51 



need always be the case, is to be seen. Here, then, is one very mate- 

 rial difficulty to commence with. But let us suppose all the farmers 

 of Kansas and Nebraska are thoughtful, and also abundantly able to 

 have prepared all the machinery, patent appliances and nostrums 

 Yankee ingenuity or entomological science can devise, and that they 

 are carefully kept ready for use when the day of battle comes. I now 

 ask the reader to take his stand with me in imagination upon one of 

 the beautiful grassy ridges or green mound-like hillocks of Nebras- 

 ka or Kansas, as, for example, the valley of Big-Blue in the former, 

 or College Hill, at Manhattan, in the latter, (and if he has never done 

 this in reality, he has missed a sight worth seeing) and look over the 

 beautiful rolling prairies and spreading valleys, and compare the 

 occupied and cultivated area before him with the broad surrounding 

 expanse of unoccupied land. Let him extend his imagination a lit- 

 tle farther : It is a beautiful morning, about the first of August ; not 

 even fleecy cloud specks the sky, although a breeze is sweeping down 

 from the northwest; the fields of corn in sight reflect the silvery 

 beams from seas of waving leaves, while their tasseled heads gently 

 bow before the breeze. All at once, about ten o'clock, a dark shadow 

 is seen moving rapidly over the plains from the northwest ; the rays 

 of the sun are suddenly cut off, and the entire scene appears as though 

 beneath some vast canopy which has been overspread ; for gazing up- 

 ward, he beholds the heavens rilled with broad, living, silvery snow- 

 flakes, and then a shower thick as rain, but dropping like pebbles, 

 descends striking his hat, his hands, his upturned face, and the 

 ground around, with a sudden and peculiar thud. Grasshoppers! 

 grasshoppers by the millions ! This exclamation is also the explana- 

 tion — 



Onward they come, a dark conti nuoua cloud 

 Of congregated myriads numbeil as, 

 The rushing of whose wings was as the sound 

 Of a broad. river headlong in its course. 

 Plunged from a mountain summit, or the roar 

 <tf a wild ocean in the Autumn storm, 

 Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks. 



He watches the myriads of restless workers for a few hours, and ere 

 the sun has set sees the corn stripped of its green leaves, and the beau- 

 tiful green covering of the scene changed almost to a barren waste 



It is true this is given as an imaginary sketch, yet those who have 

 beheld the arrival and operations of these hordes will scarcely con- 

 sider it greatly exaggerated or far from correct. 



In one of the letters given by Prof. Riley in his Seventh Report, I 

 find the following statement : 



" They appeared on Sunday, July 26, at about six o'clock P. M. 

 They were so thick in the air that they appeared like a heavy snow- 

 storm ; those high in the air forming apparently light fleecy clouds, 

 while those dropping to the earth resembled flakes of snow. Next 

 morning, Monday the 27th, at daylight the country was literally cov- 

 ered with grasshoppers. Soon after sunrise they collected on the 

 growing crops, young trees, etc., and commenced eating, and before 

 night had eaten the leaves from almost every green thing." 



A resident of Nebraska, whose place I had visited before the inva- 

 sion, describing their arrival, stated that they arrived about ten A. 

 M., darkening the sky with their numbers ; that by three P. M. the 



