THE LOST ATLANTIS. 117 
Central America, and probably by the Cape Verdes, or, guided by the more southern equa- 
torial current, to Brazil. Latest of all, Behring Strait and the North Pacific islands may 
have become the highway for a migration by which certain striking diversities among 
nations of the northern continent, including the conquerors of the Mexican plateau, are 
most easily accounted for. 
It is not necessary to include in the question here discussed, the more comprehensive 
one of the existence of man in America contemporary with the great extinct animals of 
the Quaternary Period ; though the acknowledged affinities of Asiatic and American anthro- 
pology, taken in connection with the remoteness of any assignable period for migration 
from Asia to the American continent, renders it far from improbable that the latest oscilla- 
tions of land may here also have exercised an influence. The present soundings of 
Behring Strait, and the bed of the sea extending southward to the Aleutian Islands, 
entirely accord with the idea of a former continuity of land between Asia and America. 
The idea to which the speculations of Darwin, founded on his observations during the 
voyage of the “ Beagle,” gave rise, of a continuous subsidence of the Pacific Ocean, also 
favoured the probability of greater insular facilities for trans-oceanic migration at the sup- 
posed period of the peopling of America from Asia. But more recent explorations, and 
especially those connected with the “ Challenger” expedition, fail to confirm the old theory 
of the origin of the coral islands of the Pacific; and in any view of the case, we must be 
content to study the history of existing races, alike of Europe and America, apart from 
questions relating to palæocosmic man. If the vague legend of the lost Atlantis embodies 
any trace of remotest historical tradition, it belongs to a modern era compared with the 
men either of the European drift, or of the post-glacial deposits of New Jersey and the auri- 
ferous gravels of California. When resort is had to comparative philology, it is manifest 
that we must be content to deal with a more recent era than contemporaries of the 
Mastodon, and their congeners of Europe’s Mammoth and Reindeer Periods, notwith- 
standing the fact that the modern representatives of the later have been sought within 
our own Arctic circle. 
Such evidence as a comparison of languages thus far supplies, lends more countenance 
to the idea of migration through the islands of the Pacific, than to such a route from the 
Mediterranean as is implied in any significance attached to the legend of Atlantis. As to 
the Behring Strait route, present ethnology and philology point rather to an overflow 
of Arctic American population into Asia. Gallatin was the first to draw attention to 
certain analogies in the structure of Polynesian and American languages, as deserving of 
investigation ; and pointed out the peculiar mode of expressing the tense, mood, and voice 
of the verb, by affixed particles, and the value given to place over time, as indicated in the 
predominant locative verbal form. Such are to be looked for with greater probability 
among the languages of South America; but the substitution of affixed particles for inflec- 
tions, especially in expressing the direction of action in relation to the speaker, is common 
to the Polynesian and the Oregon languages, and has analogies in the Cherokee. The dis- 
tinction between the inclusive and exclusive pronoun we, according as it means “ you 
and I,” or “they and J,” ete., is as characteristic of the Maori as of the Ojibway. Other 
observations of more recent date have still further tended to countenance the recognition 
of elements common to the languages of Polynesia and America; and so to point to 
migration by the Pacific to the western continent. 
