THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 173 
Some curious traditions are found in the writings 
of the ancients respecting an island of very large size, 
believed to have once existed in the Atlantic. Plato, 
in the Timeus, gives the fullest account of this 
island, which was called Atlantis. It is stated to have 
been nearly two hundred miles in length, situated 
opposite the Straits of Gibraltar. It was fertile and 
populous, and some of the warlike chiefs among 
whom it was divided, are said to have made irrup- 
tions upon the continent, and to have conquered a 
considerable part of Europe and Northern Africa. 
Several other islands are described as situated in the 
vicinity of Atlantis, beyond which lay a continent 
superior in size to all Europe and Africa. At length, 
the whole island is reported to have been swallowed 
up by the sea; after which, for a long period, that 
part of the Ocean was of difficult and dangerous navi- 
gation, on account of the numerous rocks and shelves 
-which lay beneath the surface. There are many cir- 
eumstances which render it improbable that this 
story, marvellous as it is, is entirely a fiction. It 
has been supposed that the great island was Cuba, 
the surrounding ones the other West Indies, and the 
great continent America; and that the cessation of 
intercourse with these regions, through the decay of 
naval enterprise, gave rise to the tradition that the 
island itself had disappeared. But this would not 
explain the matter-of-fact statement of the rocky 
shallows after the catastrophe; nor would the dis- 
tance of Cuba from Europe permit martial invasions 
of this continent to be readily made from it. Others 
have concluded—and this does not seem to my own 
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