In 1749 locusts stopped the army of Charles XII., King of Sweden, as it was retreating from Bessarabia, on its defeat at Pultowa. The king thought that he was assailed by a hail-storm, when a host of these insects beat violently against his army as it was passing through a defile, so that men and horses were blinded by this living hail, falling from a cloud which hid the sun. The arrival of the locusts had been announced by a whistling sound like that which precedes a tempest; and the noise of their flight quite over-powered the noise made by the Black Sea. All the country round about was soon laid waste on their route. During the same year a great part of Europe was invaded by these pests, the newspapers of the day being full of accounts relating to this public calamity. In 1753 Portugal was attacked by them. This was the year of the earthquake of Lisbon, and all sorts of plagues seemed at this time to rage in that unfortunate country. In 1780, in Transylvania, their ravages assumed such gigantic proportions that it was found necessary to call in the assistance of the army. Regiments of soldiers gathered them together and enclosed them in sacks. Fifteen hundred persons were employed in crushing, burying, and burning them; but, in spite of all this, their number did not seem to diminish; but a cold wind, which fortunately sprang up, caused them to disappear. In the following spring the plague broke out again, and every one turned out to fight against it. The locusts were swept with great brooms into ditches, in which they were then burnt; not, however, before they had ruined the whole country. Locusts showed themselves at the same time in the empire of Morocco, where they caused a fearful famine. The poor were to be seen wandering on all sides, digging up the roots of vegetables, and eagerly devouring camels' dung, in hopes of finding in it a few undigested grains of barley. Barrow and Levaillant, in their travels through Central Africa, speak of similar calamities having happened many times between 1784 and 1797. They add that the surface of the rivers was then hidden by the bodies of the locusts, which covered the whole country. According to Jackson, in 1739 they covered the whole surface of the ground from Tangiers to Mogador. All the region near to the Sahara was ravaged, whilst on the other side of the river El Klos there was not one of these insects. When the wind blew they were driven into the sea, and their carcases occasioned a plague which laid Barbary waste. India and China often suffer from these destructive insects. In 1735 clouds of locusts hid from the Chinese both the sun and moon. Not only the standing crops, but also the corn in the barns and the clothes in the houses were devoured.