62 THE OCEAN RIVER 



natural rainfall and one made fertile by waters impounded 

 from the high mountains that ranged along the north of the 

 island. Many wild and tame animals inhabited Atlantis, in- 

 cluding elephants. The outermost walls of the citadel were of 

 bronze and others of tin and orichalcum. 



Now for many generations of men the Atlanteans main- 

 tained almost a divine nature — just, obedient and well-affected 

 toward gods and men. But their wealth brought on a degener- 

 ation and they despised virtue, became avaricious, and had no 

 eye to see true happiness any longer. Zeus, seeing that an hon- 

 orable race was in a wretched state, wished to inflict punish- 

 ment on them . . . and here Plato's story ends. 



If a sudden end came to the Atlantis of Plato, what could 

 have happened sometime as late as nine thousand b.c. or as 

 early as the beginnings of the holocene period, say twenty-five 

 or thirty thousand b.c? This was about the time the Cro- 

 Magnons came from somewhere southward up the Iberian 

 peninsula to southern France and their cave dwellings. 



The answer lies in the recent geological history of the lands 

 beneath the whirl of Atlantic waters from west to east to 

 south, somewhere within the encircling arm of the great Atlan- 

 tic stream. For a long time it was scientifically convenient to 

 believe that there had been no appreciable change in the great 

 ocean deeps for many hundred thousand years at least; they 

 were labelled as more or less permanent. But research and 

 theory have changed this attitude toward the hidden deeps of 

 the Atlantic Ocean in particular. The plastic surface crust of 

 the earth, thought to be thirty or more miles deep, is now 

 believed to be in a constant state of adjustment to different 

 kinds of strains, internal and possibly external. Occasional 

 acute adjustments occur in the crust, such as the shiver and 

 shake in the Province of Assam in India in 1950 which changed 

 the course of rivers, drained and created lakes, ruined settled 

 communities with quake and landslide, and probably raised 



