Consider Her Ways by Frederick Philip Grove

I had at last given in and accepted the fact that we had to remain in this northern country for another year. The season was beginning to be too inclement to proceed when we came upon a location which seemed favourable for wintering.

Perhaps I should mention that every now and then we had, of late, met with friendly tribes of minute ants who lived a very precarious life within human habitations; and occasionally we found among them some who, to our amazement, had travelled widely and seen much of the world. They laughed at us when they heard that we were marching; they never did. From their descriptions we concluded at first that they made use of those monstrous animals which we had seen on the tarry roads; but it seemed there were still other ways and means of utilizing human contrivance. These little ants told us of what they called space-machines. At any rate, the stories which reached us mostly through Azte-ca had given me hope that perhaps we should winter in a human city; for we heard much of a huge hominary built around certain inlets of the eastern sea; and what we were told about this hominary made me think that it must be a place very different from the human farm. But it so happened, much to our ultimate advantage as it turned out, that we were caught by a wintry spell at a point far removed from any human habitation.