112 JOURNEY FROM A heavy punishment, at the same time, was inflicted upon those who neglected this useful precaution, as though they had been guilty of an unpardonable crime against their sovereign and their country. In Lemnos, also, there was a measure estabhshed to regulate the quantity which each man should kill ; and every person was obhged to give in his account to the magistrate, and to produce his measure full of dead locusts*.

It may easily be conceived, from these relations, what consternation and dismay is excited among the inhabitants of a cultivated country by the appearance of a large swarm of locusts. The mischief, however, occasioned at Mesurata by those which we have mentioned above, was not by any means so great, we are happy to say, as might have been reasonably expected : and the Arabs of the place were soon as busily employed in eating their formidable invaders, as they had at first been in preserving their crops from experiencing a similar fate.

On the 2nd December, after repeated promises and disappointments, our camels at length arrived ; and having made suitable presents to Shekh Belcazi and his son, we prepared to continue our journey. We had few difficulties to encounter in our dealings with the people of Mesurata ; and we must confess that we found in their Shekh, notwithstanding his occasional evasions, more openness and honesty than are usually met with in the inhabitants of Mahometan countries.

* Nat. Hist. lib. xi. c. 29.