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Chap. XXXI: Tartars

Dr. Clarke, to give some idea of the infinite numbers of these animals, compares them to a flight of snow when the flakes are carried obliquely by the wind. They covered his carriage and horses; and the Tartars assert, that people are sometimes suffocated by them. The whole face of nature might have been described as covered by a living veil. They consisted of two species, G. tartaricus, and migratorius, L.; the first is almost twice the size of the second, and, because it precedes it, is called by the Tartars, the herald or messenger.-Travels, i. 348. The account of another traveller, Mr. Barrow, of their ravages in the southern parts of Africa, in 1784, and 1797, is still more striking: an area of nearly two thousand square miles might be said literally to be covered by them. When driven into the sea by a N. w. wind, they formed upon the shore, for fifty miles, a bank three or four feet high; and when the wind was s. E. the stench was so powerful, as to be smelt at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles.-Travels, &c. 257.

From 1778 to 1780, the empire of Morocco was terribly devastated by them; every green thing was eaten up, not even the bitter bark of the orange and pomegranate escaping. A most dreadful famine ensued: the poor were seen to wander over the country, deriving a miserable subsistence from the roots of plants; and women and children followed the camels, from whose dung they picked the undigested grains of barley, which they devoured with avidity: in consequence of this, vast numbers perished, and the roads and streets exhibited the unburied carcases of the dead. On this sad occasion, fathers sold their children, and husbands their wives.- Southey's Thalaba, i. 171.