one would not imagine it had rained, but that the ground appears
deluged. Thus passes the Abyssinian winter, a dreadful season, in
which the whole kingdom languishes with numberless diseases, an
affliction which, however grievous, is yet equalled by the clouds of
grasshoppers, which fly in such numbers from the desert, that the
sun is hid and the sky darkened; whenever this plague appears,
nothing is seen through the whole region but the most ghastly
consternation, or heard but the most piercing lamentations, for
wherever they fall, that unhappy place is laid waste and ruined;
they leave not one blade of grass, nor any hopes of a harvest.

God, who often makes calamities subservient to His will, permitted
this very affliction to be the cause of the conversion of many of
the natives, who might have otherwise died in their errors; for part
of the country being ruined by the grasshoppers that year in which
we arrived at Abyssinia, many, who were forced to leave their
habitations, and seek the necessaries of life in other places, came
to that part of the land where some of our missionaries were
preaching, and laid hold on that mercy which God seemed to have
appointed for others.

As we could not go to court before November, we resolved, that we
might not be idle, to preach and instruct the people in the country;
in pursuance of this resolution I was sent to a mountain, two days'
journey distant from Maigoga. The lord or governor of the place was
a Catholic, and had desired missionaries, but his wife had conceived
an implacable aversion both from us and the Roman Church, and almost
all the inhabitants of that mountain were infected with the same
prejudices as she. They had been persuaded that the hosts which we
consecrated and gave to the communicants were mixed with juices