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pear in an awful light. Desolation and famine mark their pro- 

 gress; all the expectations of the husbandman vanish; his fields, 

 which the rising sun beheld covered with luxuriance, are before 

 evening, a desert; the produce of his garden and orchards is 

 equally destroyed ; for, where these destructive swarms alight, not 

 a leaf is left upon the trees, a blade of grass in the pasture, nor an 

 ear of corn in the field: all wears the marks of dreadful devasta- 

 tion; to be renewed no more until the next rainy season. The 

 locusts not only cause a famine, by destroying the produce of the 

 country, but in districts near the sea, where they had been drowned, 

 they have occasioned a pestilence, from the putrid effluvia of 

 immense numbers blown upon the coast, or thrown up by the 

 tides. 



It is not a few fields, or only two or three villages, that are ruined 

 by these voracious creatures; the face of the country is covered 

 with them for many miles; yet in India they are not near so perni- 

 cious as in Arabia, and many parts of Africa, where they prove a 

 scourge of the severest kind. Soon after my arrival at Baroche I 

 saw a flight of locusts extending above a mile in length, and half 

 as much in breadth; they appeared, as the sun was in the meri- 

 dian, like a black cloud at a distance; as they approached the 

 density of the host obscured the solar rays, cast an awful gloom, 

 like that of an eclipse, over the garden, and caused a noise like 

 the rushing of a torrent. They were near an hour in passing 

 over our little territory; I need not say with what an anxious 

 eye we marked their progress, fearful lest the delicacies of our gar- 

 den should allure them to a repast. We picked up a few stragglers, 

 but the main body took a western direction, and without settling 



VOL. II. 2 N 



