In the year 1799, these destructive insects were carried away into the Western Ocean by a violent hurricane; and the shores were afterwards covered with their dead bodies, which in many places emitted a pestilential smell; that is, wherever the land was low, or where the salt water had not washed them:[100] to this event succeeded a most abundant crop of corn, the lands which had lain fallow for years, being now cultivated; but the produce of the cultivation was accompanied with a most infectious and deadly plague, a calamity of which the locusts have often been observed to be the fore-runners.[101] The Saharawans, or Arabs of the Desert, rejoice to see the clouds of locusts proceeding towards the north, anticipating therefrom a general mortality, which they call (el-khere) _the good_, or _the benediction_; for after depopulating the rich plains of Barbary, it affords to them an opportunity of emanating from their arid recesses in the Desert, to pitch their tents in the desolated plains, or along the banks of some river; as was done by one of the kabyles of Tuat, after the plague had depopulated Barbary in the summer and autumn of 1799, and the spring of 1800, when these wild Arabs poured into Draha from Sahara, and settled along the banks of the river of that devastated country. Locusts are esteemed a great delicacy, and during the above periods dishes of them were generally served up at the principal repasts; there are various ways of dressing them; that usually adopted, was to boil them in water half an hour; then sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and fry them, adding a little vinegar; the head, wings, and legs are thrown away, the rest of the body is eaten, and resembles the taste of prawns. As the criterion of goodness in all eatables among the Moors is regulated by the stimulating qualities which they possess, so these locusts are preferred to pigeons, because supposed to be more invigorating.[102] A person may eat a platefull of them, containing two or three hundred, without any ill effects. When the locust is young, it is green; as it grows, it assumes a yellow hue, and lastly becomes brown. I was informed by an Arab, who had seen the (Sultan Jeraad) king of the locusts, that it was larger and more beautifully coloured than the ordinary one; but I never myself could procure a sight of it. The mode of catching locusts is thus: several persons go out in the evening, and where they find the bushes covered, they through Haicks, or garments, over them, beating them with sticks or canes; they then collect the insects together, and put them in a sack, which they will fill, by this means, in half an hour. A drawing of this devouring insect will be found in Plate 8th, page 103.