But Though He Can Endure Hunger, Like All

[P.117] savages, he will gorge when an opportunity offers.

I never saw the man who could refrain from water upon the line of march; and in this point they contrast disadvantageously with the hardy Wahhabis of the East, and the rugged mountaineers of Jabal Shammar. They are still “acridophagi,” and even the citizens far prefer a dish of locusts to the Fasikh, which act as anchovies, sardines, and herrings in Egypt. They light a fire at night, and as the insects fall dead they quote this couplet to justify their being eaten—

“We are allowed two carrions and two bloods, The fish and locust, the liver and the spleen.[FN#55]”

Where they have no crops to lose, the people are thankful for a fall of locusts. In Al-Hijaz the flights are uncertain; during the last five years Al-Madinah has seen but few. They are prepared for eating by boiling in salt water and drying four or five days in the sun: a “wet” locust to an Arab is as a snail to a Briton. The head is plucked off, the stomach drawn, the wings and the prickly part of the legs are plucked, and the insect is ready for the table. Locusts are never eaten with sweet things, which would be nauseous: the dish is always “hot,” with salt and pepper, or onions fried in clarified butter, when it tastes nearly as well as a plate of stale shrimps.

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