On the 16th of May, 1800, Buchanan met with in Mysore a flight of Locusts which extended in length about three miles. He compares the noise they made to the sound of a cataract.[352] This swarm was very destructive to the young crops of jola.[353]
In 1811, at Smyrna, at right angles to a flight of Locusts, a man rode forty miles before he got rid of the moving column. This immense flight continued for three days and nights, apparently without intermission. It was computed that the lowest number of Locusts in this swarm must have exceeded 168,608,563,200,200! Captain Beaufort determined that the Locusts of this flight, which he himself saw, if framed into a heap, would have exceeded in magnitude more than a thousand and thirty times the largest pyramid of Egypt; or if put on the ground close together, in a band of a mile and an eighth in width, would have encircled the globe! This immense swarm caused such a famine in the district of Marwar, that the natives fled for subsistence in a living torrent into Guzerat and Bombay; and out of every hundred of these Marwarees, Captain Carnac estimates, ninety-nine died that year! Near the town of Baroda, these poor people perished at the rate of five hundred a day; and at Ahmedabad, a large city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, one hundred thousand died from this awful visitation![354]
In 1816, Captain Riley met with a flight of Locusts in the north of Africa, which extended in length about eight miles, and in breadth three. He tells us, also, he was informed that several years before he came to Mogadore, nearly all the Locusts in the empire, which at that time were very numerous, and had laid waste the country, were carried off in one night, and drowned in the Atlantic Ocean: that their dead carcasses a few days afterward were driven by winds and currents on shore, all along the western coast, extending from near Cape Spartel to beyond Mogadore, forming in many places immense piles on the beach: that the stench arising from their remains was intolerable, and was supposed to have produced the plague which broke out about that time in various parts of the Moorish dominions.[355] Before this plague in 1799, Mr. Jackson tells us, from Mogadore to Tangier the face of the earth was covered by them, and relates the following singular incident which occurred at El Araiche: The whole region from the confines of the Sahara was ravaged by the Locusts; but on the other side of the river El Kos not one of them was to be seen, though there was nothing to prevent their flying over it. Till then they had proceeded northward; but upon arriving at its banks they turned to the east, so that all the country north of El Araiche was full of pulse, fruits and grain, exhibiting a most striking contrast to the desolation of the adjoining district. At length they were all carried by a violent hurricane into the Western Ocean; the shore, as in former instances, was covered by their carcasses, and a pestilence (confirming the statement, and verifying the supposition of Captain Riley) was caused by the horrid stench which they emitted: but when this evil ceased, their devastations were followed by a most abundant crop.[356]