ATLANTIC LEGEND 



THE progressive creation of our earth as man found it had 

 gone on for many miUion years before man himself began 

 its discovery. In the long stream of evolution man has been 

 here but the wink of an eye. Early man looking on his world 

 saw chaos where modern man has discovered order. But the 

 necessity for order was part of his mind. The urge to discover 

 harmony between himself and inanimate nature set him apart 

 as Man. He began to think in pictures, stories, and legends — 

 hypotheses formed from the true testimony of his senses tem- 

 pered with fear and hope. So when we use the word 'legend" 

 we do not mean fable or fairy story. True racial legend is a kind 

 of history in the making composed of old memories and inven- 

 tions to fit facts and events that, as yet, have no orderly recog- 

 nition in history. Above all it was an effort of the human mind 

 to mold unity out of chaos without the aid of our modern pre- 

 cise instruments or more disciplined scientific method of 

 thought. But, oddly enough, legends often break trail in the 

 dark uncertainty of prehistory and become accepted history in 

 their turn. Troy, we should remember, was once a name in a 

 poem until Schleimann pursued the legend and found the 

 actual city as described in Homer's Iliad. 



There is a particular and persistent legend connected with 

 our story of the Ocean River — the legend of the lost Atlantis, 



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