263 
consider the inconsistencies of Bruce’s account, I shall beg to intro¬ 
duce his description of the Zimb. 
“Nothing was more opposite than the manners and life of the 
Cushite and of his carrier the shepherd. The mountains of the Cush¬ 
ite and the cities he built afterwards were situated upon a loamy black 
earth, so that, as soon as the tropical rains began to fall, a wonder¬ 
ful phenomenon deprived him of his cattle. Large swarms of flies 
appeared wherever that loamy earth was, wdiich made him absolutely 
dependent in this respect upon the shepherd; but these affected the 
shepherd also. This insect is called the Zimb * in modern or vulgar 
Arabic; it has not been described by any naturalist. It is in size 
very little larger than a bee, of a thicker proportion, and the wings, 
which are broader than those of a bee, are placed separate, like those 
of a fly. They are of pure gauze, without colour or spot upon them ; 
the head is large; the upper jaw or lip is sharp, and has at the end 
of it a strong pointed hair of about a quarter of an inch long; the 
lower jaw has two of these pointed hairs, and this pencil of hairs, 
when joined together, makes a resistance to the finger nearly equal 
to that of a strong hog’s bristle; its legs are serrated on the inside, 
and the w T hole covered with brown hair or down. As soon as this 
plague appears and its buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake their 
food and run wildly about the plain till they die, worn out with fa¬ 
tigue, fright and hunger. No remedy remains but to leave the black 
earth and to hasten down to the plains of Atbara, and there they re¬ 
main whilst the rains last, this cruel enemy never daring to pursue 
them farther. 
“What enables the shepherd to perform the long and toilsome 
journeys across Africa is the camel, emphatically called by the Arabs 
the ship of the desert. Though his size is immense, like his strength, 
and his body covered with a thick skin defended with strong hair, yet 
still is he not capable to sustain the violent punctures the fly makes 
with his pointed proboscis. He must lose no time in removing to the 
sands of Atbara, for when once attacked by this fly, his body, head 
and legs swell out into large bosses, which break and putrefy to the 
certain destruction of the creature. Even the elephant and rhino¬ 
ceros, who, by reason of their enormous bulk and the vast quantity 
of food and water they daily need, cannot shift to desert and dry 
places as the season may require, are obliged to roll themselves in 
mud or mire, which when dry coats them over like armour, and en¬ 
ables them to stand their ground against this winged assassin ; yet I 
have found some of these tubercles upon almost every elephant and 
rhinoceros that I have seen, and attribute them to this cause. All 
the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Melinda, down to Cape Gardefan, 
Saba, and the south coast of the Rea Sea, are obliged to put them¬ 
selves in motion and change their habitation to the next sand in the 
beginning of the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from 
being destroyed. 
“ Of all those' that have written upon these countries, the prophet 
Isaiah alolie has given an account of this animal and the manner of 
* “ See Appendix, It is the same name as Zebul in Hebrew.—E,” 
