mainly the lower and most ignorant, so far as the arts were concerned;
those that dwelt in distant and outlying places; and those who lived by
agriculture. These last at that date had fallen to such distress that
they could not hire vessels to transport themselves. The exact number of
those left behind cannot, of course, be told, but it is on record that
when the fields were first neglected (as I have already described), a
man might ride a hundred miles and not meet another. They were not only
few, but scattered, and had not drawn together and formed towns as at
present.

Of what became of the vast multitudes that left the country, nothing has
ever been heard, and no communication has been received from them. For
this reason I cannot conceal my opinion that they must have sailed
either to the westward or to the southward where the greatest extent of
ocean is understood to exist, and not to the eastward as Silvester would
have it in his work upon the "Unknown Orb", the dark body travelling in
space to which I have alluded. None of our vessels in the present day
dare venture into those immense tracts of sea, nor, indeed, out of sight
of land, unless they know they shall see it again so soon as they have
reached and surmounted the ridge of the horizon. Had they only crossed
to the mainland or continent again, we should most likely have heard of
their passage across the countries there.

It is true that ships rarely come over, and only to two ports, and that
the men on them say (so far as can be understood) that their country is
equally deserted now, and has likewise lost its population. But still,
as men talk unto men, and we pass intelligence across great breadths of
land, it is almost certain that, had they travelled that way, some echo
of their footsteps would yet sound back to us. Regarding this theory,
therefore, as untenable, I put forward as a suggestion that the ancients