The Origin of the American Races. -I'-l 



ancient writers are called to give willing or unwilling testimony ; and 

 Plato's narrative (invented or really based on tradition, who can tell ?) 

 concerning the Lost Atlantis appears at full length. 



Humboldt must have had an overdose of the Asiatic theory, hence 

 his impatient fling at poor Father Garcia. But that such speculations 

 interested him when exhibited in moderation there can be little doubt. 

 In fact in his later work on the Cordilleras he seems to have become a 

 convert to an Eastern Asiatic Convert Theory. In a note to page 52 of 

 the first volume of his Travels (I refer always to Eoutledge and Sons' 

 edition, in Sir John Lubbock's Hundred Best Books Series) he refers to 

 the Atlantis without entering into any discussion concerning it ; but 

 somehow the feeling comes to one that the problem of its existence was 

 all the time present in his mind when making his elaborate observations 

 of ocean currents, ocean soundings, volcanic convulsions and kindred 

 phenomena in the Canary Islands and in the New World. The task to 

 which he set himself, however, was to collect facts, materials ; where 

 these justified immediate and reasonable conclusions he was ready to 

 draw them and was remarkably happy in doing so ; but his great object 

 was to collect materials of every sort and description for subsequent 

 study ; and I shall later on have to speak about one trove of his — a 

 collection of old manuscripts purchased at Mexico, which has proved of 

 the utmost value to recent Americanists and may probably lead to still 

 more important results in connection with the decipherment of native 

 hieroglyphs. 



In the meantime a last word with regard to the Lost Atlantis. The 

 perished Continent is not wholly lost. Among ourselves, a founder and 

 ex- President of this Institute, whose name, well known in European 

 scientific circles, will always be held in honour in this colony, where his 

 invaluable researches have been made, has both spoken and written 

 repeatedly upon this subject. Last year, if I remember rightly, or the 

 year before, he dealt with it incidentally in a lecture which he delivered 

 at the Queen's Royal College ; and the interest of his lecture was greatly 

 enhanced by a short address at its conclusion, on the same subject, 

 and to a like effect with certain modifications, by Dr. Watts, Royal 

 Commissioner on Agriculture in the West Indies. Since then I have 

 come across an article in the Fourteenth Report (1912) of the Michigan 

 Academy of Science indirectly confirming the views of both lecturers. 

 The conclusions at which the learned author, Mr. Howard B. Baker, 

 arrives are : that during an undetermined period prior to the close of 

 the Pleistocene Glacial Epoch, there was a much lower ocean level than 

 there has been since ; that at the end of that Epoch there was an increase 

 in the volume of oceans and that the general level rose several thousand 

 feet, probably a mile or more : that in the present state of science it is 

 impossible to account for this increase of the ocean on the basis of the 

 previous existence of the excess on or about the earth, and that the 

 natural inference is, that the increase resulted from cosmic causes which 

 for the present must be left in general terms. The importance of this 



