38 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
No simile seems so apt to me as that of a heavy snow- 
storm with large flakes, and this uninterraptedly for two or 
three hours. Though the land before them was not exactly 
as the Garden of Eden, verily behind them it was a desolate 
wilderness. As the cold of night came on, they collected on 
the bushes in enormous masses, eight or ten feet through, for 
warmth, weighing them completely to the ground, and they 
took flight again the next morning after the sun was well up. 
For two days my oxen never put their heads down ; there 
was nothing found for them to eat. The swarms pass through 
waste and cultivated land alike, bringing dearth and destruc- 
tion, and men’s hearts fail ; but the adversary has arrayed his 
forces against them, and through the dense flights sweep the 
wedge-shaped squadrons of the sfringkhdn vogel, or locust 
birds: dark and long of wing like swifts, with white patches 
beneath the pinion. As squadron after squadron wheels and 
passes over you, the husks of the locusts fall like hail.. The 
birds are in very large numbers and do their work deftly ; 
before long the air above you is clear, and though the evidence 
of the curse is upon the earth, and remains, the locusts them- 
selves are soon got rid of, for everything on two legs and four 
eats them. The Bushmen follow the flights, feed on them, dry 
them, and keep them in store. One night, Livingstone and 
I lost our way, and seeing the light of a fire, made for it. 
Around it sat a family of Bushmen; so, heralding our 
approach from a safe distance, for fear of a flight of arrows, 
we introduced ourselves. They welcomed us, and offered us 
guides and a snack of dried locusts. I ate two or three, and 
they were not so nasty ; something like what old shrimp-shells 
without the insides might be. These insects are bad enough 
in their winged, but worse in their early wingless, form, when, 
as the dreaded ‘ foot-gangers’ of the Dutch farmer, they roll in 
living waves over his land, defy all attempts at extermination 
from their multitude, climb walls, quench lines of small fires 
placed in the hopes of turning them, cross rivers, millions 
jumping in, and millions getting over on the living raft. In 
NR Te | rt ae Mee wane aed cena ee 
