Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 242
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[Page 242]
for the locusts, that they may come upon the land of Egypt, and eat every herb of the land even all that the hail hath left …
15. For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees that the hail hath left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees or in the herbs of the feild, through all the land of Egypt."
When riding along the line, this afternoon where the sands of the dessert and the cultivated land meet, the air was so filled with locusts that reminder was at ever step made of the chapter in Exodus wherein is narrated the 8th of the plagues sent by God through Moses upon the land of Egypt. Millions and millions of the flying insects were above me, around me, on the bank of the canal beneath the hoofs of my horse. Some grey others yellow. All intent on flight obeying an instinct which directed them unerringly. They were not as numerous as in the days of Moses, but they were to me a truly awful sight, in view of the destruction which they may be able to inflict upon the growing and ripening crops which at this moment are flourishing upon the land. Moses threatened Pharoe, telling him that the locusts would eat every green thing, and "X-6. And they shall fill thy houses and the houses of thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy fathers nor thy fathers fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day …"
The stoical Egyptian this afternoon, with the plague around him, pursued his accustomed task, surrounded by his children, his sheep, goats, oxen, donkeys, camels, cut the green fodder, loaded on the beasts, and prepared to move home to his village. Unmoved, as is the Sphynx, by the impending disaster which flew around him in millions, ready to descend on his means of