h bird, like a drop of water at
regular intervals into a metal bowl.

The Colonel and G. rode at 8 A.M., and I biked. It is not such
interesting country here as what we came through in the train--rolling,
stoney, with friable red soil, and hard to ride on. Many dusty roads
meet at all angles; along these you meet herds of buffalo and cows
driven leisurely by boys or men. Some cows, of errant natures, have logs
dangling by a rope from their necks amongst their feet; they can't go
off very fast or far with the encumbrance. They stir up the dust as they
go along, and it falls and lies on the children till their dark skins
have a bloom like sloe-berries. There are all sorts of birds to look
at--kites, crows, vultures, hawks, eagles; with these you can't expect
to see game birds, though it looks an ideal country, though perhaps a
little waterless, for pheasants and partridges. When I stop I see the
side of the road swarms with insect life, ants of various, kinds, black
and red, small and big, pegging along the level, and up and down trees,
as if the world depended on each individual's particular bustling. There
are white ant hills like ragged heaps of raw chocolate--very hard and
strong. I don't know what they are built for--I must consider the matter
like the sluggard some day, if I have time, or read about them if that
is not a bigger order. What strikes you at first about the white ant is
that you never see it unless you lay its works open. His hard-sun-baked
protections run up the tree stems or wherever he goes and conceals and
protects his soft, white, fleshy body, and if you prise this casing open
you may see him getting away as fast as his little legs will take him;
really he is a termite you know, like a "wood louse or worm," and not an
ant. A wonder of the world is how he gets the liquid secretion to fasten
the grains of sand together to make his earthen tunnels. If he goes to
the top of a house to remove furniture or the like, he builds his tunnel
all the way up; and in a thirsty land the top storey of a sun-bitten
house does not seem the place to get water: but I must leave this
subject to the disquisitions of men of more leisure and greater
abilities, and proceed to make some observations on, and jottings of,
the figures on the road. Here are women bringing up great round
earthenware vases on their heads and little round brass bowls in their
hands, going and coming from a muddy pool in the centre of a waste of
dr