The Fabled Atlantis 209 
Turning to the western side of the Atlantic, we find in the 
“Teo Amoxtli,’ as translated by the Abbé Brasseur de 
Bourburg, an account of the overwhelming of a country 
by the sea, when thunder and flames came out of it, and 
“the mountains were sinking and rising.” Everywhere 
throughout America there are traditions of a great catas- 
trophe, in which a whole country was submerged, and only 
a few people escaped to the mountains; and the Spanish 
conquerors relate with wonder the accounts they found 
amongst the Indians of a universal deluge. Amongst the 
modern Indians the traveller, Catlin, relates that in one 
hundred and twenty different tribes that he had visited in 
North, and South, and Central America, “ every tribe re- 
lated, more or less distinctly, their tradition of the deluge, 
in which one, or three, or eight persons were saved above 
the waters on the top of a high mountain.” 4 
If Atlantis were lowlands connecting the West Indian 
Islands with America, the other islands mentioned by Plato 
may have been the Azores, also greatly increased in extent 
by the lowering of the ocean; and the overwhelming of this 
lowland, on the melting of the ice at the close of the glacial 
period, may be that great catastrophe that is recorded on 
both sides of the Atlantic, but is more clearly remembered 
in the traditions of America, because all the highlands there 
had been covered with ice, and the inhabitants were re- 
stricted to those that were overwhelmed by the deluge. 
I approached this subject from the side of Natural History. 
I was driven to look for a refuge for the animals and plants. 
of tropical America during the glacial period, when I found 
proofs that the land they now occupy was at that time 
either covered with ice or too cold for genera that can now 
only live where frost is unknown. I had arrived at the 
conclusion that they must have inhabited lowlands now 
submerged, and following up the question, I soon saw that 
the very accumulation of ice that made their abode im- 
possible provided another for them by the lowering of the 
sea. Then pursuing the subject still further, I saw that all 
over the world curious questions concerning the distribution 
of races of mankind, of animals, and of plants, were rendered 
more easy of solution on the theory that land was more 
1 Lifted and Subsided Rocks in America, by G. Catlin, p. 182. 
