ATLANTIS NOT A MYTH. 763 



abound. The sun shines clear overhead, and the huge mountains look 

 down upon the cities and villages at their feet, like a mother upon her 

 babes : all is a picture of peacefulness. Suddenly, in a second, all is 

 changed. The protecting angels become destroying fiends, vomiting 

 fire and liquid hell upon the devoted cities at their feet, burning, 

 scorching, strangling their wretched inhabitants. The earth rocks 

 horribly, palaces, temples, all crashing down, crushing their human 

 victims, flocked together like so many ants. Vast rents open at their 

 very feet, licking with huge, flaming tongues the terrified people into 

 their yawning mouths. And then the inundations. Mighty waves 

 sweep over the land. The fierce enemies, Fire and Water, join hands 

 to effect the destruction of a mighty nation. 



How they hiss and surge, rattle and seethe ! How the steam rises, 

 mingled with the black smoke, looking like a mourning-veil, that it is, 

 and, when that veil is lifted, all is still, the quiet of annihilation ! 

 Of all that populous land, naught remains save fuming, seething mud. 

 It is not to be supposed that all perished in that calamity. Long 

 before this they had spread over the portion of the Americas contigu- 

 ous to the peninsula, building cities, palaces, roads, and aqueducts, 

 like those of their native homes ; and adventurous pioneers continually 

 spreading north, east, and westward, their constant increase of num- 

 bers from their former homes enabling them to overcome the resist- 

 ance offered to their progress by both natives and nature, till at last 

 they reached and discovered the copper country of Lake Superior. 

 That they appreciated this discovery is evinced by the innumerable 

 evidences of their works and of their skill in discovering the richest 

 and most promising veins. Wherever our miners of the present day 

 go, they find their ancient fellow craftsmen have been before them, 

 worked the richest veins and gathered the best copper ; and it is sup- 

 posed that they continued thus till the terrible blotting out of their 

 native country cut short all this, and left this advancing civilization 

 to wither and die like a vine severed from the parent stem. 



Having no further accession to their numbers, and being continu- 

 ally decimated by savages and disease, they slowly retreated before 

 the ever-advancing hordes. Gradually, and contesting every step, as 

 is shown by their numerous defensive works along their path, they 

 were forced back to their cities on this continent, that had been spared 

 them from the universal destruction of their country, where the dense 

 and almost impassable forests afforded them their last refuge from 

 their enemies, and where, reduced by war, pestilence, and other causes, 

 to a feeble band, their total extinction was only a matter of time. 

 Such is probably the history of this lost civilization, and such would 

 have been the history of our civilization had we in our infant growth 

 been cut off from receiving the nourishment of the mother coun- 

 tries. 



Within the last twenty-five years, all sciences relating to the past 



