An account of the empire of Marocco, and the districts of Suse and Tafilelt; compiled from miscellaneous observations made during a long residence in, and various journies through, these countries. To which is added an account of shipwrecks on the western coast of Africa, and an interesting account of Timbuctoo, the great emporium of Central Africa

by James Grey Jackson

(Jeraada) a Locust, natural size.

London Published June 4. 1811. by G. & W. Nicholl Pall Mall.

Locusts are produced from some unknown physical cause, and proceed from the Desert, always coming from the south. When they visit a country, it behoves every individual to lay in a provision against a famine; for they are said to stay three, five, or seven years. During my residence in West and South Barbary, those countries suffered a visitation from them during seven years. They have a government among themselves, similar to that of the bees and ants; and when the (Sultan Jerraad) king of the locusts rises, the whole body follow him, not one solitary straggler being left behind to witness the devastation. When they have eaten all other vegetation, they attack the trees, consuming first the leaves, and then the bark, so that the country, in the midst of summer, from their general rapacity, bears the face of winter. In my travels, I have seen them so thick on the ground, as sometimes actually to have covered my horse’s hoofs, as he went along; it is very annoying to travel through a host of them, as they are continually flying in your face, and settling on your hands and clothes. At a distance, they appear, in the air, like an immense cloud, darkening the sun; and whilst employed in devouring the produce of the land, it has been observed that they uniformly proceed one way, as regularly as a disciplined army on its march; nor will it be possible to discover a single one going a different way from the rest. In travelling from Mogodor to Tangier, before the plague in 1799, the country was covered with them: a singular incident then occurred at El Araiche; the whole country from the confines of Sahara to that place was ravaged by them, but after crossing the river El Kos,[98] they were not to be seen, though there was nothing to prevent them from flying across it; moreover, they were all moving that way, that is to the north; but when they reached the banks of the river, they proceeded eastward, so that the gardens and fields north of El Araiche were full of vegetables, fruits, and grain. The Arabs of the province of El Garb[99] considered this remarkable circumstance as an evident interposition of Providence.

This curse of heaven can only be conceived by those who have seen the dismal effects of their devastation: the poor people by living on them, become meagre and indolent, for no labour will yield fruit, whilst the locusts continue increasing in numbers. In the rainy season they partially disappear, and at the opening of the spring the ground is covered with their young; those crops of corn which are first mature, and the grain which becomes hardened before the locust attains its full growth, are likely to escape, provided there be other crops less forward for them to feed upon.

In the year 1799, these destructive insects were carried away into the Western Ocean by a violent hurricane; and the shores were afterwards covered with their dead bodies, which in many places emitted a pestilential smell; that is, wherever the land was low, or where the salt water had not washed them:[100] to this event succeeded a most abundant crop of corn, the lands which had lain fallow for years, being now cultivated; but the produce of the cultivation was accompanied with a most infectious and deadly plague, a calamity of which the locusts have often been observed to be the fore-runners.[101] The Saharawans, or Arabs of the Desert, rejoice to see the clouds of locusts proceeding towards the north, anticipating therefrom a general mortality, which they call (el-khere) the good, or the benediction; for after depopulating the rich plains of Barbary, it affords to them an opportunity of emanating from their arid recesses in the Desert, to pitch their tents in the desolated plains, or along the banks of some river; as was done by one of the kabyles of Tuat, after the plague had depopulated Barbary in the summer and autumn of 1799, and the spring of 1800, when these wild Arabs poured into Draha from Sahara, and settled along the banks of the river of that devastated country.

Locusts are esteemed a great delicacy, and during the above periods dishes of them were generally served up at the principal repasts; there are various ways of dressing them; that usually adopted, was to boil them in water half an hour; then sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and fry them, adding a little vinegar; the head, wings, and legs are thrown away, the rest of the body is eaten, and resembles the taste of prawns. As the criterion of goodness in all eatables among the Moors is regulated by the stimulating qualities which they possess, so these locusts are preferred to pigeons, because supposed to be more invigorating.[102] A person may eat a platefull of them, containing two or three hundred, without any ill effects.

When the locust is young, it is green; as it grows, it assumes a yellow hue, and lastly becomes brown. I was informed by an Arab, who had seen the (Sultan Jeraad) king of the locusts, that it was larger and more beautifully coloured than the ordinary one; but I never myself could procure a sight of it.

The mode of catching locusts is thus: several persons go out in the evening, and where they find the bushes covered, they through Haicks, or garments, over them, beating them with sticks or canes; they then collect the insects together, and put them in a sack, which they will fill, by this means, in half an hour.

A drawing of this devouring insect will be found in [Plate 8th, page 103.]

The Venomous Spider (Tendaraman).—This beautiful reptile is somewhat similar to a hornet in size and colour, but of a rounder form; its legs are about an inch long, black, and very strong; it has two bright yellow lines, latitudinally crossing its back; it forms its web octagonally between bushes, the diameter being two or three yards; it places itself in the centre of its web, which is so fine, as to be almost invisible, and attaches to whatever may pass between those bushes. It is said to make always towards the head before it inflicts its deadly wound. In the cork forests, the sportsman, eager in his pursuit of game, frequently carries away on his garments the Tendaraman, whose bite is so poisonous, that the patient survives but a few hours.