Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/322

 The appearance of the dress as the light falls on the looking-glass is most strange and odd. I never saw a shawl of the sort before. It is too coarse to be worn by any but poor people: when working in the fields, in what an extraordinary manner the light must be caught on all those reflecting circles of glass!

June 19th.—We drove into the Fort to call on a fair friend at 5 No sooner had I entered the house, than we saw clouds of locusts in the air: immediately afterwards a heavy storm of rain fell, and the locusts were beaten down by it in great numbers to the ground. The native servants immediately ran out and caught them by handfuls, delighted to get them to make a curry; for which purpose they may, perhaps, be as delicate as prawns, which are most excellent. I took some to preserve with arsenical soap: they look like very large grass-*hoppers. I never saw a flight of locusts before; on our return home the air was full of them.

The food of St. John in the wilderness was locusts and wild honey: very luxurious fare, according to the natives, who say, either in a curry or fried in clarified butter, they are excellent. I believe they divest them of their wings, and dress them after the fashion of woodcocks.

Some assert that St. John did not live upon locusts, but upon the bean of a tree called by the Arabs Kharroùb, the locust-tree of Scripture —a point too difficult to be decided by a poor hājī in search of the picturesque.

20th.—At 5 I rode out with a friend, and met the hounds under the Mahratta Bund; no other persons were present, and we had not gone twenty yards before two jackals crossed the road just before the dogs: away they went, in the prettiest style imaginable. Mr. B galloped off across a ploughed field: the horse had scarcely gone ten yards when his legs sunk into a deep soft hole; the creature could not recover himself; over he went, falling on his back, with his rider under him; and there the horse lay kicking with all four legs in the air for a short time, ere the gentleman had the power to extri-*