ce of the colour it is impossible to describe in words;
and the best artist would have failed to reproduce it even were he ten
times a Turner.

At this moment, and just as the cloud was becoming elongated again,
Moncrieff came to our side. His usually bright face fell at once as soon
as he glanced at it.

'Locusts!' He almost gasped the word out.

'Locusts!' was re-echoed from every corner of the carriage; and
immediately all eyes were strained in the direction of our 'lofty golden
cloud.'

As we approached nearer to it, and it came nearer to us, even the light
from the setting sun was obscured, and in a short time we were in the
cloud, and apparently part of it. It had become almost too dark to see
anything inside our carriage, owing to that dense and awful fog of insect
life. We quickly closed the windows, for the loathsome insects were now
pattering against the glass, and many had already obtained admittance,
much to the horror of young Mrs. Moncrieff, though aunt took matters easy
enough, having seen such sights before.

The train now slowly came to a standstill. Something--no one appeared to
know what--had happened on ahead of us, and here we must wait till the
line was clear. Even Moncrieff's mother had awakened, and was looking out
with the rest of us.

'Dearie me! Dearie me!' she exclaimed. 'A shower o' golochs! The very
licht o' day darkened wi' the fu'some craiters. Ca' you this a land o'
milk and honey? Egyptian darkness and showers o' golochs!'

We descended and walked some little distance into the country, and the
sight presented to our astonished gaze I, for one, will not forget to my
dying day. The locusts were still around us, but were bearing away
southward, having already devastated the fields in this vicinity. But they
fell in hundreds and thousands around us; they struck against our hands,
our faces, and hats; they got into our sleeves, and even into our pockets;
and we could not take a step without squashing them under foot.

Only an hour before we had been passing through a country whose green
fertility was something to behold once and dream about for ever. Evidence
of wealth and contentment had been visible on all sides. Beautiful,
home-looking, comfortable _estancias_ and out-buildings, fat, sleek cattle
and horses, and flocks of beautiful sheep, with feathered fowls of every
description. But here, though there were not wanting good farmsteadings,
all was desolation and threatened famine