Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/236

English colonies have been called upon to show their love for the mother country in a similar way; and this really amounts to an order. India, Ceylon, Africa, and all the other countries controlled by Great Britain, must assist the English in keeping ahead of Germany in the race for naval supremacy. It seems an absurd situation to me, but possibly I know as little about it as the editorial writer on the Natal Mercury knows about America. (Note.—Since the above was written, Canada has balked, and refused to vote money for English battleships.). . . Some writers say that Africa is the Coming Country; that thousands of years hence, when Europe and America have become as dry as India or the Sahara desert, Africa will be about right, and contain cities like New York and London. By that time, New York and London will have been deserted, as old Memphis, Thebes and Babylon are now deserted. This is said to be the history of the world: Countries wear out like men; the country around the Red Sea was once fertile and populous, but is now a desert, owing to slowly changing climatic conditions; the world is so old that mountain ranges have been worn level with the surrounding plains by the wind, rain, heat and cold of many centuries. This is what will finally happen to our Rocky Mountains. The country where we live was once tropical, and it will become tropical again, in the course of time. The one thing we do not realize is the great age of the world, having long been taught that it is ten or twelve thousand years old. It is more than ten or twelve million years old; some geologists say its age is certainly forty or fifty million years. . . . My father left