RAVAGES OF THE LOCUST. 253 



was ravaged by these insects. In the summer of that year 

 such clouds of Locusts came from the south that they darkened 

 the air and devoured a ]3art of the harvest. Their offspring 

 committed still greater mischief. Locusts appeared and bred 

 anew in the following year, so that in the spring the ground 

 was wholly covered, and they crawled one over the other in 

 search of their subsistence. 



' The whole country was eaten up : the very bark of the iig, 

 pomegranate, and orange-tree — bitter, hard, and corrosive as it 

 was — could not escape the voracity of these insects. The lands, 

 ravaged throughout all the western provinces, produced no 

 harvest ; and the Moors, being obliged to live on their stores, 

 began to feel a dearth. Their cattle died with hunger ; nor 

 could any be preserved but those which were in the neigh- 

 bourhood of mountains or in marshy grounds, where the re- 

 growth of pasturage is more rajiid. 



'In 1780, the distress was still further increased. The dry 

 winter had checked the jiroducts of the earth, and given birth 

 to a new generation of Locusts, who devoured whatever had 

 escaped from the inclemency of the season. The husbandman 

 did not even reap what he had sowed, and found himself 

 destitute of food, cattle, or seed corn. In this time of extreme 

 wretchedness, the poor felt all the horrors of famine. They 

 were seen wandering over the country to dig roots, and, 

 perhaps, abridged their days by digging into the entrails of 

 the earth in search of the crude means by which they might 

 be preserved. 



' Vast numbers perished of indigestible food and want. I 

 have beheld country people in the roads, and in the streets, 

 who had died of hunger, and who were thrown across asses 

 to be taken and buried. The husband, with the consent of his 

 wife, would take her into another province, there to bestow 

 her in marriage, as if she were his sister, and afterwards come 

 and reclaim her when his wants were not so great. I have 

 seen women and children run after camels, and rake their 

 dung, to seek for some undigested grain of barley, which, 

 if they found, they devoured with avidity.' 



The writer also mentions the mode in which the young 

 Locusts were destroyed in one province. A vast trench was 

 dug, more than three miles in length, and extending from the 



