read, and reported its contents on my arrival in England
from Mogodor, about the year 1807, to my Lord Moira (now the
Marquis of Hastings), to Sir Joseph Banks, and to Sir Charles
Morgan, was a liberated negro of Seed el Abes Buhellel, a Fas
merchant, whose father had an establishment at Timbuctoo. When
Buhellel liberated this negro, he had such confidence in him, that
he advanced to him, on his own personal credit, goods to a
considerable amount, with which he crossed Sahara, and took them to
Timbuctoo for a market. It were to be desired, for the sake of
_humanity_, that our West-India planters would take a lesson on
this subject from the Moors, whose conduct, in this particular, is
worthy of imitation.

221

THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.

_Their incredible Destruction.--Used as Food.--Remarkable Instance
of their destroying every Green Herb on one Side of a River, and
not on the other._

In the autumn of 1792, (Jeraad) locusts began to appear in West
Barbary. The corn was in ear, and therefore safe, as this devouring
insect attacks no hard substance. In (the _liahli_,) the period of
heavy rains comprised between the forty longest nights, _old
style_, they disappeared; so that one or two only were seen
occasionally: but so soon as the _liahli_ had passed, the small
young green locust began to appear, no bigger than a fly. As
vegetation increased, these insects increased in size and quantity.
But the country did not yet seem to suffer from them. About the end
of March, they increased rapidly. I was at (_Larsa Sultan_) the
emperor's garden, which belongs to the Europeans, and which was
given to the merchants of Mogodor by the emperor Seedi Muhamed ben
Abdallah, in the kabyl of Idaugourd, in the province of Haha, and
the garden flourished with every green herb, and the fruit-trees
were all coming forward in the productive beauty of spring. I went
there the following day, and not a green leaf was to be seen: an
222 army of locusts had attacked it during the night, and had devoured
every shrub, every vegetable, and every green leaf; so that the
garden had been converted into an unproductive wilderness. And,
notwithstanding the incredible devastation that was thus produced,
not one locust was to be seen. The gardener reported, that