1M 
t8j 9 .] Atlantis not a Myth. 
impenetrable forests of Central and South America suddenly 
finds himself upon a broad and well-paved road, but a road 
over which in places there have grown trees centuries old. 
Curiously following this road he sees before him, as though 
brought thither by some Aladdin’s lamp, a vast city, a city 
built of stone ; buildings that look at a distance like our large 
New England factories ; splendid palaces and aqueduds, all 
constructed with such massiveness and grandeur as to com- 
pel a cry of astonishment from the surprised traveller ; an 
immense but deserted city, whose magnificent palaces and 
beautiful sculpturing are inhabited and viewed only by the 
iguana and centipede. The roads and paths to the aque- 
ducts, once so much travelled as to have worn hollows in 
the hard stone, are now trodden only by the ignorant mestizo 
or simple Indian. Of this deserted home of a lost race the 
traveller asks the same question as the miner, and the only 
answer he gets from the semi-civilised Indian is a laconic 
“ Qnien sabe ?” And who does know ? 
The curious and scientific world, however, are not so 
easily answered, and various are the theories and conjectures 
as to these diggers of mines and builders of mounds and 
strange cities. One of the most plausible of these — one 
believed by many scientists to be the true theory — is this : 
Ages ago the Americans presented a very different appear- 
ance from what they now do. Then an immense peninsula 
extended itself from Mexico, Central America, and New 
Granada, so far into the Atlantic that Madeira, the Azores, 
and the West India Islands are now fragments of it. This 
peninsula was a fair and fertile country inhabited by rich 
and civilised nations, a people versed in the arts of war and 
civilisation — a country covered with large cities and magni- 
ficent palaces ; their rulers, according to tradition, reigning 
not only on the Atlantic Continent, but over islands far and 
near, even into Europe and Asia. Suddenly, without 
warning, this whole fair land was engulfed by the sea, in a 
mighty convulsion of nature. 
Now, this catastrophe is not impossible or even impro- 
bable. Instances are not wanting of large trads of land, 
several hundred miles in extent, disappearing in a like man 
ner. The island of Ferdinandea sudddenly appeared, and 
after a while as suddenly disappeared. In 1819, during an 
earthquake in India, an immense trad of land near the 
River Indus sank from view, and a lake now occupies its 
place. 
The whole bed of the Atlantic, where Atlantis is said to 
have been situated, consists of extind volcanoes. The 
VOL. IX. (N.S.) 3 B 
