When Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, of the British horse-artillery, was surveying, on the 6th of October, 1813, the scene of the battle of the Pyrenees from the summit of the mountain called Pena de Aya, or Les Quartres Couronnes, he and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of Ants, so numerous as entirely to intercept their view, so that they were
obliged to remove to another station in order to get rid of them.[575]
“Not long since,” says Josselyn in his Voyage to New England, London, 1674, “winged Ants were poured down upon the Lands out of the clouds in a storm betwixt Blackpoint and Saco, where the passenger might have walkt up to the Ancles in them.”[576]
Wingless Ants, in swarms or armies, also migrate at particular seasons; but for what purpose is not clear, except to obtain better forage. In Guiana, Mr. Waterton says he has met with a colony of a species of small Ant marching in order, each having in its mouth a leaf; and the army extended three miles in length, and was six feet broad.[577]
It is recorded by Oviedo and Herrera, that the whole island of Hispaniola was almost abandoned in consequence of the Sugar-Ant, Formica omnivora of Linnæus, which, in 1518 and the two succeeding years, overran in such countless myriads that island, devouring all vegetation, and causing a famine which nearly depopulated the Spanish colony. A tradition, says Schomburgk, prevails in Jamaica that the town of Sevilla Nueva, which was founded by Esquivel in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was entirely deserted for a similar reason. Herrera relates that, in order to get rid of this fearful scourge in Hispaniola, the priests caused great processions and vows to be made in honor of their patron saint, St. Saturnin, and that the day of this saint was celebrated with great solemnities, and the Ants in consequence began to disappear. How this saint was chosen, we read in Purchas’s Pilgrims: “This miserie (caused by the Ants) so perplexed the Spaniards, that they sought as strange a remedie as was the disease, which was to chuse some Saint for their Patron against the Antes. Alexander Giraldine, the Bishop, having sung a solemne and Pontifical Masse, after the consecration and Eleuation of the Sacrament, and devout prayers made by him and the people, opened a Booke in which was a Catalogue of the Saints, by lot to chuse some he or she Saint, whom God should please to appoint their Advocate against the Calamitie. And the Lot fell vpon Saint Saturnine, whose Feast is on the nine
and twentieth of Nouember; after which the Ant damage became more tolerable, and by little and little diminished, by God’s mercie and intercession of that Saint.”[578]
These devouring Ants showed themselves about the year 1760 in Barbados, and caused such devastations that, in the words of Dr. Coke, “it was deliberated whether that island, formerly so flourishing, should not be deserted.” In 1763, Martinique was visited by these devastating hordes; and about the year 1770 they made their appearance in the island of Granada. Barbados, Granada, and Martinique suffered more than any other islands from this plague. Granada especially was reduced to a state of the most deplorable desolation; for, it is said, their numbers there were so immense that they covered the roads for many miles together; and so crowded were they in many places that the impressions made by the feet of horses, which traveled over them, would remain visible but for a moment or two, for they were almost instantly filled up by the surrounding swarms. Mr. Schomburgk assures us that calves, pigs, and chickens, when in a helpless state, were attacked by such large numbers of these Ants that they perished, and were soon reduced to skeletons when not timely assisted. It is asserted by Dr. Coke that the greatest precaution was requisite to prevent their attacks on men who were afflicted with sores, on women who were confined, and on children that were unable to assist themselves. Mr. Castle, from his own observation, states that even burning coals laid in their way, were extinguished by the amazing numbers which rushed upon them.
Notwithstanding the myriads that were destroyed by fire, water, poison, and other means, the devastations continued to such an alarming extent, that in 1776 the government of Martinique offered a reward of a million of their currency for a remedy against this plague; and the legislature of Granada offered £20,000 for the same object; but all attempts proved ineffectual until the hurricane in 1780 effected what human power had been unable to accomplish.
In 1814, the Ants again made their appearance in the island of Barbados, doing considerable injury; but happily they did not continue long.[579]
Malouet, in visiting the forests of Guiana, of which he has spoken in his travels into that part of the globe, perceived in the midst of a level savanna, as far as the eye could reach, a hillock which he would have attributed to the hand of man, if M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him, had not informed him that, in spite of its gigantic construction, it was the work of black Ants of the largest species (most probably of the genus Ponera). He proposed to conduct him, not to the Ant-hill, where both of them would infallibly have been devoured, but to the road of the workers. M. Malouet did not approach within more than forty paces of the habitation of these insects. It had the form of a pyramid truncated at one-third of its height, and he estimated that its elevation might be about fifteen or twenty feet, on a basis of from thirty to forty. M. de Prefontaine told him that the cultivators were obliged to abandon a new establishment, when they had the misfortune to meet with one of these fortresses, unless they had sufficient strength to form a regular siege. This even occurred to M. de Prefontaine himself on his first encampment at Kourva. He was desirous of forming a second a little farther on, and perceived upon the soil a mound of earth similar to that which we have just described. He caused a circular trench to be hollowed, which he filled with a great quantity of dry wood, and, after having set fire to it in every point of its circumference, he attacked the Ant-hill with a train of artillery. Thus every issue was closed to the hostile army, which, to escape from the invasion of the flames and the shaking and plowing of the ground by the cannon-balls, was obliged to traverse, in its retreat, a trench filled with fire, where it was entirely cut off.[580]