ATLANTIS — TERMIEE. 225 



from Europe to the United States, or from Morocco to the West 

 Indies, or from Senegambia to the South American Continent. 



Now, let geology say its word. In the same way that the painter's 

 eye perceives a whole world of colors and reflections unsuspected by 

 other men, so is the eye of the geologist impressed by the vague and 

 very uncertain gleams w^hich illumine, for him alone, the darkness 

 of the gulfs and the still deeper night of the distant past. And his 

 ear, sensitive as that of the musician, vibrates to the murmurs, the 

 crackings, and the sighs which come from the earth's depths or from 

 the depths of history and which the majority of men mistake for 

 absolute silence. 



Observe one primary fact: The eastern region of the Atlantic 

 Ocean, over all its length and probably from one pole to the other, 

 is a great volcanic zone. In the depression along the coast of 

 Africa and of Europe and in the eastern part of the highly elevated 

 strip which occupies the middle of the sea volcanoes are abundant. 

 All the peaks which reach the surface of the sea outcrop in the 

 form of volcanic islands or bearing volcanoes. Gough Island, Tris- 

 tan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension, the Cape Verde Islands, the 

 Canaries, the great Madeira and the neighboring isles, all the Azores, 

 Iceland, Jan Mayen Island are either integrally or in greater part 

 formed of lava. I will tell in a moment how certain dredgings in 

 1898 found lavas, at depths of 3,000 meters, on a line from the 

 Azores to Iceland, and at about 500 miles or 900 kilometers to the 

 north of the Azores. One navigator in 1838 established the exist- 

 ence of a submarine volcano on the Equator at about 22° west longi- 

 tude, or on the line joining Ascension to the archipelago of Cape 

 Verde; warm steam was rising from the waves and shallows had 

 formed unlike those indicated on the charts. On the islands I have 

 just named many volcanoes are still in activity, the extinct ones 

 appear to have been extinguished only yesterday, everywhere earth- 

 quakes are frequent, here and there islets may spring up abruptly 

 from the sea or rocks long known may disappear. The continuity 

 of these phenomena is concealed by the ocean covering them, but to 

 the geologist it is unquestionable. 



The volcanic zone of the eastern Atlantic is comparable in lengtli, 

 in breadth, and in eruptive or seismic activity, to that which forms 

 the western border of America, and coincides in the south with the 

 Cordillera of the Andes; it is one of the characteristic traits of the 

 present phase of the earth, quite like the fiery girdle of the Pacific 

 Ocean. Now, there is no volcano without a convulsion, or, at the 

 very least, not without a subsidence of some portion of the terrestrial 

 crust. The volcanoes of the fiery girdle of the Pacific stake out the 

 border of a deep marine foss which compasses this ocean, and which, 

 18618°— SM 1915 15 



