“That’s a wild heath ahead of us, which we shall have to pass,” observed Ned. “I never saw the like of it.”
“See, see,” exclaimed Pedro, pointing rather more to the right than we had been looking. “What is that?”
At first we could not guess what was happening. It appeared as if at a little distance off there was a heavy snow-storm falling, the whole air being full of large white flakes, so dense as almost to conceal the fierce rays of the sun.
“No, it can’t be snow—that’s certain,” said Ned. “But what it is, I can’t say.”
The seeming snow-drift swept on as we advanced towards the brown heath. Pedro ran on a little ahead, and stooping down, soon returned with a large insect in his hand, which I recognised as a locust. It was fully three inches in length, of a reddish brown colour, and with very long and powerful hind-legs, with which, when Pedro opened his hand, it sprung off to a great distance. The appearance we had seen was that of a flight of locusts, or rather a small division of their army, which was about to settle directly in our course.
We were soon among their outposts, where they lay pretty thick; but beyond, as far as we could see, the ground was completely covered with them. Pedro, who had often seen them before, declared that, like ants and bees, they have peculiar laws and regulations; and that those we first came upon were, like the sentinels of an army, placed to give warning of coming danger. If such is the case at times, they gave no notice of our approach, but merely skipped and jumped about, and knocked against our legs as we walked by.
“It’s a good job these beasts have no fancy for eating meat as well as vegetables,” observed Ned. “If they once began upon us, there wouldn’t be much of us left in the course of an hour.”
As, however, they neither sting nor bite, they did us no harm, though they skipped about us in millions as we advanced, while numbers were crushed every time we put our feet to the ground. We proceeded for upwards of an hour through this moving mass of life, till we stood literally in the centre of a sea of locusts. It was necessary to push on to get from among them before dark, as we had no fancy to attempt to rest among such unquiet companions. It took us more than another half-hour to get clear of them; and we calculated that they covered a space four to five miles broad at the place we found them. We then came upon the ground which they had occupied, and the most ruthless of invaders could not have destroyed a country more completely than they had done. Not a blade of grass remained; every tree and shrub was leafless, and their branches were stripped of their bark. We could not help looking with painful amazement on the scene of desolation which those small animals had caused. Not only would they, as Ned Gale said, have eaten us up had they been carnivorous, but they might have devoured Pizarro and the army with which he conquered Peru in the course of a night. For miles in advance they had left traces of their visit. We congratulated ourselves on having brought water with us, as we could find none in the neighbourhood. What became of this vast flight of locusts I could not tell. I only hope they flew into the sea, or died from repletion; for had they gone on consuming as much daily as we saw them destroy, they might lay a whole province desolate in the course of a few weeks.
We walked on till it was quite dark before we could find a sheltered spot in which to bivouac. At last we reached a deep hollow, which at one period of the world’s history had been probably part of a watercourse, but owing to some convulsion of nature, it was now perfectly dry. Trees grew on the upper edges, and the sides were covered with brushwood. It appeared, as far as we could judge in the uncertain light of the evening, to be a place well suited for our purpose; and we accordingly hunted about till we found a spot where we could light a fire and lie down to rest. This was not very easy, but at length we discovered a small open space covered with grass. Gale cut away the bushes round it, and piling up some in the centre, we lighted a fire. The flames, as they burned up, showed us the wild character of the place we were in. Dark rocks appeared here and there among the brushwood, and tall trees towered above our heads, effectually screening the light of our fire from any persons who might by chance have been in our neighbourhood.
We boiled our cocoa, and parched our heads of Indian corn, and then prepared to rest.