Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/373

 Fury ate them all most greedily, barking and jumping until she had finished them.

Going for our evening drive, such a smell of roasted locusts issued forth as we passed the stables! The flight consisted of red locusts, but amongst them were some of a bright yellow colour. Brown locusts are the most common; the red as well as the yellow are scarce; the red in dying become nearly quite brown.

It is recorded that Ibn-Abu-Awfi said, "I fought seven battles along with the prophet Mahommud, and we used to eat locusts with his highness."

The khānsāmān prepared many of the bodies with arsenical soap, and filled them with cotton. An enormous death's head moth flew in at the moment, and experienced the same fate. Moths, locusts, great beetles, and cockroaches are prepared like small birds.

They say red locusts predict war, the others famine. The latter prediction is likely to prove true; the little rain that fell made the crops spring up, since which time the sun has killed the greater part of the young plants. All grain is very dear, and the people are exclaiming, "We shall die, if the rain does not fall."

Famine, earthquakes, pestilence! What do these portend? Let us not sit in judgment man on man, or declare "The hand of God is on the earth, until one-third of the wicked are swept away from the face of it ."

All the three Residencies are agog about steam navigation once again. I think there is a fair chance of success, if the whole of the funds are voted in support of the Bombay scheme, by which communication might be established in fifty days; and if the overland dāk from Bombay was put on a more speedy footing, we might hear from England within two months. Nearly £15,000 has been already subscribed, and the work of collection still goes on: the newspapers are flattering the rich