210 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
continuous once than now; that islands now separated were 
then joined together, and to adjacent continents; and that 
what are now banks and shoals beneath the sea were then 
peopled lowlands. 
I have said that during the glacial period, if, as I believe, 
it was contemporaneous in the two hemispheres, the sea 
must have stood at least 1000 feet lower than it now does. 
It may have been much lower than this, but I prefer to err 
on the safe side. When geologists have mapped out the 
limits of ancient glacier and continental ice all over the 
world, it will be possible to calculate the minimum amount 
of water that was abstracted from the sea; and if by that 
time hydrographers have shown on their charts the shoals 
and submerged banks that would be laid dry, fabled Atlantis 
will rise before our eyes between Europe and America, and 
in the Pacific the Malay Archipelago will give place to the 
Malay Continent. Here is a noble inquiry, an unexplored 
region of research, at the entrance of which I can only stand 
and point the way for abler and stronger minds; an inquiry 
that will lead to the knowledge of the lands where dwelt the 
peoples of the glacial period who lived before the flood. 
Vague and visionary as these speculations must seem to 
many, to others who are acquainted with the enormous 
glaciation to which America has been subjected they wil 
appear to be based on substantial truths. The immense 
accumulation of ice over both poles, reaching far down into 
the temperate zones, in some meridians encroaching on the 
tropics, and in Equatorial America certainly all the land, 
lying 2000 feet above the level of the sea, supporting great 
glaciers, involve conditions which must have greatly drained 
the sea. Lands now submerged must have been uncovered, 
and on the return of the waters at the close of the glacial 
period many a peopled lowland must have been overwhelmed 
in the nearly universal deluge. 
