In the first few pages of the novella "Heart of Darkness," we encounter five men who are relaxing on the deck of a ship anchored at the mouth of the Thames. The men are in a reflective mood, and after a while, one of them comments on how London was, at some point in history, "one of the dark places of the earth." He thinks of a Roman soldier who might have had to travel to England, where nothing was to be found except for wilderness.
