Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/173

 days after their destruction. On the other occasion, however, they were more successful. Myriads of the creatures appeared in the neighbourhood of Nanking from the Hu-kuang provinces. They are said to have crossed the brooks and rivers in their course during the night by making themselves into a moving bridge, each animal seizing the tail of the one in front of him with his teeth, and so swimming across; and on arrival at the other side they threw themselves upon the crops and devoured them. Another time they effected the passage of the Yellow River. Among the minor plagues of China, in times past, are recorded thick yellow fogs, described in terms that would do full justice to the November fogs in London; excess of snow in winter; cold, biting winds in the summer months; violent gales, sometimes so charged with dust as to render it impossible to distinguish a man two paces off; hailstones as large as a man's fist; groanings and rumblings underground, and under the waters of the Yellow River; and an occasional landslip. In the year 5 of Chêng Tê of the Ming dynasty we read of a rain of earth, which was no doubt a dust-storm of preternatural violence, and on various other occasions of the appearance on the ground of dew as sweet as sugar to the taste. Only two years ago we heard of "summer-snow" having fallen near Soochow, and the terror of the people in consequence. It is not often that we hear of pestilence, although in the reign of the last Ming Emperors one occurred of such severity that it is said there were not enough survivors to bury the dead, and that a few years earlier the roads were blocked up with corpses; all of which is no doubt greatly exaggerated. Still, it would L