggs, the caves, cellars, or magazines. But, above all, search to the centre. There lurks the mystery of this little world; there is its palladium, its idol, incessantly surrounded by the cares of an enthusiastic crowd. A strange and shocking object, which is not the less obeyed, and visibly adored!

It is the queen, or common mother, frightfully fecund, from whose body issues an uninterrupted flood of about sixty eggs per minute, or eighty thousand eggs per day!

You can conceive of nothing more fantastic. These strange creatures, which we compare to vermin, have nevertheless their moment of supreme poesy, their hour of love; for a moment their wings uplift them, and almost immediately they sink. The couples thus bereft, having neither refuge nor strength, and no means of resistance, are a prey for all the insects,--a manna upon which they straightway throw themselves. The working termites, which have neither love nor wings, endeavour to save a couple of the victims, welcome them,--weak, and fallen, and wretched as they are,--and make them monarchs.

They remove them to the centre of the city, and establish them in the saloon on which all the apartments and corridors abut. There they are revived, recruited, and nourished day and night; and the female gradually assumes an enormous size, until in body and stomach she is two thousand times larger than her natural condition,--though, by a hideous contrast, the head does not increase. For the rest, immovable, and therefore captive, the doors through which she entered have become infinitely too narrow to admit of the egress of such a monster. Accordingly, there she will remain, pouring out, until she splits asunder, that torrent of living matter which the termites day and night collect, and which, to-morrow, will be the People.

This soft and whitish-looking creature, a stomach rather than a being, is at least of the size of the human thumb: a traveller pretends to have seen one as large as a crab.

The bigger she is, the more fertile, the more inexhaustible, this terrible mother of lice seems the more enthusiastically worshipped by her fanatical vermin. She appears to be their ideal, their poetry, their ecstasy. If you carry them off, with a fragment, a ruin of the city, you may see them, under a glass shade, instantly set to work to build an arch for the protection of the mother's venerated head, to reconstruct her royal hall, which will become, if the materials be sufficient, the centre and basis of the resuscitated community.

I am not astonished, let me add, at the extravagant love which they show towards this instrument of fecundity. If every other race did not jointly labour to destroy them, this truly prodigious mother would make them masters of the world,--nay, what do I say?--its only inhabitants. The fish alone would survive; but the insect world would perish. It suffices to remember that the queen-bee takes a year to accomplish what the termite mother accomplishes in a day. Through her means they would swallow up Everybody; but they are feeble and savoury, and it is Everybody which swallows up them.

When the species of termites which live and dwell in the woods unfortunately approach near our habitations, there is no means of arresting their ravages. They work with a truly incredible vigour and rapidity. They have been known in one night to eat their way through the leg of a table, then through the thickness of the table itself, descending through the leg on the opposite side.

The reader can easily imagine the effect produced by such toil as this on the joists and framework of a house. The worst of it is, that a long time may elapse before their ravages are detected. We continue to rely upon supports which suddenly, one fine morning, crumble away; we sleep peacefully under roofs which to-morrow will cease to exist.

The town of Valencia, in New Grenada, undermined by the subterranean galleries these insects have excavated in the earth, is now literally suspended upon their dangerous catacombs.

We have ourselves seen, at Rochelle, the formidable beginnings of the ravages they executed in the timber-work of a quarter of the town where they were introduced by foreign ships. Whole buildings are found eaten up, though apparently sound,--all the wood hollowed and tunnelled, even to the banisters of the staircase: do not rest upon them, or they will yield and give way under your hand. These terrible nibblers seem willing, however, to confine themselves to one district of the town, and not to invade the remainder. Otherwise, this historical city, important still through its marine and its commerce, would be reduced to the condition of Herculaneum and Pompeii.