festive hilarity
pervades among the inhabitants, accompanied by the song and the dance.

Contumacy, or a refusal to confess, is invariably followed by death.

In short, the bewildered natives feel the effects, and dread the power of
these extraordinary institutions; they know they exist, but their
deliberations and mysteries are impenetrably concealed from them; and the
objects of their vengeance are in total ignorance, until the annihilating
stroke of death terminates their mortal career.

It is impossible to contemplate the religious institutions, and
superstitious customs of the western nations of Africa, north of the
equator, without closely assimilating them with those of Ethiopia and
Egypt; and from hence to infer that a correspondence has existed between
the eastern and western inhabitants of this great continent.

SECTION II.

_Of the_ Termite, Termes, _or_ Bug a Bug, _as it is called by the Natives
upon the Windward Coast of Africa._

Among the insects mentioned in page 36, the _termite, termes_, or _bug a
bug_, attracts peculiar notice. The following observations are derived from
the investigations I occasionally made upon the Island of Tasso, attached
to Bance Island, where they abound, and indeed in nearly all the western
countries of Africa.

The oeconomy of nature, and the wisdom of Providence, are wonderfully
displayed in these little animals; for although they occasion the utmost
devastation to buildings, utensils, and all kinds of household furniture
and merchandize, and indeed every thing except metal and stone, yet they
answer highly important purposes in demolishing the immense quantity of
putrid substances, which load the earth in tropical climates.

Their astonishing peculiarities cannot fail to excite the notice of an
attentive observer; the sagacity and ingenuity they display in their
buildings, their industry, and the plunder and devastation they commit, is
incredible to those who have not witnessed their communities and empires.
They are divided into innumerable societies, and acknowledge a king and
queen, the former of which I brought to Europe, but the latter was by
accident mislaid at sea. Linnaeus denominates the African _bug a bug,
Termes_, and describes it as the plague of the Indies. Every community, as
I have observed, has a king and queen, and the monarchy, if I may be
allowed the expression, forms three distinct orders of insects, in three
states of existence; of every specie