466 NATURAL HISTORY OF AFRICA. 
ture of their numbers and ravages in Southern 
Africa. He says, that, in the part of the country 
where he then was, for an area of nearly 2000 
square miles, the whole surface of the ground 
might literally be said to be covered with them. 
The water of a very wide river was scarcely visible, 
on account of the dead insects that floated on the 
surface, drowned in the attempt to come at the 
reeds that grew in it. They had devoured every 
blade of grass, and every green herb, except the 
reeds. The year 1797 was the third year of their 
continuance in Sneuwberg ; and their increase, ac- 
cording to Mr Barrow's account, had far exceeded 
that of a geometrical progression, whose ratio is a 
million. For ten years preceding the present vi- 
sit, this district was entirely free from them. Their 
former exit was somewhat singular. All the full 
grown insects were driven into the sea by a tem- 
pestuous north-west wind, and were afterwards cast 
upon the beach, where, it is said, they formed a 
bank three or four feet high, that extended a dis- 
stance of nearly fifty English miles ; and it is as- 
serted, that when the mass became putrid, and the 
wind was at south-east, the stench was sensibly felt 
in several parts of Sneuwberg, distant fully a hun- 
dred and fifty miles. 
The locust is an article of food in some districts 
in Africa. They are dressed in different ways ; 
some pound and boil them with milk; others only 
