Locusts are always to be found in Algeria, in the provinces of Oran, Bona, Algiers, and Bougia, but they never commit those terrible ravages which change cultivated countries into deserts. There are in Algeria years of locusts as there are with us years of cockroaches, of blight, of caterpillars, &c. These plagues are fortunately rare. The most terrible took place in 1845 and in 1866. In the former year a formidable invasion of locusts took place. It lasted five months, from March to July, each day bringing new bands of these devastating insects; and M. Henry Berthoud, then in Algeria, saw a column of them, whose passage began before daylight, and had scarcely ended at four o'clock in the afternoon. Dr. Guyon, doctor to the army, and correspondent of the Institute, addressed to this learned body an account of a few peculiarities of this invasion, of which he was a witness. He speaks of a band which passed on the 16th of March over the plain of Sebdon, going in the direction of the desert of Angard. Their passage lasted three hours. The locusts, having found nothing to devour in the desert, came back again, and next day made a descent upon the plain of Sebdon, which is 30 kilomètres long, by 12 to 15 kilomètres broad. In four hours all the crops were devoured, and all vegetation destroyed. "The locusts," says the Doctor, "left behind them an infectious odour of putrid herbs, produced by their excretions."
At Algiers, in the Faubourg Bab-Azoum, they penetrated in masses into the barley stores, and there was the greatest difficulty in driving them away, great barricades being raised before the storerooms to stop the invasion. In 1845 they penetrated into the pits in which the natives preserve their wheat. According to the report of the Commandant de la Place of Philippeville, M. Levaillant, a column of locusts alighted in the country round about that town on the 18th of March, 1845, which extended from 30 to 40 centimètres, and the locusts were found heaped upon the ground to the height of three décimètres.
In the environs of Algiers alone were destroyed, in 1845, 369 quintals of locusts. It is computed that 400 locusts go to a kilogramme. This gives, then, a total of 14,760,000 insects destroyed. As in this number half were probably females, and as each female lays on an average seventy eggs, the result we arrive at is, that this stopped the production of 516,600,000 larvæ on the territory of Algiers alone. The invasion of locusts which took place in 1866 was as disastrous as that of 1845. It was in the month of April, 1866, that the vanguard of these destructive insects appeared. Debouching through the mountain gorges and through the valleys, into the fertile plains near the coast, they alighted first on the plain of Mitidja and on the Sahel of Algiers. Their mass, at certain points, intercepted the light of the sun, and resembled those whirlwinds of snow which, during the storms of winter, hide the nearest objects from our view. Very soon the cabbages, the oats, the barley, the late wheat, and the market-gardeners' plants, were partly destroyed. In some places the locusts penetrated into the interiors of the houses. By order of the government of Algiers the troops joined the colonists in combating the plague; and the Arabs, when they found that their interests were suffering, rose to lend their aid against the common enemy. Immense quantities of locusts were destroyed in a few days; but what could human efforts do against these winged multitudes, who escape into space, and only abandon one field to alight in the next?
It was impossible to prevent the fecundation of these insects. The eggs quickly producing innumerable larvæ, the first swarms were very soon not only replaced, but multiplied a hundredfold by a new generation. The young locusts are particularly formidable on account of their voracity. These hungry masses threw themselves upon everything which was left by those which went before them. They choked up the springs, the canals, and the brooks; and it was not without a great deal of trouble that the waters were cleared of these causes of infection. Almost at the same time the provinces of Oran and of Constantine were invaded. At Tlemcen, where within the memory of man locusts had never appeared, the ground was covered with them. At Sidi-bel-Abbes, at Sidi-Brahim, at Mostaganem, they attacked the tobacco, the vines, the fig-tree, and even the olive-trees, in spite of the bitterness of their foliage. At Relizane and at L'Habra they attacked the cotton-fields. The road, 80 kilomètres long, which connects Mostaganem with Mascara, was covered to the whole of its extent.
In the province of Constantine the locust appeared almost simultaneously, from the Sahara to the sea, and from Bougia to La Calle. At Batna, at Setif, at Constantine, at Guelma, at Bona, at Philippeville, at Djidjelly, the inhabitants struggled with energy against this invasion, but neither fire nor any obstacles opposed to the advance of this winged army were able to stop their ravages. The French Government, to alleviate as much as possible the ruin which was thus brought upon the colony, opened a public subscription at the end of the year 1866.
The negroes of Soudan endeavour to frighten the locusts in their flight by savage yells. In Hungary they employed for the same object the noise of cannon. In the middle ages, for the want of cannon, they exorcised the locusts. A traveller of the sixteenth century, the monk Alvarez, relates that he also employed exorcisms against an immense host of these destructive insects which he met with in Ethiopia. When he perceived them, he made the Portuguese and the natives form in procession, and ordered them to chant psalms. "Thus chanting," says he, "we went into a country where the corn was, which having reached, I made them catch a good many of these locusts, to whom I delivered an adjuration, which I carried with me in writing, by me composed the preceding night, summoning, admonishing, and excommunicating them. Then I charged them in three hours' time to depart to the sea, or else to go to the land of the Moors, leaving the land of the Christians; on their refusal of which, I adjured and convoked all the birds of the air, animals, and tempests, to dissipate, destroy, and devour them; and for this admonition I had a certain quantity of these locusts seized, and pronouncing these words in their presence, that they might not be ignorant of them, I let them go, so that they might tell the rest." If one reflects that on their arrival in the land of the Moors, these same locusts were perhaps received by prayers which had for their object to send them back to the land of the Christians, they must have been very much embarrassed by such contradictory adjurations.
The Arabs have also an infallible means of ridding themselves of the locusts. Here is what General Daumas tells us on the subject According to Ben-Omar, the Prophet read one day, on the wings of a locust, written in Hebrew characters: "We are the troops of the Most High God; we each one lay ninety-nine eggs. If we were to lay a hundred we should devastate the whole world." Upon which Mahomet, greatly alarmed, made an ardent prayer, in which he begged God to destroy these enemies of Mussulmans. In answer to this invocation, the angel Gabriel told Mahomet that a part of his prayer should be granted. Since that epoch, indeed, words of invocation to the Prophet, written on a piece of paper, and enclosed in a reed, which is planted in the middle of a wheat-field or orchard, have the power of turning away the locusts. [80] This receipt is infallible, at least so say the devout Mussulmans.
There exists another quite as efficacious. They take four locusts, and write on the wings of each a verse of the Koran (four verses of the Koran are appropriated to this purpose). They then let the locusts thus marked fly into the midst of the swarm, and the flying army immediately take another direction.
By what the Arabs say, the locusts possess a number of virtues. When you see them in a dream, they announce the future; if you dream that you are eating them, it is a good omen; if you dream that it rains golden locusts, God will restore to you that which you have lost; &c. When Omar-ben-el-Khottal was Caliph, the locusts seemed to have completely disappeared. There was great sadness in the country in consequence. The Caliph especially was very much afflicted at it. He sent carriers into Yemen, into Cham, and into Irak, to see if they could not find a few. One of the envoyés succeeded in his mission, and brought back a handful of locusts. "God is great!" cried Omar, who from that day had no more misgivings. In order to understand first the despair and then the satisfaction of the Caliph Omar, it is written, so say the Mussulmans, that the human race will disappear from the earth after the extinction of the locusts; that these insects were formed of the rest of the clay out of which man had been formed, and that they were destined to serve him as food.
And so locusts and fish are the only creatures which God allows the Mussulman to eat without being skinned. They must, however, have been killed by one of the faithful, for otherwise their flesh is impure! The Arabs eat, and are very fond of locusts. When he was asked his opinion on this article of food, the Caliph Omar-ben-el-Khottal said, "I only wish I had a basketful of them, wouldn't I scrunch them!"