FIGHTING THE LOCUSTS While I was traveling in the south, another menace to our people's welfare had appeared: the locusts.

From the Soudan they came in tremendous hosts--black clouds of them that obscured the sun.

It seemed as if Nature had joined in the conspiracy against us.

These locusts were of the species known as the pilgrim, or wandering, locust; for forty years they had not come to Palestine, but now their visitation was like that of which the prophet Joel speaks in the Old Testament.

They came full-grown, ripe for breeding; the ground was covered with the females digging in the soil and depositing their egg-packets, and we knew that when they hatched we should be overwhelmed, for there was not a foot of ground in which these eggs were not to be found.
The menace was so great that even the military authorities were obliged to take notice of it.