one to waste. What a commentary on
Bolshevism!

Now that I had the opportunity of quietly watching the long, hurrying
columns, I came hour by hour to feel a greater intimacy, a deeper
enthusiasm for their vigor of existence, their unfailing life at the
highest point of possibility of achievement. In every direction my
former desultory observations were discounted by still greater
accomplishments. Elsewhere I have recorded the average speed as two
and a half feet in ten seconds, estimating this as a mile in three and
a half hours. An observant colonel in the American army has laid bare
my congenitally hopeless mathematical inaccuracy, and corrected this
to five hours and fifty-two seconds. Now, however, I established a
wholly new record for the straight-away dash for home of the army
ants. With the handicap of gravity pulling them down, the ants, both
laden and unburdened, averaged ten feet in twenty seconds, as they
raced up the post. I have now called in an artist and an astronomer to
verify my results, these two being the only living beings within
hailing distance as I write, except a baby red howling monkey curled
up in my lap, and a toucan, sloth, and green boa, beyond my laboratory
table. Our results are identical, and I can safely announce that the
amateur record for speed of army ants is equivalent to a mile in two
hours and fifty-six seconds; and this when handicapped by gravity and
burdens of food, but with the incentive of approaching the end of
their long journey.

As once before, I accidentally disabled a big worker that I was
robbing of his load, and his entire abdomen rolled down a slope and
disappeared. Hours later in the afternoon, I was summoned to view the
same soldier, unconcernedly making his way along an outward-bound
column, guarding it as carefully as if he had not lost the major part
of his anatomy. His mandibles were ready, and the only difference that
I could see was that he could make better speed than others of his
caste. That night he joined the general assemblage of cripples quietly
awaiting death, halfway up to the nest.

I know of no highway in the world which surpasses that of a big column
of army ants in exciting happenings, although I usually had the
feeling which inspired Kim as he watched the Great White Road, of
understanding so little of all that was going on. Early in the morning
there were only outgoing hosts; but soon eddies were seen in the swift
current, vortexes made by a