THE LOST ATLANTIS. 125 
connected it with the ancient science of south-eastern Asia. But instead of its exhibiting 
any such inevitable accumulation of error as that which gave so peculiar a character to 
the historical chronology of the Egyptians, its computation differed less from true solar 
time than the unreformed Julian calendar which the Spaniards had inherited from pagan 
Rome. But though this suffices to show that the civilisation of Mexico was of no great 
antiquity, it only accords with other evidence of its borrowed character. The Mexicans 
stood in the same relation to Central America as the Northern Barbarians of the third and 
fourth century did to Italy ; and the intruding Spaniard nipped their germ of borrowed civi- 
lisation in the bud. So long as the search for evidences either of a native or intruded 
civilisation is limited to the northern continent of America, it is equivalent to an attempt 
to recover the traces of Greek and Roman Civilisation in transalpine Europe. The Mexican 
calendar stone is no more than the counterpart of some stray Greek or Roman tablet 
beyond the Alps; or rather, perhaps, of some Mæsogothic product of borrowed art. 
We must await then, the intelligent exploration of Central America, before any 
certain conclusion can be arrived at relative to the story of the New World’s unknown 
past. On the sculptured tablets of Palenque, Quiriqua, Chichenitza, and Uxmal, and 
on the collossal statues at Copan and other ancient sites, are numerous inscriptions 
awaiting the decypherment of the future Young or Champolion of American palæo- 
graphy. The whole region was once in occupation by a lettered race, having the 
same written characters and a common civilisation. If they learned of some apostle 
from the Mediterranean the grand invention of letters, which, as Bacon says, “ as 
ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of 
the wisdom, illuminations and inventions, the one of the other ;” then, we may confidently 
anticipate the recovery of some graphic memorial of the messenger, confirming the 
oft-recurring traditions of bearded white men who came from beyond the sea, intro- 
duced the arts of civilisation, and were reverenced as divine benefactors. It cannot be that 
Egyptian, Assyrian, Hittite, Pheenician, and other most ancient races, are still perpetuated 
by so many traces of their wanderings in the Old World; that the Northmen’s graphic 
runes have placed beyond all question their pre-Columbian explorations ; and yet that not 
a single trace of Mediterranean wanderers to the lost Atlantis survives. In Humboldt’s 
“ Researches,” a fragment of a reputed Phoenician inscription is engraved. It was copied 
by Ranson Bueno, a Franciscan monk, from a block of granite which he discovered in a 
cavern in the mountain chain, between the Orinoco and the Amazon. Humboldt recog- 
nised in it some resemblance to the Phenician alphabet. We must remember, however, 
what rudely traced Phœnician characters are; and as to their transcriber, it may be pre- 
sumed that he had no knowledge of Phenician. Humboldt, says of him: “The good 
monk seemed to be but little interested about this pretended inscription,” though, he 
adds, he had copied it very carefully 
The lost Atlantis, then, lies still in the future. The earlier studies of the monuments 
and prehistoric remains of the American continent seemed to point conclusively, to a native 
source for its civilisation. From quipu and wampum, pictured grave-post and buffalo 
robe, to the most finished hieroglyphs of Copan or Palenque, continuous steps appear to 
be traceable whereby American man developed for himself the same wondrous invention 
of letters which ancient legend ascribed to Thoth or Mercury ; or, in less mythic form, to 
