Note 5 — Chapter VIII · THE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES

In the early part of the sixteenth century, according to Herrera,5 their numbers in Española and Puerto Rico were so great and their devastations so extensive and irresistible, that they threatened to depopulate the islands. Various parts of South America have also at different times suffered from the same plague—rivaling the seven plagues of Egypt in the distress and destruction which marked their path. Had we not had here, and elsewhere in the tropics, ocular evidence of their prodigious numbers, and been witnesses of the magnitude of the works due to their united efforts, we should have classed the accounts left us by the early chroniclers of the extent of the ravages of the ant plague among works of fiction rather than records of authentic history.6