dirt into the river, and no sewage is permitted to flow into the river from any part. Ships, while on the river, in the pool, or at the wharves, are occupied as if they were houses on land, and their sewage has to be deodorised and dessicated day by day.
Our party took a launch driven by electric motors and propelled by a revolving keel, and Thomas Frankston made himself into sailing master and left the young people to their holiday and their freedom. It was decided that they should only travel by day. They wanted to see the country through its entire length, and to make the most of what they saw.
In one respect the river is a little monotonous in its lower portions. It is always clear, and though thirty feet in depth the bottom is generally visible. Its banks, too, are grassed to the water's edge, except where a ferry boat crosses; that is every two miles or so. Railway tunnels run underneath at frequent intervals. Charley Frankston told the party that the river was to a great extent a work of art. Through ages it had been dredged and widened. When the first Sidonia was built, a little village on the ocean shore, the river was a useless thing, emptying itself into the ocean through half a dozen shallow mouths. Sidonia grew and became a national capital, and the Sidonians became a commercial and warlike nation. The Sea of Marmon was at last a Sidonian lake. Centuries of war and peace rolled on, and the empire grew, and the Sidonian speech became the language of commerce. The world grew sick of war, and the men of various nations entered into bonds of labor; they would not reduce the wages rate by underworking each other; they would not join military organisations to fight each other; they would work shorter hours, and have some share of what they produced and made.
And it was time; for men had fought on land and on sea and had at length carried on battles in the air and a rain of blood had fallen upon the cities and the plains and bodies and mangled limbs had fallen into the streets.
Sidonia had become strong and rich and peaceful; she would not fight but all the nations knew that her power and wealth would give her victory even if all the other nations were arrayed against her. Her power made for peace and she became the arbitrator of the nations. Her speech grew to be the language of the schools and the date line and the time ball were found in Sidonia. She grew into a sort of cosmopolitan capital—all men of mark had to drift towards her from all centres of population.
Still generations passed away and still Sidonia grew and grew. Within her boundaries the ambassadors of the nations met to discuss the terms of the Perpetual Peace and there they signed it. Sidonia then became a Federal Capital. The "Black Century" came and taxed to the very uttermost, the resources of the Sidonian Empire and the great Federation. In this time man grew to man, and each did what he could for the other; when this term was past all private fortunes were melted away. Meanwhile the Federal
