208 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
the ocean, on which the present West Indian Islands were 
mountains, rising high above the level and fertile plains that 
are now covered by the sea? Obscurely the accounts of it 
have come down to us from the dim past, but there is a 
remarkable coincidence between the traditions that have 
been handed down on the two sides of the Atlantic. 
In a fragment of the works of Theopompus, who lived 
in the fourth century before the Christian era, is an account 
of a conversation between Silenus and Midas, the king of 
Phrygia, in which the former tells the king that Europe, Asia, 
and Africa were surrounded by the sea, but that beyond them 
was an island of immense size, in which were many great 
cities, and nations with laws and customs very different 
from theirs. Plato, in his “ Timzus and Critias,” relates 
that Solon was told by a priest of Sais, from the sacred 
inscriptions in the temple, how Solon’s country “once 
opposed a power which with great arrogance pushed its way 
into Europe and Asia from the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond 
the entrance which you call the Pillars of Hercules there 
was an island larger than Libya and Asia together. From 
it navigation passed to the other islands, and from them 
to the opposite continent which surrounded that ocean. 
On this great Atlantic island there was a powerful and 
singular kingdom, whose dominion extended not only over 
the whole island, but over many others, and parts of the 
continent. It ruled also over Libya as far as Egypt, and 
over Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This kingdom with the 
whole of its forces united tried to subjugate in one campaign ~ 
your country and ours, and all the country within the strait. 
At that time, O Solon, your nation shone out from all others 
by bravery and power. It was placed in great danger, but 
it defeated the attacking army, and erected triumphal 
monuments. But when at a later period earthquakes and 
great floods took place, the whole of your united army was 
swallowed up during one evil day and one evil night, and 
at the same time the island of Atlantis sank into the sea.” 
Crantor, quoted by Proclus, corroborates the account by 
Plato, and says that he found this same story retained by 
the priests of Sais, three hundred years after the period of 
Solon, and that he was shown the inscriptions on which it 
was recorded. 
