Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/176

 Zakkum: it is the mandrake of these regions, and the round excrescences upon the summits of its fleshy arms are supposed to resemble men's heads and faces. On Tuesday the 5th December we arose at 6 A.M., after a night so dewy that our clothes were drenched, and we began to ascend the Wady Darkaynlay, which winds from east to south. After an hour's march appeared a small cairn of rough stones, called Siyaro, or Mazar [4], to which each person, in token of honor, added his quotum. The Abban opined that Auliya or holy men had sat there, but the End of Time more sagaciously conjectured that it was the site of some Galla idol or superstitious rite. Presently we came upon the hills of the White Ant [5], a characteristic feature in this part of Africa. Here the land has the appearance of a Turkish cemetery on a grand scale: there it seems like a city in ruins: in some places the pillars are truncated into a resemblance to bee-hives, in others they cluster together, suggesting the idea of a portico; whilst many of them, veiled by trees, and overrun with gay creepers, look like the remains of sylvan altars. Generally the hills are conical, and vary in height from four to twelve feet: they are counted by hundreds, and the Somal account for the number by declaring that the insects abandon their home when dry, and commence building another. The older erections are worn away, by wind and rain, to a thin tapering spire, and are frequently hollowed and arched beneath by rats and ground squirrels. The substance, fine yellow mud, glued by the secretions of the ant, is hard to break: it is pierced, sieve-like, by a network of tiny shafts. I saw these hills for the first time in the Wady Darkaynlay: