I like he follows up these thoughts of time and empire with the image of the swift river and the camels being drowned and swept down in it.
Great image of the telegraph wire terminating at the shack and him remembering bring at the other end in London in the club with the noise and traffic and cigarette smoke as news just an hour away from this “primitive” land came in.
He wonders if the British will go the way of the Buddhists with no trace of them in time but then hopes it will be at least remembered that they brought in more crops, the death rate was lower, and civilisation had come to the Frontier for a time. But if the Muslims were to vanish they might hope they people would remember they they brought a morality to the Frontier.
Khokhlakov and Lisa are nuts, Lisa in particular. However, they must be loved, too. I don’t get Lisa though. She’s like her mother in that she babbles on and on, but her mother always has a method to her madness, Lisa is just mad.
That doctor is an ass. Science is not looked on kindly here.