Every seeming blade of grass was a living locust.

TCD MS 10515 folio 85 recto

TCD MS 10515 folio 85 recto

[May 10th 1916]

over the sand or clinging to the blades of grass and sparse desert scrub. Some days they were more scattered; belts of desert a mile or two in width would be free of locusts but in other places they would be assembled into dense multitudes as numerous as the pebbles in the sea shore. One day we were passing through an area where the locusts were fewer than usual when I saw in the distance what I took to be an expanse of beautiful green grass tinged with a yellow hue and I thought that there, at last we would be rid of a plague of flies which were then annoying us. But when we arrived at the expected meadow I found to my disgust not a trace of pasture; nothing but the base brown sand where every seeming blade of grass was a living locust. Such are their millions that they cover thousands or more prob-