ACRIDOPHAGI. 
159 
They have no other furniture than cradles and chests, joined 
together with the bark of trees. Their beds consist of wood shav- 
ings, almost as soft as feathers, and their children lie naked upon 
them in cradles. They can neither read nor write, nor do they culti- 
vate the land ; and they seem totally ignorant of times past. Their 
boats are also made of the bark of trees sewed together, and their 
religion is pagan. They have some little brazen idols, tolerably well 
cast, representing men and animals, made of wood and earth, all 
of which are dressed in silks, in the manner of Russian ladies. To 
these they sometimes offer a beast or fish in sacrifice, and are per- 
suaded that the saint or hero, represented by the image, always 
attends their sacrifices, and, when over, returns to his abode in the 
air. The Ostiacks are obliged to take an oath of fidelity, or rather 
imprecation, to the Russian government. 
Acridophagi. 
This word signifies Locust-eater, and was used to distinguish an 
ancient people of Ethiopia, who inhabited near the deserts and fed 
on locusts. Diodorus Siculus describes these people as being short of 
stature, meagre, and extremely black. “ They were so short-lived, 
that their lives never exceeded forty years, and they generally died a 
w^retched death. In their old age, winged insects of different forms 
bred in their bodies, beginning in the breast and belly, and soon 
spreading through the whole frame. The patient at first felt an 
itching, and the agreeable semsation produced by scratching occa- 
sioned these vermin, forcing their way out, to be accompanied by 
effusions of corrupt blood, with excruciating pains in the skin. The 
sufferer, with lamentable cries, was industrious himself to make pas- 
sages for them with his nails. At length he expired, covered with 
numlierless ulcers. In spring, when the warm west winds drive swarms 
of locusts among the Acridophagi, they set fire to wood and other 
combustibles, in a steep and large valley, when in their flight locusts 
passing over it, w'ere suffocated by the smoke. They are immediately 
cullected in heaps, and salted for use.” 
Pliny represents the Parthians as feeding on locusts. ^Elian says, 
they W'ere sold in Egypt for food, which is corroborated by the testi- 
mony of various Greek authors. flasselquist, who vsiited Syria and 
Egypt in the year 1752, with a view to improve natural history, 
infbrins us that he asked some Franks, and many others who had 
lived long in these countries, whether they had ever heard that the 
inhabitants of Arabia, Ethiopia &c. used locusts as food ? They 
answered in the affirmative. To the same questions, the Armenians, 
Copts, and Syrians, who lived in Arabia, and had travelled in Syria, 
and near the Red sea, gave a similar answer. A learned scheik at 
Cairo, who had lived six years in Mecca, mentioned, that a famine 
frequently rages at Mecca, w'lien there is a scarcity of corn in Egypt, 
which obliges the inhabitants to live upon coarser food than ordinary, 
and that when corn is scarce, the Arabians grind the locusts in hand- 
mills, pr stone mortars, and bake them into qakes, and use these 
in place of bread. 
