ant
children) to the known existing trials of the country, whose useful
talents would otherwise have greatly aided me in the formation and
superintendence of schools.

July 2nd. An agreeable change has taken place in the scenery around us;
the trees are breaking into leaves, and many plants are in blossom,
where, but a short time ago, everything bore the aspect of winter. But
this almost sudden and pleasing change has brought an unceasing
torment: night and day we are perpetually persecuted with the
mosquitoes, that swarm around us, and afford no rest but in the
annoying respiration of a smoky room. They hover in clouds about the
domestic cattle, and drive them (almost irritated to madness) to the
smoke of fires lighted with tufts of grass for their relief. The trial
of this ever busy and tormenting insect is inconceivable, but to those
who have endured it. We retire to rest, enveloped in clothes almost to
suffocation, but the musquitoe finds its way under the blankets,
piercing with its envenomed trunk, till we often rise in a fever. Nor
are we relieved from this painful scourge until the return of a slight
frost, in the beginning of September.

20th. The weather is extremely hot, the thermometer more than 90 deg. above
zero. Vegetation is making an astonishingly rapid progress, and the
grain in its luxuriant growth upon a rich soil, presents to the eye the
fairest prospects of a good harvest. But the locust, an insect very
like the large grasshopper, is beginning to make sad ravages, by
destroying the crops, as it has done for the last three years, at the
Settlement. These insects multiply so rapidly, that they soon
overspread the land, or rather the whole country; and had not a wise
Providence limited their existence to a year, they would no doubt (if
permitted to increase) soon destroy the whole vegetative produce of the
world. They seem to devour, not so much from a ravenous appetite, as
from the rage of destroying every vegetable substance that lies in the
way; and their work of destruction is frequently so regular in a field
of corn, as to have the appearance of being cut with a scythe. Where
they are bred, from eggs that are deposited in the earth the autumn
before, they stop during the months of April, May, and June; towards
the latter end of July, they get strong, and have wings, when they rise
together, sometimes so numerous as to form a black cloud, which darkens
the rays of the sun. Their first direction