The immense column of Locusts which ravaged all the Mahratta territory, and was thought to have come from Arabia, extended, Mr. Kirby’s friend told him, five hundred miles, and was so dense as thoroughly to hide the sun, and prevent any object from casting a shadow. This horde was not composed of the migratory Locust, but of a red species, which imparted a sanguine color to the trees on which they settled.[349] Mr. Forbes describes a flight of Locusts which he saw soon after his arrival at Baroche in 1779. It was more than a mile in length, and half as much in breadth, and appeared, as the sun was in the meridian, like a black cloud at a distance. As it approached, its density obscured the solar rays, causing a gloom like that of an eclipse, over the gardens, and causing a noise like the rushing of a torrent. They were almost an hour in passing a given point.[350] In another place, this traveler states that, in one considerable tract near the confines of the Brodera district, he witnessed a mournful scene, occasioned by a scourge of Locusts. They had, some time before he came, alighted in that part of the country, and left behind them, he says, “an awful contrast to the general beauty of that earthly paradise.” The sad description of Hosea, he adds, was literally realized: “That which the palmer-worm hath left, hath the caterpillar eaten. They have laid waste the vine, and barked the fig-tree; they have made it clean bare, and the branches thereof are made white: the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field are withered. Howl, O ye husbandmen! for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. How do the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate!”[351] On the 16th of May, 1800, Buchanan met with in Mysore a flight of Locusts which extended in length about three miles. He compares the noise they made to the sound of a cataract.[352] This swarm was very destructive to the young crops of jola.[353]