ATLANTIS. 



By Pierre Termier, 

 Memher of the AcadeDiy of Srienee.'i, Director of f^errice of the (leoloffic Chart 



of France. 



There is a somber poem, that of Atlantis, as it is unfolded to our 

 eyes, marvelonsly concise and simple, in two of Plato's dialogues. 

 We understand, after having read it, why all of antiquity and the 

 Middle Ages, from Socrates to Columbus, for nineteen hundred years, 

 gave the name " Sea of Darkness " to the ocean region which was 

 tlie scene of so frightful a cataclysm. They knew it, that sea, full 

 of crimes and menaces, wilder and more inhospitable than any other; 

 and they questioned fearfully what there was beyond its mists, and 

 what ruins, still splendid after a hundred centuries of immersion, 

 were hidden beneath its peaceful waves. To brave a voyage across 

 the Sea of Darkness and to pass the gulf where sleeps Atlantis, 

 Columbus required a superhuman courage, an almost irrational con- 

 fidence in the idea that he had apprehended the true shape of the 

 earth, an almost supernatural desire to bear the Christ — after the 

 manner of his patron, St. Christopher, the sublime river ferryman — 

 to the unknown peoples who so long were awaiting Him, " seated in 

 the shadow of death," 



On the mystic shores of the western world. 



After the voyages of Columbus terror disappears, curiosity re- 

 mains. Geographers and historians are occupied with the question 

 of Atlantis; leaning over the abyss they seek to determine the exact 

 location of the engulfed island, but, finding nowhere any definite 

 indication, many of them slip into skepticism. They doubt Plato, 

 thinking that this great genius might indeed have imagined, from 

 beginning to end, the fable of Atlantis, or that he mistook for an 

 island of gigantic dimensions a portion of Mauritania or of Sene- 

 gambia. Others transpose Atlantis into northern Europe, while 

 others at length do not hesitate to identify it with all America. The 

 poets alone remain f aithfid to the beautiful legend ; the poets who, 



1 Lecture given before the Institnt Oceanographique of Paris? Nov. 30, 1912. Translated 

 by permission from Bulletin de I'lnstltut Oc^anographiqne, No. 256, 191.3. 



219 



