OBLITERATED CONTINENTS. 143 



but it varies sufficiently to indicate a distinct source of 

 information. The priests of the ancient inhabitants of 

 Gaul, also, known as Druids, and the successors of the 

 Cyclopes, or cave-dwellers, possessed traditions collected by 

 Timagenes and pi-eserved in the " Fragments of Greek 

 History," by Ammienus Marcellinus, according to which 

 that country was invaded by a numerous people who came 

 from a distant island. Marcellus also informs us that there 

 were formerly seven islands in the Atlantic ocean near the 

 European continent, which we now recognize as the Cana- 

 ries. He adds that the inhabitants of these islands pre- 

 served the memory of a much larger island, Atlantis, 

 which for a long time exercised dominion over all the 

 other islands of the Atlantic. Other historical mention 

 might also be cited tending to convince us that, at a re- 

 mote period, a large island existed to the west of the straits 

 of Gibraltar, and which, by some convulsion of nature, or 

 by the slow erosion of the elements, has been extinct for 

 3,500 years. 



Now the sounding-line of the mariner comes again to 

 contribute its data to the solution of the puzzle of Atlantis, 

 " the fabled Atlantis," as we please to call it. Some of 

 my readers will recall the newspaper announcement, a few 

 years since, that Commander Gorringe, of the U. S. sloop 

 Gettysburg, had discovered a bank in the Atlantic ocean, 

 thirty-two fathoms beneath the surface of the water, which 

 was covered with a growth of living pink coral. The Get- 

 tysburg Bank is less than a hundred miles from the coast 

 of Portugal. A hundred miles west of this is the Jose- 

 phine Bank, in 82 fathoms of water. These observations 

 led to the collation of soundings by other government 

 vessels. In January, 1873, the British ship Challenger 



