But continue by your compass so
and you will come (suddenly again and with no apparent reason for its
abrupt origin) upon the dead straight line that ran from the capital of
the Nervii, three days' march and more, and pointing all the time
straight at Vermand.
And so it is throughout the province and its neighbourhood. Here and
there, as at Bavai, a great capital has decayed. Here and there (but
more rarely), a town wholly new has sprung up since the Romans, but the
plan of the country is the same as that which they laid down, and the
roads as you discover them, mark it out and establish it. The armies
that you see marching to-day in their manoeuvres follow for half a
morning the line which was taken by the Legions.
The Reward of Letters
It has often been remarked that while all countries in the world possess
some sort of literature, as Iceland her Sagas, England her daily papers,
France her prose writers and dramatists, and even Prussia her railway
guides, one nation and one alone, the Empire of Monomotopa, is utterly
innocent of this embellishment or frill.
No traveller records the existence of any Monomotopan quill-driver; no
modern visitor to that delightful island has come across a
_litterateur_ whether in the worse or in the best hotels; and such
reading as the inhabitants enjoy is entirely confined to works imported
by large steamers from the neighbouring Antarctic Continent.
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