THE LOCUST PLAGUE—SYRIA—BABIES CHOKED TO DEATH.—
The plague of locusts is causing sad devastation in Syria. In a recently received letter from Mrs. Bowen Thompson, dated Beyrout, June 23, it is stated that the accounts from Hisbaya are most distressing. It is worthy of remark that when the plague visited the country last year, the Christians exerted themselves to destroy the locusts and their eggs, but the Mohammedans, who looked upon the locusts as a great delicacy, caught and ate them. The cholera has everywhere in the East followed in the train of the locusts, and the proportion of Mohammedans to Christians who have succumbed to the disease is beyond compare. A letter from a native of Hisbaya says that the locusts cover the whole land, and enter the houses as they have never done before. They have eaten up all the herbs, leaving nothing, and Hisbaya looks like a desert. One day two little Druse babies were left alone in a house while their mothers were out. The locusts came into the house and choked the babies, and they died; and now the people cannot get out of their houses because the locusts will come in, and they cannot drive them away.