It is, really, a superb country."
"It would be hard to find more splendid vegetation."
"If we found the like of it around London it would not be
natural, but it would be very pleasant," put in Joe. "Why
is it that such savage countries get all these fine things?"
"And who knows," said the doctor, "that this country
may not, one day, become the centre of civilization? The
races of the future may repair hither, when Europe shall
have become exhausted in the effort to feed her inhabitants."
"Do you think so, really?" asked Kennedy.
"Undoubtedly, my dear Dick. Just note the progress
of events: consider the migrations of races, and you
will arrive at the same conclusion assuredly. Asia was
the first nurse of the world, was she not? For about four
thousand years she travailed, she grew pregnant, she produced,
and then, when stones began to cover the soil
where the golden harvests sung by Homer had flourished,
her children abandoned her exhausted and barren bosom.
You next see them precipitating themselves upon young
and vigorous Europe, which has nourished them for the
last two thousand years. But already her fertility is beginning
to die out; her productive powers are diminishing
every day. Those new diseases that annually attack the
products of the soil, those defective crops, those insufficient
resources, are all signs of a vitality that is rapidly
wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion.
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