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consequently of crude Zro. In the first place the adventure was
expensive. It was uneconomical (in the scientific sense) to send
ships with less than 1000 fighting men. The Zro required for these
meant the employment of at least 7000 serviles, and the naval
construction was therefore of a colossal order. But although
little difficulty was found in conquering the country in the
military sense, the natives had to be almost exterminated, and
the labour of the survivors proved difficult to enforce. It was
even then not a tenth as efficient as that of the serviles at
home. The imported serviles moreover caught native diseases, and
died in hundreds; and though by prodigious sacrifices the West
African Empire was kept going for nearly 200 years, it had to end
at last no less ingloriously than the French adventure in Mexico,
or the English in India, and South Africa.*
The main causes were the impossibility of breeding children in
a climate so unsuitable, even of maintaining their own women, and
above all the fact that the crude Zro was not of a quality equal
to that obtained in Atlas, and that the Zro generated by the
Atlanteans themselves was not to be made at all outside their own
country. The lesson was learnt. Until the end no further attempt
was made to advance in any but the true direction. The great
majority of the colonists returned to Atlas; but many,
degenerating as is the fashion with colonists of this conquering
kind, abandoned Zro for gross food, intermarried with the
natives, and have generally degenerated yet further to races
inferior even to the present descendants of those who were in
those days the equivalents of the serviles of Atlas.
.pa
IX.
OF THE CATASTROPHE,
ITS ANTECEDENTS AND
PRESUMED CAUSES.
In my remarks on Zro I have a necessarily somewhat diffuse
account of the properties of this remarkable substance. It must
now be made clearer that the crude Zro in its nine stages
produced by the serviles, and consumed in the 'houses' was in
each stage of inferior quality to that of the same degree
produced by the Atlanteans, and consumed by the High House. For
example, the crude Zro was made in a labour-mill with all sorts
of insulations. The first stage of the priest's Zro could be made
anywhere and at any time, and naturally directed itself to the
receptable for it without any precautions. It must, I think, be
presumed that the Zro generated in the High House was again of
far greater purity and potency. Very little of it can have
been used in the experiments of the magicians, and it is
therefore necessary to account for enormous quantities, produced
during many centuries of uninterrupted labour. I have, however,
no data of any kind for this investigation; the mysteries of the
High House have ever been inscrutable, and were not wholly
delivered to the Heirs of Atlas. They must be rediscovered by the
magicians of the new race. It may be that in some form or other
the Zro had been made stable, and used to impregnate the column
which is alleged to have been driven 'through the Earth';
perhaps, and less improbably, only to the depth of a few hundred
miles. This column, however long it may have been, had certainly
its top immediately beneath the reservoir of the High House. It
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