For six weeks in November and December there is much rain: after this
period there are only occasional showers, occurring at longer and longer
intervals until May, when they entirely cease, and the summer sets in,
to last until the following November. There are almost six continuous
months of depressing and moist heat, which overcomes both men and
animals and makes them incapable of any constant effort.* Sometimes
a south or east wind suddenly arises, and bearing with it across the
fields and canals whirlwinds of sand, burns up in its passage the little
verdure which the sun had spared. Swarms of locusts follow in its train,
and complete the work of devastation. A sound as of distant rain is at
first heard, increasing in intensity as the creatures approach. Soon
their thickly concentrated battalions fill the heavens on all sides,
flying with slow and uniform motion at a great height. They at length
alight, cover everything, devour everything, and, propagating their
species, die within a few days: nothing, not a blade of vegetation,
remains on the region where they alighted.

* Loftus says that he himself had witnessed in the
neighbourhood of Bagdad during the daytime birds perched on
the palm trees in an exhausted condition, and panting with
open beaks. The inhabitants of Bagdad during the summer pass
their nights on the housetops, and the hours of day in
passages within, expressly constructed to protect them from
the heat.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the country was not lacking in
resources. The soil was almost as fertile as the loam of Egypt, and,
like the latter, rewarded a hundredfold the labour of the inhabitants.*
Among the wild herbage which spreads over the country in the spring,
and clothes it for a brief season with flowers, it was found that some