44 
DERVISHES. 
sort.* They were three inches long from the head to the extremity of 
the wing, and their body and head of a bright yellow. The locust which 
destroys vegetation is of a larger kind, and of a deep red. As soon as 
the wind had subsided, the plain of Bushire was covered by a great 
number of its poorer inhabitants, men, women, and children, who came 
out to gather locusts, which they eat. They also dry and salt them, 
and afterwards sell them in the bazars as the food of the lowest pea¬ 
santry. When boiled, the yellow ones turn red, and eat like stale or 
decayed shrimps. The |- locusts and wild honey, which St. John ate in 
the Wilderness, are perhaps particularly mentioned to show that he 
fared as the poorest of men, and not as a wild man, as some might 
interpret. Indeed the general appearance of St. John, clothed with 
camels’ hair (rather skin), with a leathern girdle around his loins, and 
living a life of the greatest self-denial, was that of the older Jewish 
prophets, Zach. xiii. 4.; and such was the dress of Elijah, the hairy 
man, with a girdle about his loins, described in 2 Kings, i. 8. At the 
present moment, however, we see some resemblance of it in the Der¬ 
vishes and GousJieh nishins, (or sitters in the corner,) who are so fre¬ 
quently met with in Persia; a set of men who hold forth their doctrines ' 
in open places, sometimes almost naked, with their hair and beard 
floating wildly about their head, and a piece of camel or deer skin 
thrown over their shoulders. We were struck with the cry of a Dervish, 
who had taken post for a short time on the desert near to our camp, 
uttering his piercing exclamations of hak, and hou. These cries, which 
are peculiarly wild when heard at a distance, the Dervishes utter to 
announce their arrival near a town, at the same time sounding a blast 
of a ram or a cow’s horn, which they wear slung at their girdle. 
Not far from our encampment on the road to the town, and at about 
two feet from the surface of the ground, we found two oblong vases, 
rudely made of baked clay, which were filled with human bones. 
* On almost the same day (12th March), 1674, Chardin, in his journey from Lar to 
Bender Abassi, saw a flight of locusts, which he says darkened the air. They were very 
large and red. — ChardirCs Travels, vol. ix. p. 227. 8vo. ed. 
f The locust was a clean meat. Levit. xi. 22. 
