730 Recent Literature. [September, 



3. That Atlantis was the region where man first rose from a 



4. That it became, in the course of ages, a populous and mighty 

 nation, from whose overflowings the shores of the Gulf of Mex- 

 ico, the Mississippi river, the Amazon, the Pacific coast of South 

 America, the Mediterranean, the west coast of Europe and Africa, 

 the Baltic, the Black sea and the Caspian, were populated by civ- 



Our author having, as he ; 

 points, is fully convinced that r 

 antediluvian world, the Garden of Eden, the Elysian fields, &c, 

 &c, but that the gods and godesses of the ancient Greeks, the 

 Phoenicians, the Hindoos and the Scandinavians were simply the 

 kings, queens and heroes of Atlantis, and the acts attributed to 

 them in mythology are a confused recollection of real historical 

 events. His thirteenth and last proposition is that when Atlantis 

 sunk under the waves " a few persons escaped in ships and in 

 rafts, and carried to the nations east and west the tidings of the 



appalling catastrophe, \vhi< h ha 



: in the 



flood and deluge legends of the different nations of the old and 

 new worlds." 



The book is the result of extensive but desultory reading, 

 neither critical nor well directed. We may admire the author's 

 courage, while we may not have so high an opinion of his judg- 

 ment in dealing with subjects in regard to some of which the 

 ablest investigators might well hesitate to express an opinion. 

 So-called demonstrations based on improbable hypotheses, in this 

 book go hand in hand with a leveling democratic use or misuse 

 of authors, which is characteristic of works of the character of 

 the " Atlantis." He does not seem to recognize the fact that one 

 writer may carry more weight than another. 



The author starts with the view that the results of the Challen- 

 ger's researches were to establish the existence of a submarine 

 Atlantean continent; whereas if any one geological fact seems to 

 have been elicited by the soundings made in the North Atlantic, 

 and one about which the soundest geologists are agreed, is the 

 view that the ocean beds have always been such. If this be so, 

 the foundations of a hypothetical Atlantis have been removed ; 

 and so one might go through the book and show, in the light 01 

 modern anthropology and philology, that the positions soberly 

 advocated by our well-meaning author, are simply absurdities. 

 The book is well written, with excellent illustrations, and type 

 and press work are most creditable to the publishers, but the 

 time for such books has gone by, since the results of recent geo- 

 logical and anthropological as well as philological studies combine 

 to show that man originated somewhere in Central Asia, ana 

 migrated westward. If the reader thinks that our criticisms :m 

 unjust, let him, after reading the "Atlantis," examine Tylor s 



