r exactly what the decay of our old
culture is in society, a loss of traditions and distinctions and assured
reactions. When I think of these inexplicable dissolvent centres that
have come into being in our globe--these quap heaps are surely by far
the largest that have yet been found in the world; the rest as yet mere
specks in grains and crystals--I am haunted by a grotesque fancy of the
ultimate eating away and dry-rotting and dispersal of all our world. So
that while man still struggles and dreams his very substance will change
and crumble from beneath him. I mention this here as a queer persistent
fancy. Suppose, indeed, that is to be the end of our planet; no splendid
climax and finale, no towering accumulation of achievements, but
just--atomic decay! I add that to the ideas of the suffocating comet,
the dark body out of space, the burning out of the sun, the distorted
orbit, as a new and far more possible end--as Science can see ends--to
this strange by-play of matter that we call human life. I do not believe
this can be the end; no human soul can believe in such an end and go on
living, but to it science points as a possible thing, science and reason
alike. If single human beings--if one single ricketty infant--can be
born as it were by accident and die futile, why not the whole race?
These are questions I have never answered, that now I never attempt to
answer, but the thought of quap and its mysteries brings them back to
me.

I can witness that the beach and mud for two miles or more either way
was a lifeless beach--lifeless as I could have imagined no tropical mud
could ever be, and all the dead branches and leaves and rotting dead
fish and so forth that drifted ashore became presently shrivelled and
white. Sometimes crocodiles would come up out of the water and bask, and
now and then water birds would explore the mud and rocky ribs that rose
out of it, in a mood of transitory speculation. That was its utmost
admiration. And the air felt at once hot and austere, dry and
blistering, and altogether different the warm moist embrace that had met
us at our first African landfall and to which we had grown accustomed.

I believe that the primary influence of the quap upon us was to increase
the conductivity of our nerves, but that is a mere unjustifiable
speculation on my part. At any rate it gave a sort of east wind effect
to life. We all became irritable, clumsy, languid and disposed to
be impatient with our lang