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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 10
Page 05
They had not been long on their way when they came to a place where the trail ran between two high, smooth-faced bowlders. "These," said their Wosakidi companions, "are the Bumping Rocks. If you step into that narrow passageway between them they will crash together and kill you." The boys started as if to enter, but fell back. The huge rocks came violently together, but did no harm. The feint was made three times, and each time the rocks crashed together and bounded back. The fourth time the boys entered they placed their sacred wands of turquoise and white shell across the gap above their heads and passed through, for these held the bowlders apart. As they emerged on the opposite side they saw the Sun rising from his eastern home and he was yet far away.
As regards eugenics, there is no doubt that a vast and persistent elimination of lives goes on even in civilized countries. It has been calculated that, of every hundred English born alive, fifty do not survive to breed, and, of the remainder, half produce three-quarters of the next generation. But is the elimination selective? We can hardly doubt that it is to some extent. But what its results are--whether it mainly favours immunity from certain diseases, or the capacity for a sedentary life in a town atmosphere, or intelligence and capacity for social service--is largely matter of guesswork. How, then, can we say what is the type to breed from, even if we confine our attention to one country? If, on the other hand, we look farther afield, and study the results of race-mixture or "miscegenation," we but encounter fresh puzzles. That the half-breed is an unsatisfactory person may be true; and yet, until the conditions of his upbringing are somehow discounted, the race problem remains exactly where it was. Or, again, it may be true that miscegenation increases human fertility, as some hold; but, until it is shown that the increase of fertility does not merely result in flooding the world with inferior types, we are no nearer to a solution.
On September 10th--that was the seventh day of our involuntary fast--we had another dreary march, again without a morsel of food. My men were so downhearted that I really thought they would not last much longer. Hunger was playing on them in a curious way. They said that they could hear voices all round them and people firing rifles. I could hear nothing at all. I well knew that their minds were beginning to go, and that it was a pure hallucination. Benedicto and Filippe, who originally were both atheists of an advanced type, had now become extremely religious, and were muttering fervent prayers all the time. They made a vow that if we escaped alive they would each give L5 sterling out of their pay to have a big mass celebrated in the first church they saw.
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