Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/150

 or the farmer is perhaps cheated out of all, or at best sells at an incalculable loss. A ship's cargo, or Yankee speculation to that city, is sometimes composed of iron coffins, or nests of coffins filled with shoes, so accommodating both the living and the dead.

Grasshoppers, so called, but in fact a species of locust about the length of my little finger, swarm in countless millions all over this and the contiguous states, where oats and other crops are sometimes cut unripe to prevent their being devoured by these almost worse than Egyptian locusts. They hop, jump, and fly from about six to ten feet from the ground, and devour every green thing above and below. A hat left in the field was devoured in a night. Their wings and trunks are beautifully colored. On their rising from the surface they frequently strike my nose. In all the plain round this city they leave scarcely a blade of grass. It now looks as rusty and dusty as a ploughed field, the grass being eaten down to the very roots. The intelligent Mr. Adams says, that when he was surveying the territory on the Michigan, and other Lakes, flies were seen falling in clouds, and lay dead and {138} stinking on the land nearly knee-deep. What fine manure! But how offensive to the Pharaohs of the country! By the papers to-day, I see that Miss Courtney, the daughter of an emigrant in Mr. Birkbeck's settlement, was killed in a few hours by the bite of a huge spider, such as I saw in Carolina, scattering thousands of eggs in my path. It seized the unfortunate lady on her forehead; no cure could be had of the Indian, or other doctors. Her head swelled to an enormous size, and after her death was livid all over. The herb called the Plantago is said to be a remedy, if applied in time. The west country mail and travellers are now repeatedly stopped and robbed by parties of men