PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION C. 35 



and their in frequency in the last hundred years is not improbably 

 due to the country in the path the swarms would follow having 

 been brought more and more under cultivation. 



Locusts were observed in Table Valley by visiting mariners 

 long before the settlement of Cape Town by the Dutch, and 

 V^an Riebeek experienced losses bv them during his first summer 

 in this country, 1653. A quarter of a century later, 1687, they 

 again ravaged the gardens of the little colony, as recorded bv 

 Theal in his " History of South Africa." Apparently there 

 was more trouble witli the insects a few years later, but Theal 

 observes that from 1695 until the closing days of 1746 the 

 colony was free from them. On the 28th of December, he 

 then records. 



They found their way in such vast numbers into Table Valley that the 

 air seemed filled with them, and in few days there was nothing edible 

 left, not even leaves on the trees. 



The devastation in Uie .surrounding country was 

 equally severe, and the price of meat in the little colony doubled 

 because so many cattle and sheep perished from starvation. 

 History further records that the Cape authorities at the time 

 were having a mole, or breakwater, constructed for the pro- 

 tection of shipping. The work was suspended owing to the 

 fall in revenue and the increase in costs brought about by the 

 locusts, and it may be added that it was never resumed. The 

 name " Mouille Point " — that is, " Mole Point " — however, has 

 survived for the place where the start was made. In February, 

 1843 — that is, nearly a hundred years later — the Cape and 

 surrounding districts were again visited by locusts. Crops, 

 vineyards, and pasturages were greatly damaged, but, as it came 

 later in the season, the daiuage was not so serious as on the 

 previous occasion. Enormous numbers of the insects were 

 blown into the sea and afterwards washed up. Mr. H. C. V. 

 Leibbrandt. late Keeper of the Cape Archives, told me ten years 

 ago that he clearly remembered tlie incident. The locusts, he 

 said, lay nine inches deep along the beach at Sea Point, and 

 created an intolerable .stench. I inake special metition of these 

 visitations to indicate that the south-western districts of the 

 Cape Province are not entirely safe from a scourge of locu.sts, 

 and that the residents in that comparatively thickly-settled part 

 of the Union should feel it to their interests to grant the 

 Government 'help to combat the pest when it ravages other parts 

 of the country. 



Inland parts of South Africa are frequently devastated by 

 locusts. One cycle of their abundance appears to have begun 

 about 1797, eleven years after GraafT-Reinet. the first Karroo 

 town, was founded, and to have continued until 1808. In 1824 

 the country, from the most northern settlements south to Bedford, 

 was overrun, and the plague lasted until about 1831. The 

 period 1842 to 1854 seems to mark their next invasion, and that 

 from 1862 to 1876 the one following. Then for fourteen years 



