Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/220

 202, looking like the crown of a dome. On breaking through this, the whole city of the ants was laid bare—a wonderful mass of cells, pillars, chambers, and passages.—The spade sunk perhaps two feet among the crisp and cracking ruins, which seemed formed either of the excavated remnants of the tree, or a thin shell-like cement of clay. The arrangement of the interior was singular: the central part had the appearance of innumerable small branching pillars, like the minutest stalactical formations, or like some of the smaller coralline productions. Towards the outer part, the materials assumed the appearance of thin laminae, about half the substance of a wafer, but most ingeniously disposed in the shape of a series of low elliptic arches, so placed that the centre of the arch below formed the resting-place for the abutment of the arch above. These abutments again formed sloping platforms for ascent to the higher apartments. In other places, I thought I could discern spiral ascents, not unlike geometrical staircases. The whole formed such an ingenious specimen of complicated architecture, and such an endless labyrinth of intricate passages, as could bid defiance alike to art and to Ariadne's clue: but even the affairs of ants are subject to mutation. This great city was deserted—a few loiterers alone remained, to tell to what race it had formerly belonged. Their great store-houses had been exhausted—even the very roots had been laid under contribution; till at last its myriads of inhabitants had emigrated en masse, to commence anew their operations in some other soil.

We have had a long discussion about establishing a paper currency among the agriculturists, in which was proposed, that each of a certain number, in proportion to their actual possessions, should be privileged to draw promissory notes payable in colonial produce at market rates. I am opposed to this, and see many objections to it; but have not yet considered the matter so fully as to state them definitely. Where