•j74 Tvmehri. 



conclusion, based on a mass of evidence which it is impossible Cor we 

 even to summarise, as to the general ocean level having risen several 

 thousand feet, perhaps a mile or more, as offering an explanation, partial 

 or complete, for the disappearance of a former continent — or continents, 

 since the Lost Atlantis is not the only one whose existence has been 

 geologically conjectured— is so obvious as to require merely to be 

 mentioned. 



Donelly's celebrated work. -The Lost Atlantis." to judge from a 

 much thumbed copy which I recently borrowed from the Library, must 

 be a favourite work with the Trinidad reading public ; and well may it be 

 so. since our Island and the northward chain of Tobago, Grenada, St. 

 Lucia. St. Vincent, and the Windward and Leeward Islands generally, 

 mark, we are assured, the shore of a great inland sea to the east in 

 which the lost Continent subsided. We are all like children, it has 

 been said, picking up shells on the shore of eternity; but the thought 

 is specially brought home to us by the physical fact, as there seems every 

 reason to deem it. that we are here to-night, for example, met together 

 vvithin a mile or so of a great sea whose waves washed formerly a Conti- 

 nent now vanished. If sermons are to be found in stones, the rocks of 

 Trinidad surely have their lesson. 



But to return from the Lost Atlantis which in so far as the subject 

 of my lecture is concerned is or was. if it truly existed, but a stepping- 

 stone or bridge connecting the present so called Old and New Continents, 

 and rendering probable the dispersion of races from east to west, or 

 vice '-< rsa, across thousands of miles of now existing ocean, at a time 

 when coracles and curials were the sole means of transportation, wo have 

 had here in Trinidad within recent years a savant whose works bearing 

 on this subject have not yet locally obtained the recognition which they 

 merit. 1 refer to that series of noble works, monuments of erudition 

 and research, which flowed one after another from the pen of the Rev. 

 Father Etienne Brosse. formerly of the Leper Asylum, Cocorite. 

 It was my misfortune to come to this Island too late to have the privi- 

 lege of knowing him. It is a privilege which I should have greatly 

 prized, because apart from his great learning he must have been (from 

 many anecdotes told me concerning him by Father O'Byrne, our 

 late Vicar-General), a man of an exceptionally interesting and lovable 

 nature : modest, retiring, simple as a child, and self-devoting in whatever 

 cause he espoused in the interests of science or humanity. The dedica- 

 tion of one. the first of his works bearing on the subject now in ques- 

 tion, seemed to me even as I heard of it from the lips of Father 

 O'Byrne before I had read it. a touching index to the man's character. 

 It. is worded as follows : — ' : O Mon Dieu et Pere Bien-aime, je t'ofire ce 

 petit livre, qui a ete compose dans la solitude. En i'ecrivant, je n'ai 

 eherche que la verite ; mais comine dans mon isolement presque tout a fui 

 pour moi, sinon toi, o mon Pere, et que personne ne sera la pour 

 recevoir mon oeuvre, c'est a toi que je la confie et 1'abandonne. Ce que 

 tn ferae sera bien fait, si tn la soutiens, je te henirai tout autant." 



