Luxury and corruption caused the fall of Rome, Carthage, Greece, Assyria, Egypt, and the countless races that preceded these chronicled nations. When Melchizedek walked the earth, and Lot pleaded with the angels, mankind was old and worn out with self-indulgences. When Noah vainly preached to the sons of men, they had become dilettante, idle, cynical, and luxurious; refined in art, cruelty, and callous vice; enervated to the last degree, and barren of all impulse. This has always been and always must be the results of ultra-civilisation. The second step from utter barbarism which deals with conquest and cruelty, is but the beginning of the end of all nations, ancient and modern. The implacable order of nature is to grow and decline. Matter must change, although its constituents are immortal. The road from the desert to the city was broad and straight. Fifty chariots could drive abreast through the centre, leaving the side-paths for the pedestrians. A double line of huge palm trees fringed this wide highway, and cast violet shadows on the side-walks. Between the trunks they could see rich and carefully irrigated fields of grain and vegetables--maize, rice, manioc, wheat, pulse, yams, and pine-apples, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic, with shady groves of sugar cane and bananas at the corners, and hedges all around of vines. The glistening of water in the regularly cut canals and lotus-covered ponds, with the fringes of papyrus reeds and varied-tinted blossoms and flowers, made a delicious picture of rural prosperity and radiance. Regular symmetry and mathematical order were the predominant features of these fertile plains, with their straight canals and square ponds. Not a foot of soil was wasted nor left to run wild. It was all under cultivation, like a carefully tended garden. Dark-skinned and semi-nude slaves of both sexes crowded these fields and plantations, while the same class of white-clad, yellow-skinned, and diminutive overseers walked about and plied the whip remorselessly, yet without excitement. Our heroes longed to ask questions, for they were bursting with curiosity, and they inwardly resolved to learn the language as soon as possible, if they were permitted to live here long enough. Already they had mastered the native terms for water, wine, food, chariots, leopards, lions, spears, helmets, and armour. This was a fair beginning. As for Cocoeni and his fellow-Kaffirs, they were devoting themselves most assiduously to the pursuit of their conquests, and, as they showed by their ardent glances, conquerors also. They appeared to be progressing fairly well, considering that looks were their only means of communication at present. As they drove along, eight abreast, they noticed that they were causing a considerable stir amongst the pedestrians and other natives whom they met, overtook, or passed. They were also watching with great interest these inhabitants.