210 Atlantis. 



In the assertion of Brasseur de Bourbourg, however, be true, it 

 would seem to form the complement of the Atlantic tradition and 

 complete a chain of circumstantial evidence of great strength. 

 The main argument against the tradition, namely : its alleged 

 physical impossibility, is one upon which scientists are not agreed. 

 Sir Charles Lyell treats it as a fact, so far as this is concerned, 

 regarded by the people of that day as a judgment of their supreme 

 deity. After citing the earthquakes of 1822, in South America, which 

 the priests made use of to inveigh against the political revolutions in 

 that country, he says : "In like manner in the account given to 

 Solon by the Egyptian priests of the submersion of the islands of At- 

 lantis under the waters of the ocean after repeated shocks of an earth- 

 quake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the 

 moral depravity of the inhabitants." In this there is no hint of the 

 want of probable truth in the tradition, which would have appeared, 

 had the distinguished geologist considered it as a thing physically 

 impossible. 



Several authorities are cited by Brasseur de Bourbourg as support- 

 ing the opinion, that the eastern coast of Central America and Mex- 

 ico once extended far to the eastward, and included the West India 

 and Florida islands, and those lying to to southward as far as the Ori- 

 noco river. Among these are Moreau de Saint-Mery ("Description 

 topographique et politique de la Partie Espagnole al'Isle de Saint-Do- 

 mingue," 1796), who considers "the innumerable islands situated 

 from the mouth of the Orinoco to the Bahama Channel (islands which 

 include several Grenadins not always visible, in very high tides or 

 great agitations of the sea), to be the tops of the most elevated of a 

 chain of mountains which crowned a portion of the continent, whose 

 submersion has produced the Gulf of Mexico." Mr. Charles Martins 

 (Revue des Deux Mondes, March, 1867,) is also quoted as expressing 

 the opinion, that " hydrography, geology and botany agree in teaching 

 us that the Azores, the Canaries and Madeira are the remains of a 

 great continent which formerly united Europe to North America. 



Undoubtedly, to accept the theory of a cataclysm such as the 

 tradition of Atlantis requires, we must greatly enlarge the commonly 

 received theological view of man's antiquity. But the universal ten- 

 dency of modern investigation is to prove the antiquity of the human 

 race to be far greater than we can yet conceive. That America forms 

 no exception to this statement is freely admitted by Bancroft, who 

 also intimates his belief that there once existed in tropical America a 

 much higher state of civilization which had temporarily deteriorated 

 at the time of the Spanish conquest. 



