The snow then melted suddenly with heavy rains, deluging the fields with water, which slowly retired, converting the country into a wide-spread marsh.

It was very late before any seed could be sown.

The grain had but just begun to sprout when myriads of locusts appeared, devouring every green thing.

A heavy frost early in the autumn destroyed the few fields the locusts had spared, and then commenced the horrors of a universal famine.

Men, women and children, wasted and haggard, wandered over the fields seeking green leaves and roots, and dropped dead in their wanderings.