112 
JOURNEY FROM 
A heavy punishment, at the same time, was inflicted upon those 
who neglected this useful precaution, as though they had been 
guilty of an unpardonable crime against their sovereign and their 
country. In Lemnos, also, there was a measure estabhshed to 
regulate the quantity which each man should kill ; and every 
person was obhged to give in his account to the magistrate, and to 
produce his measure full of dead locusts*. 
It may easily be conceived, from these relations, what conster- 
nation and dismay is excited among the inhabitants of a cultivated 
country by the appearance of a large swarm of locusts. The 
mischief, however, occasioned at Mesurata by those which we have 
mentioned above, was not by any means so great, we are happy to 
say, as might have been reasonably expected : and the Arabs of the 
place were soon as busily employed in eating their formidable 
invaders, as they had at first been in preserving their crops from 
experiencing a similar fate. 
On the 2nd December, after repeated promises and disappoint- 
ments, our camels at length arrived ; and having made suitable 
presents to Shekh Belcazi and his son, we prepared to continue our 
journey. We had few difficulties to encounter in our dealings 
with the people of Mesurata ; and we must confess that we found 
in their Shekh, notwithstanding his occasional evasions, more open- 
ness and honesty than are usually met with in the inhabitants of 
Mahometan countries. 
* Nat. Hist. lib. xi. c. 29. 
