Plunged from a mountain summit, or the roar
Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm,
Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks![384]
Another comparison may be introduced here, to give some idea of the infinite numbers of these insects. Dr. Clarke compares a cloud of them to a flight of snow when the flakes are carried obliquely by the wind. They covered his carriage and horses, and the Tartars assert that people are sometimes suffocated by them. The whole face of nature might have been described as covered with a living veil. They consisted of two species—Locusta tartarica and L. migratoria; the first is almost twice the size of the second, and, because it precedes it, is called by the Tartars the herald or messenger.[385]
In the Account of the admirable Voyage of Domingo Gonsales, the little Spaniard, to the World of the Moon, by Help of several Gansa’s, or large Geese, we find the following: “One accident more befel me worth mention, that during my stay, I say, I saw a kind of a reddish cloud coming toward me, and continually approaching nearer, which, at last, I perceived, was nothing but a huge swarm of Locusts. He that reads the discources of learned men concerning them
(as John Leo, of Africa, and others, who relate that they are seen for several days in the air before they fall on the earth), and adds thereto this experience of mine, will easily conclude that they can come from no other place than the globe of the moon.”[386]
To accompany this piece of satire, the following suits well:
A Chinese author, quoted by Rev. Thomas Smith, observes, that Locusts never appear in China but when great floods are followed by a very dry season; and that it is his opinion that they are hatched by the sun from the spawn of fish left by the waters on the ground![387]
So far the history of the Locust has been but a series of the greatest calamities which human nature has suffered—famine, pestilence, and death. No wonder that, in all ages and times, these insects have so deeply impressed the imagination, that almost all people have looked on them with superstitious horror. We have shown how that their devastations have entered into the history of nations. Their effigies, too, like those of other conquerors of the earth, have been perpetuated in coins.
We are the army of the great God, and we lay ninety-and-nine eggs; were the hundredth put forth, the world would be ours—such is the speech the Arabs put into the mouth of the Locust. And such is the feeling the Arabs entertain of this insect, that they give it a remarkable pedigree, and the following description of its person: It has the head of the horse, the horns of the stag, the eye of the elephant, the neck of the ox, the breast of the lion, the body of the scorpion, the hip of the camel, the legs of the stork, the wings of the eagle, and the tail of the dragon.[388]