Thalaba the Destroyer Part 35

[62] "She had laid aside the rings which used to grace her ankles, lest the sound of them should expose her to calamity."

_Asiatic Researches._

Most of the Indian women have on each arm, and also above the ankle, ten or twelve rings of gold, silver, ivory, or coral. They spring on the leg, and when they walk make a noise with which they are much pleased.

Their hands and toes are generally adorned with large rings.

_Sonnerat._

"In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of _their tinkling ornaments about their feet_, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon."

"The chains, and the bracelets and the m.u.f.flers, The bonnets, and _the ornaments of the legs_, &c."

_Isaiah._ III. 18.

[63] His fingers, in beauty and slenderness appearing as the _Yed Bieza_,[h] or the rays of the sun, being tinged with Hinna, seemed branches of transparent red coral.

_Bahar Da.n.u.sh._

[h] The miraculously shining hand of Moses.

She dispenses gifts with small delicate fingers, sweetly glowing at their tips, like the white and crimson worm of Dabia, or dentifrices made of Esel wood.

_Moallakat. Poem of Amriolkais._

The Hinna, says the translator of the Bahar-Da.n.u.sh, is esteemed not merely ornamental, but medicinal: and I have myself often experienced in India a most refreshing coolness thro' the whole habit, from an embrocation, or rather plaster of Hinna, applied to the soles of my feet, by prescription of a native physician. The effect lasted for some days.

This unnatural fashion is extended to animals.

Departing from the town of Anna we met about five hundred paces from the gate a young man of good family followed by two servants, and mounted in the fashion of the country, upon an a.s.s, whose rump was painted red.

_Tavernier._

In Persia, "they dye the tails of those horses which are of a light colour with red or orange."

_Hanway._

Ali the Moor, to whose capricious cruelty Mungo Park was so long exposed, "always rode upon a milk white horse, with its tail dyed red."

_Alfenado_, a word derived from alfena the Portugueze or Moorish name of this plant, is still used in Portugal as a phrase of contempt for a fop.

[64] The blackened eye-lids and the reddened fingers were Eastern customs, in use among the Greeks. They are still among the tricks of the Grecian toilette, the females of the rest of Europe have never added them to their list of ornaments.

[65] The Mimosa Selam produces splendid flowers of a beautiful red colour with which the Arabians crown their heads on their days of festival.

_Niebuhr._

[66] The large locusts, which are near three inches long, are not the most destructive; as they fly, they yield to the current of the wind which hurries them into the sea, or into sandy deserts where they perish with hunger or fatigue. The young locusts, that cannot fly, are the most ruinous; they are about fifteen lines in length; and the thickness of a goose quill. They creep over the country in such mult.i.tudes that they leave not a blade of gra.s.s behind; and the noise of their feeding announces their approach at some distance. The devastations of locusts increase the price of provisions, and often occasion famines; but the Moors find a kind of compensation in making food of these insects; prodigious quant.i.ties are brought to market salted and dried like red herrings. They have an oily and rancid taste, which habit only can render agreeable; they are eat here, however, with pleasure.

_Chenier._

In 1778 the empire of Morocco was ravaged by these insects. In the summer of that year, such clouds of locusts came from the south that they darkened the air, and devoured a part of the harvest. Their offspring, which they left on the ground, committed still much greater mischief. Locusts appeared and bred anew in the following year, so that in the spring the country was wholly covered, and they crawled one over the other in search of their subsistence.

It has been remarked, in speaking of the climate of Morocco, that the young locusts are those which are the most mischievous; and that it seems almost impossible to rid the land of these insects and their ravages, when the country once becomes thus afflicted. In order to preserve the houses and gardens in the neighbourhood of cities, they dig a ditch two feet in depth and as much in width. This they pallisade with reeds close to each other, and inclined inward toward the ditch; so that the insects unable to climb up the slippery reed, fall back into the ditch, where they devour one another.

This was the means by which the gardens and vineyards of Rabat, and the city itself were delivered from this scourge, in 1779. The intrenchment, which was, at least, a league in extent, formed a semicircle from the sea to river, which separates Rabat from Sallee. The quant.i.ty of young locusts here a.s.sembled was so prodigious that, on the third day, the ditch could not be approached because of the stench. The whole country was eaten up, the very bark of the fig, pomegranate, and orange tree, bitter, hard, and corrosive as it was could not escape the voracity of these insects.

The lands, ravaged throughout all the western provinces, produced no harvest, and the Moors being obliged to live on their stores, which the exportation of corn (permitted till 1774) had drained, began to feel a dearth. Their cattle, for which they make no provision, and which in these climates, have no other subsistance than that of daily grazing, died with hunger; nor could any be preserved but those which were in the neighbourhood of mountains, or in marshy grounds, where the regrowth of pasturage is more rapid.

In 1780, the distress was still farther increased. The dry winter had checked the products of the earth, and given birth to a new generation of locusts, who devoured whatever had escaped from the inclemency of the season. The husbandman did not reap even what he had sowed, and found himself dest.i.tute of food, cattle, or seed corn. In this time of extreme wretchedness the poor felt all the horrors of famine. They were seen wandering over the country to devour roots, and, perhaps, abridged their days by digging into the entrails of the earth in search of the crude means by which they might be preserved.

Vast numbers perished of indigestible food and want. I have beheld country people in the roads, and in the streets, who had died of hunger, and who were thrown across a.s.ses to be taken and buried. Fathers sold their children. The husband, with the consent of his wife, would take her into another province, there to bestow her in marriage as if she were his sister, and afterwards come and reclaim her when his wants were no longer so great. I have seen women and children run after camels, and rake in their dung to seek for some indigested grain of barley, which, if they found, they devoured with avidity.

_Chenier._

[67] The Abmelec or eater of Locusts, or gra.s.shoppers, is a bird which better deserves to be described, perhaps, than most others of which travellers have given us an account, because the facts relating to it are not only strange, in themselves, but so well and distinctly attested, that however surprising they may seem, we cannot but afford them our belief. The food of this creature is the locust, or the gra.s.shopper: it is of the size of an ordinary hen, its feathers black, its wings large, and its flesh of a greyish colour; they fly generally in great flocks, as the starlings are wont to do with us: but the thing which renders these birds wonderful is, that they are so fond of the water of a certain fountain in Cora.s.son, or Bactria, that where-ever that water is carried, they follow; on which account it is carefully preserved; for where ever the locusts fall, the Armenian priests, who are provided with this water, bring a quanity of it, and place in jars, or pour it into little channels in the fields, the next day whole troops of these birds arrive and quickly deliver the people from the locusts.

_Universal History._

Sir John Chardin has given us, the following pa.s.sage from an antient traveller, in relation to this bird. In Cyprus about the time that the corn was ripe for the sickle, the earth produced such a quant.i.ty of cavalettes, or locusts, that they obscured sometimes the splendour of the sun. Wherever these came, they burnt and eat up all; for this there was no remedy, since, as fast as they were destroyed, the earth produced more: G.o.d, however, raised them up a means for their deliverance, which happened thus. In Persia, near the city of Cuerch there is a fountain of water, which has a wonderful property of destroying these insects; for a pitcher full of this being carried in the open air, without pa.s.sing through house or vault, and being set on an high place, certain birds which follow it, and fly and cry after the men who carry it from the fountain, come to the place where it is fixed. These birds are red and black, and fly in great flocks together, like starlings; the Turks and Persians call them Musulmans. These birds no sooner came to Cyprus, but they destroyed the locusts with which the Island was infested; but if the water be spilt or lost these creatures immediately disappear; which accident fell out when the Turks took this Island; for one of them going up into the steeple of Famagusta, and finding there a pitcher of this water, he, fancying that it contained gold or silver, or some precious thing, broke it, and spilt what was therein; since which the Cypriots have been as much tormented as ever by the locusts.

On the confines of the Medes and of Armenia, at certain times a great quant.i.ty of Birds are seen who resemble our blackbirds, and they have a property sufficiently curious to make me mention it. When the corn in these parts begins to grow, it is astonishing to see the number of Locusts with which all the fields are covered. The Armenians have no other method of delivering themselves from these insects, than by going in procession round the fields and sprinkling them with a particular water which they take care to preserve in their houses. For this water comes from a great distance, they fetch it from a Well belonging to one of their Convents near the frontiers, and they say that the bodies of many Christian martyrs were formerly thrown into this well. These processions and the sprinkling continue three or four days, after which the Birds that I have mentioned come in great flights, and whether it be that they eat the locusts, or drive them away, in two or three days the country is cleared of them.

_Tavernier._

At Mosul and at Haleb, says Niebuhr, I heard much of the Locust Bird, without seeing it. They there call it _Samarmar_, or as others p.r.o.nounce it, _Samarmog_. It is said to be black, larger than a sparrow, and no ways pleasant to the palate. I am a.s.sured that it every day destroys an incredible number of Locusts; they pretend nevertheless that the Locusts sometimes defend themselves, and devour the Bird with its feathers, when they have overpowered it by numbers. When the children in the frontier towns of Arabia catch a live Locust, they place it before them and cry _Samarmog_! And because it stoops down terrified at the noise, or at the motion of the child, or clings more closely to its place, the children believe that it fears the name of its enemy, that it hides itself, and attempts to throw stones. The _Samarmog_ is not a native of Mosul or Haleb, but they go to seek it in Khorasan with much ceremony. When the Locusts multiply very greatly, the government sends persons worthy of trust to a spring near the village of _Samarun_, situated in a plain between four mountains, by _Mesched_, or _Musa er ridda_, in that province of Persia. The deputies with the ceremonies prescribed fill a chest with this water, and pitch the chest so that the water may neither evaporate nor be spilt before their return. From the spring to the Town whence they were sent, the chest must always be between heaven and earth: they must neither place it on the ground, nor under any roof, lest it should lose all its virtue. Mosul being surrounded with a wall, the water must not pa.s.s under the gate way, but it is received over the wall, and the chest placed upon the Mosque _Nebbi Gurgis_, a building which was formerly a church, and which in preference to all the other buildings has had from time immemorial the honour to possess this chest upon its roof. When this precious water has been brought from Khorasan with the requisite precautions, the common Mohammedans, Christians and Jews of Mosul believe that the _Samarmog_ follows the water, and remains in the country as long as there is a single drop left in the chest of _Nebbi-Gurgis_. Seeing one day a large stork's nest upon this vessel, I told a Christian of some eminence in the town, how much I admired the quick smell of the _Samarmog_, who perceived the smell of the water thro' such a quant.i.ty of ordure, he did not answer me, but was very much scandalized that the government should have permitted the stork to make her nest upon so rare a treasure, and still more angry, that for more than nine years, the government had not sent to procure fresh water.

_Niebuhr. Desc. de l'Arabie._

Dr. Russell describes this bird as about the size of a starling, the body of a flesh colour, the rest of its plumage black, the bill and legs black also.

[68] The Locusts are remarkable for the hieroglyphic that they bear upon the forehead, their colour is green throughout the whole body, excepting a little yellow rim that surrounds their head, which is lost at their eyes. This insect has two upper wings pretty solid: they are green like the rest of the body, except that there is in each a little white spot.

The Locust keeps them extended like great sails of a ship going before the wind, it has besides two other wings underneath the former, and which resemble a light transparent stuff pretty much like a cobweb, and which it makes use of in the manner of smack sails that are along a vessel; but when the Locust reposes herself she does like a vessel that lies at anchor, for she keeps the second sails furled under the first.

_Norden._

The Mohammedans believe some mysterious meaning is contained in the lines upon the Locust's forehead.

I compared the description in the Poem with a Locust, which was caught in Leicestershire. It is remarkable that a single insect should have found his way so far inland.

[69] An Arabian expression from the Moallakat. "She turns her right side, as if she were in fear of some large-headed Screamer of the night."

_Poem of Antara._