Thus the dark shadows fell on this huge world.  The captured educated classes made a heroic effort to continue their cultured manners and religious life, but the prejudice against them and their ways was so great that they were compelled to live in the lower strata or suffer the pain of death.  In process of time, the wild woods flourished where once the temples of science and pure religion reared their imposing pillars.

What can we expect of such a race of people who have drifted from the light of civilization for so long a period?  As I looked at their customs and their ways, I was reminded of a garden that has run wild.  Here and there I could see traces of the once thrifty life now almost choked out by the overpowering crop of weeds.

Gradually the people became worse and worse.  Sin played havoc and built carnal fires around which these children of men gathered.  Sensuality became the ruling passion and, in less than five hundred years of our time, the last family observance had died away and these creatures wallowed in the quagmire of fleshly lusts, compared with which the brute life of our world is highly respectable.  “Free Love” was rampant and human offspring was cared for by mothers, or at least by such as were willing to assume the task.  No one was supposed to know who was his father.

I saw this sad and sickening spectacle against which my instincts revolted with horror.  It is true that if man is left totally unbridled, he sinks to a depth which it would be impossible for any species of the animal creation to reach.

As I continued looking on this low life with its horrors too numerous and too dreadful to mention, my thoughts flew back to the world whence I came, and to America where I was born, and I remembered of some who advocated “Free Love.”  “Let their arms be withered,” I cried, rather than have such a thistle fasten itself in the soil of our social life.

Let the libertine of our world go to the world of Scum where he belongs, or rise to the dignity of man whose image he bears.

[Illustration:  Great Battle between Low Tribes on Scum.]

Compared with our world, the physical features of Scum are all fashioned on a much larger scale, and the mountains, rivers and vegetation are five times greater than ours; so are also the many varieties of wild and domestic animals.

The inhabitants of Scum are divided into many warring tribes, and it is fearful to see the conflicts that take place.  During my brief stay I witnessed one of the big battles between two of the stronger tribes.  One hundred and fifty thousand men went dashing into an enemy of greater numbers.  It was a foot ball melee on a vast scale.  Weapons were all of the hand-to-hand type, except the spear wagons which were indeed clumsy weapons of war.

Nothing is known of surrender or a flag of truce, so the conflict raged horribly to a bitter end until eighty thousand bruised victors participated in the jubilant feast that followed.  Over two hundred thousand Scumites lay dead on the field and along the mountain ridges.  According to past history, another such great battle is not liable to occur for another generation.