590 CHINESE FOLKLORE AND SOME WESTERN ANALOGIES. 



a pleas.ant harbor, I>03'<)ikI which could l>c soon tho towoi's aiul castles 

 of a noblo city. The adventure)- loft his companions in tho stately 

 bai'ji'o that came out to meet him, and was ontei'tainod one o\-onino- at 

 tho court-house of an old-time city, where everything l)o.spoke the 

 fashions and manners of three centuries ago. Taken back to the har- 

 bor he found no caravel there, but when ho awoke from tho slumber 

 into which the rowers' chant had lulled him he learned that he had 

 been picked up senseless from a drifting wreck by a passing Portu- 

 guese trader. Arriving at his ancestral home he found that his family 

 had long since departed. More fortunate in seeking tho house of his 

 betrothed, he espied her upon a })alcony, and was about to spring into 

 her arms when she sought protection from a young cavalier by her 

 side. She was not his ladylove, but the groat-granddaughlor of the 

 Seralina Alvarez whom Don Fernando had left when ho set out upon 

 his strange voyage. 



Nor are the Japanese without their islands of perpetual youth, where 

 time passes unnoted by the blissful inhabitants, after the fashion in 

 which aging humanity has essayed to portray them since the days 

 long ago when men first l)egan to grow old. The land of lloraizan, 

 whoi'o reigns eternal spi-ing. where ethereal blossoms ovi'r bloom upon 

 the fertile slopes of Fusan, tlu' Mountiiin of luunortalit}', where pain 

 and sorrow are unknown, lies far away in the eastern sea. Once, it is 

 said, the physician of a cruel C'iiinoso tyrant escaped the despot's clutches 

 by promising to pick for his master the herl) of inunortality from this 

 favored shor(^; but ho ntn'oi* came back, and nothing would have ])oen 

 known of his succ(\ss had it not bocMi for \Vaso))i()Wo, a wise man of 

 Japan, who was di-ivon over tho ocean by a hurricane, and found him, 

 heedless of his errand, and living a joyous life among tho elect of the 

 gods in that deathless abode. W'asobiowo lived .several hundred years 

 agreeably enough in these delectable surroundings, but, being Japanese, 

 he W(Miriod at length even of heavenly content, and was brought home 

 on the back of a stork to die in his l)eloved Nagasaki. 



It seems hardly possible that mere accidental similarity can suffi- 

 ciently explain that prevalent fancy of a lost Atlantis in Europe, that 

 large island situated many days' sail from Libya toward the west, 

 which, in the description of Diodorus Siculus, "abounds with gardens 

 stored with various trees and niunerous orchards intersected hy pleas- 

 ant streams, * * * excelling so much in felicity as to resemble the 

 habitations of gods rather than of men."^ 



No feature is perhaps more common to the folk legends of Europe 

 and Asia than the magical passage of time in slumber or in a visit to 

 some place of enchantment. The germ of this notion has been referred 

 with some plausibility to the long sleep of nature during winter, after 



^The late Ignatius Donnelly made much of this tradition in his fanciful "Atlan- 

 tis," New York, 1882, 



