The insect which we have here before us is a proof how fallacious it is to judge by appearances. If we consider its small size, its weakness, want of variety or beauty, nothing in the creation is more contemptible and insignificant. Yet passing from these to his history, and to the account of his powers, we must confess the very great injustice we do him from want of consideration. We are obliged, with the greatest surprise, to acknowledge, that those huge animals, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion and the tiger, inhabiting the same woods, are still vastly his inferiors, and that the appearance of this small insect, nay, his very sound, though he is not seen, occasions more trepidation, movement, and disorder, both in the human and brute creation, than would whole herds of these monstrous animals collected together, though their number was in a tenfold proportion greater than it really is. [Illustration: _Tsaltsalya._ _El Adda._ _London. Published Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._] The necessity of keeping my narrative clear and intelligible as I proceeded, has made me anticipate the principal particularities relating to this insect. His operations are too materially interwoven with the history of this country, to be left apart as an episode. The reader will find the description[84] of its manners in that part of my history which treats of the Shepherds, and in several places throughout the narrative he will meet with accounts of the consequences of its wonderful influence. Providence, from the beginning it would seem, had fixed its habitation to one species of soil, being a black fat earth, extraordinary fruitful; and small and inconsiderable as it was, it seems from the first to have given a law to the settlement of the country. It prohibited absolutely those inhabitants of the fat earth, called Mazaga, domiciled in caves and mountains, from enjoying the help or labour of any beasts of carriage. It deprived them of their flesh and milk for food, and gave rise to another nation, whose manners were just the reverse of the first. These were the Shepherds, leading a wandering life, and preserving these immense herds of cattle by conducting them into the sands beyond the limits of the black earth, and bringing them back again when the danger from this insect was over.