JERUSALEM'S LOCUST PLAGUE 



533 



difficult to perceive that they had been 

 prematurely and hurriedly plucked to 

 save them. 



But these are but drops in the bucket. 

 Miles and miles of water- and musk- 

 melon fields fell a prey to the locusts on 

 the plains. Likewise were destroyed the 

 cucumber, vegetable marrow and tomato 

 fields, and the truck gardens in plain and 

 hill, to say nothing of the absolute an- 

 nihilation of the grape and fig crops. 

 Thousands of acres of dura, or native 

 corn, still but a few inches tall, were 

 eaten to the ground. 



In fact, nothing escaped their ravages 

 except the orange gardens at Jaffa, due 

 to the heavy sea breezes and strenuous 

 human efforts, while those of the suburbs 

 were entirely eaten. The only vegetables 

 now entering the Jerusalem markets came 

 from Jericho. Here the eggs laid in the 

 alkali fields seemed not to hatch, while 

 those near the Jordan were thoroughly 

 dug out ; so that not a single wingless 

 locust was seen there, and the crops re- 

 mained undisturbed, till suddenly envel- 

 oped by the new fliers, as we shall see 

 later (see page 544). The only vegetables 

 and fruits now available came from the 

 Jaffa gardens, but instead of being, as 

 usual, the food for the poor, they were 

 so rare that none but the richest could 

 pay the price at which they sold. 



INVADING THE HOMES 



Disastrous as they were in the country, 

 equally obnoxious they became about the 

 homes, crawling up thick upon the walls 

 and, squeezing in through cracks of closed 

 doors or windows, entering the very 

 dwelling rooms (see page 528). When 

 unable to find an entrance they often 

 scaled the walls to the roofs, and then 

 got into the houses by throwing them- 

 selves into the open courts, such as most 

 Oriental houses are built around. Women 

 frantically swept the walls and roofs of 

 their homes, but to no avail. 



In Nazareth it required several hun- 

 dred men to sweep the locusts together 

 and to destroy them, and many donkeys 

 to carry away to near-by fields the minia- 

 ture carcasses. Stores were closed and 

 some houses abandoned, for there it 

 seemed as if the locusts were even more 

 active than in other towns. 



During the Egyptian plagues we find 

 Moses announcing the locust scourge in 

 terms of which our present experience is 

 such an exact duplicate, as follows : "Be- 

 hold tomorrow will I bring the locusts 

 into thy coasts : and they shall cover the 

 face of the earth, . . . and they shall 

 eat the residue of that which is escaped 

 . . . every green tree which groweth. 

 . . . And they shall fill thy houses, and 

 the houses of thy servants, and the houses 

 of all the Egyptians" (Ex. 10: 4-6). 



About our houses they became so thick 

 that one could not help crushing them 

 with every step. They even fell into 

 one's shirt collar from the walls above 

 and crawled up onto one's person. 

 Women were especially troubled with 

 them, and on one occasion a lady, after 

 being away from home for half a day, 

 returned with no of them concealed 

 within the skirts. 



Whenever touched, or especially when 

 finding themselves caught within one's 

 clothes, they exuded from their mouth a 

 dark fluid, an irritant to the skin and 

 soiling the garments in a most disgusting 

 manner. Imagine the feeling (we speak 

 from experience) with a dozen or two 

 such creatures over an inch long, with 

 sawlike legs and rough bodies, making a 

 race-course of your back ! 



One warm, breathless night they were 

 found crawling thick into our windows, 

 which were left open after sundown, for 

 usually during the cool nights they never 

 moved. "They shall run to and fro in 

 the city ; they shall run upon the wall ; 

 they shall climb up upon the houses ; they 

 shall enter in at the windows like a thief" 

 (Joel 2:9). 



A FELXAH PESSIMIST 



One evening of the first days of June, 

 while fighting the locusts on Scopus, the 

 mountain adjoining Olivet to the north, 

 and the very ground on which Titus' 

 Roman army pitched camp in 70 A. D., 

 when Jerusalem was entirely destroyed 

 (Mark 13 : 2), an aged fellah walked up, 

 and notwithstanding the wholesale cap- 

 ture befalling the locusts, broke out with : 

 "All this is no use ; go home and rest ; 

 you can do nothing. They are Allah's 

 army, and once they fly they will destroy 

 everything. So it was 'sent el jarad' 



