The story opens in 2989 and is narrated by William Purley, a student of Melbourne University. Purley embarks on a tour of Australia with some friends. They set out to visit the capital, Eyreton, and later decide to extend their adventure with a trip to the African continent and then England. In England, they visit many cities that have become greatly diminished and barely inhabited. The narrator is then transported back to London in the last years of the 19th century to see the origin of England's decline.
