The Cornhill Magazine Volume 64 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1891 Excerpt: ... THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS. One warm bright day I was strolling up the banks of a little oued, or stream, about a hundred miles from Algiers, and, looking on along my path, saw a great line of brush-fire and smoke across the narrow neck of the valley a few miles ahead. That line of smoke marked the spot where an effort was being made to check the Great Invasion (the locust inroad into North Africa this year deserves to be spelt with a capital letter, extending, as it does, from Egypt to Morocco). The dense hordes of Acridians which had crossed the frontiers of their territory, the Sahara, leaving their fastnesses for their annual summer 'outing' in the North, had now thrown forward their advanced-guard so far as this fruitful valley, and, if the effort to check them should be ttnsuccessful, the banks of the stream would be both the cradle and the grave of many of their race. Now, in their case, the word 'cradle' is synonymous with famine, ' and ' grave' spells ' pestilence.' This reflection, however, I did not make at that time, for my attention was suddenly drawn to a flock of little birds, not bigger than wrens, that was passing steadily over a long low hillock on my left, heavily clothed in dark furze, and round the corner of which, as round a headland, entry was gained into another large valley that ran up north towards the sea (an offshoot from the valley in which I myself was walking). These little birds were of light yellow and grey, and I had not readily distinguished them in that bright sandy landscape till I noticed them passing over the dark clump of furze into the side valley. Now, looking upward with quickened attention, I saw them passing also overhead (but the entire stream of them set steadily into the other valley), and in an instant the knowled...