THE LOST ATLANTIS. ‘128 
of Dracon are said to have been enacted”—the period, in fact, from which the legend 
of Atlantis was professedly derived. Vet there the graven characters are, with their 
authentic bit of history, legible to this day, of the son of Theokles, sailing with his 
company “up the Nile, when King Psamatichos came to Elephantina” So it is with 
Egyptians, Assyrians, Phenicians, and with the strange forgotten Hittites, whose vast 
empire has vanished out of the world’s memory. The lion of the Pirzeus, with its graven 
runes, is a thing of yesterday, compared with the inscribed lion from Marash, covered 
with Hittite hieroglyphs, now in the museum at Constantinople; for the Hittite capital, 
Ketesh, was captured by the Egyptian Sethos, B.C. 1340. All but the name of this once 
powerful people seemed to have perished. Yet the inscribed stones, by which they 
were to be restored to their place in history, remained, awaiting the interpretation of an 
enlightened age. 
If then, traces of the lost Atlantis are ever to be recovered in the New World, it must 
be by some indubitable memorial of a like kind. Old as the legend may be, it is seen that 
literal graphic memorials—Assyrian, Phoenician, Khita, Egyptian and Greek—still remain 
to tell of times even beyond the epoch assigned to Solon. The antiquaries of New England 
have sought in vain for runic memorials of the Northmen of the tenth century ; and the 
diligence of less trustworthy explorers for traces of ancient records has been stimulated 
to excess, throughout the northern continent, with results little more creditable to their 
honesty than their judgment. What some chance disclosure may yet reveal, who can 
presume to guess? But thus far it appears to be improbable that within the continental 
area north of the Gulf of Mexico, evidences of the presence of Phcenician, Greek, or 
other ancient historic race will now be found. Certain it is that, whatever transient 
visits may have been paid to North America by representatives of Old World progress, no 
long-matured civilisation, whether of native or foreign origin, has existed here. Through 
all the centuries of which definite history has anything to tell, it has remained a world 
apart, secure in its isolation, with languages, arts, and customs essentially native in 
character. The nations of the Maya stock appear to have made the gratest progress 
in civilisation of all the communities of Central America. They dwelt in cities adorned 
with costly structures dedicated to the purposes of religion and the state; and had 
political government, and forms of social organisation, to all appearance, the slow growth 
of many generations. They had, also, a well-matured system of chronology ; and have left 
behind them graven and written records, analogous to those of ancient Egypt, which still 
await decypherment. Whether this culture was purely of native growth, or had its origin 
from the germs of an Old World civilisation, can only be determined when its secrets have 
been fully mastered. The region is even now very partially explored. The students of 
American ethnology and archeology are only awakening to some adequate sense of its 
importance. But here appears to have been the centre of a native American civilisation 
whence light was slowly radiating on either hand, before the vandals of the Spanish 
Conquest quenched it in blood. The civilisation of Mexico was but a borrowed reflex of 
that of Central America; and its picture- writing is a very inferior effort imitation of the 
ideography of the Maya hieroglyphics. 
A tendency manifests itself anew to trace the metallurgy, the letters, the astronomical 
science, and whatever else marks the quickening into intellectual life of this American 
leading race, to an Asiatic or other Old World origin. The point, however, is by no means 
