obliged to halt at different periods for days together, till another and

yet another was consigned as a clod to the vast clod which had been once

our living mother. Thus we continued travelling during the hottest season;

and it was not till the first of August, that we, the emigrants,--reader,

there were just eighty of us in number,--entered the gates of Dijon.

We had expected this moment with eagerness, for now we had accomplished the

worst part of our drear journey, and Switzerland was near at hand. Yet how

could we congratulate ourselves on any event thus imperfectly fulfilled?

Were these miserable beings, who, worn and wretched, passed in sorrowful

procession, the sole remnants of the race of man, which, like a flood, had

once spread over and possessed the whole earth? It had come down clear and

unimpeded from its primal mountain source in Ararat, and grew from a puny

streamlet to a vast perennial river, generation after generation flowing on

ceaselessly. The same, but diversified, it grew, and swept onwards towards

the absorbing ocean, whose dim shores we now reached. It had been the mere

plaything of nature, when first it crept out of uncreative void into light;

but thought brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these, the

race of man assumed dignity and authority. It was then no longer the mere

gardener of earth, or the shepherd of her flocks; "it carried with it an

imposing and majestic aspect; it had a pedigree and illustrious ancestors;

it had its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records

and titles."[1]

This was all over, now that the ocean of death had sucked in the slackening

tide, and its source was dried up. We first had bidden adieu to the state

540

The Last Man