London. Published Dec.r 1.st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.
The necessity of keeping my narrative clear and intelligible as I proceeded, has made me anticipate the principal particularities relating to this insect. His operations are too materially interwoven with the history of this country, to be left apart as an episode. The reader will find the description[84] of its manners in that part of my history which treats of the Shepherds, and in several places throughout the narrative he will meet with accounts of the consequences of its wonderful influence. Providence, from the beginning it would seem, had fixed its habitation to one species of soil, being a black fat earth, extraordinary fruitful; and small and inconsiderable as it was, it seems from the first to have given a law to the settlement of the country. It prohibited absolutely those inhabitants of the fat earth, called Mazaga, domiciled in caves and mountains, from enjoying the help or labour of any beasts of carriage. It deprived them of their flesh and milk for food, and gave rise to another nation, whose manners were just the reverse of the first. These were the Shepherds, leading a wandering life, and preserving these immense herds of cattle by conducting them into the sands beyond the limits of the black earth, and bringing them back again when the danger from this insect was over.
We cannot read the history of the plagues which God brought upon Pharaoh by the hands of Moses, without stopping a moment to consider a singularity, a very principal one, which attended this plague of the fly. It was not till this time, and by means of this insect, that God said, he would separate his people from the Egyptians. And it would seem, that then a law was given to them, that fixed the limits of their habitation. It is well known, as I have repeatedly said, that the land of Goshen, or Geshen, the possession of the Israelites, was a land of pasture, which was not tilled or sown, because it was not overflowed by the Nile. But the land overflowed by the Nile was the black earth of the valley of Egypt, and it was here that God confined the flies; for he says, it shall be a sign of this separation of the people, which he had then made, that not one fly should be seen in the sand or pasture ground, the land of Goshen, and this kind of soil has ever since been the refuge of all cattle emigrating from the black earth to the lower part of Atbara. Isaiah, indeed, says, that the fly shall be in all the desert places, and consequently the sands; yet this was a particular dispensation of providence, to answer a special end, the desolation of Egypt, and was not a repeal of the general law, but a confirmation of it; it was an exception, for a particular purpose, and a limited time.
I have already said so much of this insect, that it would be tiring my reader’s patience to repeat any thing concerning him. I shall therefore content myself, by giving a very accurate design of him, only observing, that, for distinctness sake, I have magnified him something above twice the natural size. He has no sting, though he seems to me to be rather of the bee kind; but his motion is more rapid and sudden than that of the bee, and resembles that of the gad-fly in England. There is something particular in the sound, or buzzing of this insect. It is a jarring noise, together with a humming; which induces me to believe it proceeds, at least in part, from a vibration made with the three hairs at his snout.
The Chaldee version is content with calling this animal simply Zebub, which signifies the fly in general, as we express it in English. The Arabs call it Zimb in their translation, which has the same general signification. The Ethiopic translation calls it Tsaltsalya, which is the true name of this particular fly in Geez, and was the same in Hebrew.
The Greeks have called this species of fly Cynomya, which signifies the dog-fly, in imitation of which, those, I suppose, of the church of Alexandria, that, after the coming of Frumentius, were correcting the Greek copy, and making it conformable to the Septuagint, have called this fly Tsaltsalya Kelb, to answer the word Cynomya, which is dog-fly. But this at first sight is a corruption, apparently the language of strangers, and is not Ethiopic. It is the same as if we were to couple the two nominative substantives Canis and Musca, to translate Cynomya. Canis is indeed a dog, and Musca is a fly, but these two words together, as I have now wrote them, could never be brought to signify dog-fly. It is the same in the Ethiopic, where Tsaltsalya alone signifies dog-fly, without the addition of any other word whatever. What is the derivation of this is doubtful, because there are several words, both in the Ethiopic and Hebrew, that are exceedingly apposite and probable. Salal, in the Hebrew, signifies to buzz, or to hum, and, as it were, alludes to the noise with which this animal terrifies the cattle: and Tsaltsalya seems to come from this, by only doubling the radicals. t’Tsalalou, in Amharic, signifies to pierce with violence; from this is derived Tsalatie, the name of a javelin with a round point, made to enter the rings of a coat of mail, which, by its structure, is impervious to the round cutting points of the ordinary lance or javelin. In the book of Job[85] this seems to mean a trident, or fishing-spear, and is vaguely enough translated Habergeon in the English copy. I do not know that this insect, however remarkable for its activity and numbers, has ever before been described or delineated.
EL ADDA.
There is no genus of quadrupeds that I have known in the east so very numerous as that of the lizard, or of which there are so many varieties. The eastern, or desert parts of Syria, bordering upon Arabia Deserta, which still have moisture sufficient, abound with them beyond a possibility of counting them. I am positive that I can say, without exaggeration, that the number I saw one day in the great court of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec amounted to many thousands; the ground, the walls and stones of the ruined buildings, were covered with them, and the various colours of which they consisted made a very extraordinary appearance, glittering under the sun, in which they lay sleeping, or basking. It was in vain, in a place so full of wonders as Baalbec, to think of spending time in designing lizards. I contented myself with collecting and preserving those I could catch entire, many of which have perished by the accidents of the journey, though some of very great beauty have escaped, and are in my collection in great preservation.
As I went eastward towards the desert, the number of this animal decreased, I suppose, from a scarcity of water; for example, at Palmyra, tho’ there were ruins of ancient buildings, and a great solitude, as at Baalbec, the lizards were few, all of the colour of the ground, without beauty or variety, and seemingly degenerated in point of size.