Legendary Islands of the Atlantic E-Book

William Henry Babcock

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

We cannot tell at what early era the men of the eastern Mediterranean first ventured through the Strait of Gibraltar out on the open ocean, nor even when they first allowed their fancies free rein to follow the same path and picture islands in the great western mystery. Probably both events came about not long after these men developed enough proficiency in navigation to reach the western limit of the Mediterranean. We are equally in lack of positive knowledge as to what seafaring nation led the way.

Leseprobe

LEGENDARY ISLANDSOF THE ATLANTIC

A Study in Medieval Geography

BY

WILLIAM H. BABCOCK

Author of "Early Norse Visits to North America"

First Edition, 1922

© 2021 Librorium Editions

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

EARLY ACCOUNTS OF BIG SHIPS

The Atlantis Legend

Phoenician Exploration

The Greeks and Romans

Irish Sea-Roving

The Norsemen

Moorish Voyages

Italian Exploration

Bretons and Basques

The Zeno Story

Portuguese Discovery

Columbus, Vespucius, and Cabot

CHAPTER II ATLANTIS

Elements of Fact and Fancy in Plato's Tale of Atlantis

Significant Passages from the Tale

Atlantean Invasion of the Mediterranean

Location and Size of Atlantis

Improbability of the Existence of Such an Island

Termier's Theory of an Ancient Atlantic Continental Mass

Floral and Faunal Evidence of Connection with Europe and Africa

Evidence of Submergence

Relation of the Submarine Banks of the North Atlantic to the Problem

Facts and Legends As to Submergences in Historic Times

Reports of Obstruction to Navigation in Early Times

The Sargasso Sea As the Ancient Atlantis

Summary

CHAPTER III ST. BRENDAN'S EXPLORATIONS AND ISLANDS

The Lismore Version of the Saint's Adventures

Another Version

Attempts to Explain the Origin of the Brendan Narratives

A Norman French Version

The Probable Basis of Fact

The Cartographic Evidence

The Hereford Map of circa 1275

The Dulcert Map of 1339

The Map of the Pizigani of 1367

First Use of "Porto Santo" as Name of One of the Madeiras

Animal and Bird Names of Islands

Madeira

The Beccario Map of 1426

The Bianco Map of 1448

Behaim's Globe of 1492

Later Maps

Conclusion

CHAPTER IV THE ISLAND OF BRAZIL

Probable Gaelic Origin of the Word "Brazil"

Another Suggested Derivation

Free Distribution of the Name on Early Maps

Location and Shape of the Island

Significant Shape on the Catalan Map of 1375

Possible Identification with the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region

The Catalan Map of about 1480

The Sylvanus Map of 1511

Omission of the Name in Norse and Irish Records

CHAPTER V THE ISLAND OF THE SEVEN CITIES

The Island of Brazil

Antillia

The Legendary Home of Portuguese Refugees

Another Account

Mythical Location of the Seven Cities on the Mainland

Later Reappearance As an Island

Occurrence of the Name in the Azores

CHAPTER VI THE PROBLEM OF MAYDA

Possible Arabic Origin of Name

Mayda and the Isle of Man

Resumption of Name "Mayda"

Transference of Mayda to American Waters

Possible Identity of Vlaenderen Island with Mayda

Persistence of Mayda on Maps Down to the Modern Period

Probable Basis of Fact Underlying This Legendary Island

CHAPTER VII GREENLAND OR GREEN ISLAND

Adam of Bremen's Account of Greenland

Its Insular Character

Green Island on Sixteenth-Century Maps

Various "Green Islands:" Shrinkage of the Name

Origin of the Name "Greenland" and Its Justification

Icelandic Settlement

Greenland as a Peninsula

Life of the Icelandic Colony

Explorations of Early Greenlanders

The Eskimos

CHAPTER VIII MARKLAND, OTHERWISE NEWFOUNDLAND

First Norse Account, In Hauk's Book

Another Account, In the Arna-Magnaean Manuscript

Later Derivative Records

Labrador as Markland

Nova Scotia as Markland

Intercourse between Greenland and Markland

Brazil Island in the Place of Markland

The Zeno Narrative

CHAPTER IX ESTOTILAND AND THE OTHER ISLANDS OF ZENO

The Zeno Volume

First Use of the Names "Estotiland" and "Drogio"

Geographical Implication of the Narrative

Conjectures as to the Derivation of "Estotiland"

The Estotilanders

Drogio

Discrepancies in the Narrative of the Fisherman

The Zeno Narrative Itself

The Work of F. W. Lucas

A Monastery in the Arctic

The Zeno Map

Frisland

Icaria

Influence of Imaginary Cartography

CHAPTER X ANTILLIA AND THE ANTILLES

Antillia

Peter Martyr's Identification of Antillia

Other Identifications

An Antillia of the Mainland

The Origin of the Name

Humboldt's Hypothesis

The Weimar Map

The Beccario Map of 1426

The Beccario Map of 1435

The Four Islands of the Antilles on the Beccario Map

Antillia

Reylla

Salvagio

I in Mar

The Bianco Map of 1436

The Pareto Map of 1455

The Benincasa Map of 1482

The Weimar Map (after 1481)

The Laon Globe of 1493

Other Maps

Identity of Antillia with the Antilles

CHAPTER XI CORVO, OUR NEAREST EUROPEAN NEIGHBOR

Origin of the Name

Ancient Memorials

Equestrian Statues

Need of Exploration

CHAPTER XII THE SUNKEN LAND OF BUSS AND OTHER PHANTOM ISLANDS

The Discovery of Buss

Its Disappearance from the Map

Islands of Demons

Saintly Islands

Daculi and Bra

Grocland, Helluland, etc.

Stokafixa

Other Map Islands in the Northwestern Atlantic

CHAPTER XIII SUMMARY

CHAPTER IINTRODUCTION

We cannot tell at what early era the men of the eastern Mediterranean first ventured through the Strait of Gibraltar out on the open ocean, nor even when they first allowed their fancies free rein to follow the same path and picture islands in the great western mystery. Probably both events came about not long after these men developed enough proficiency in navigation to reach the western limit of the Mediterranean. We are equally in lack of positive knowledge as to what seafaring nation led the way.

The weight of authority favors the Phoenicians, but there are some indications in the more archaic of the Greek myths that the Hellenic or pre-Hellenic people of the Minoan period were promptly in the field. These bequests of an olden time are most efficiently exploited, in the matter-of-fact and very credulous "Historical Library" of Diodorus Siculus,1 about the time of Julius Caesar, who feels himself fully equipped with information as to the far-ranging campaigns of Hercules, Perseus, and other worthies. His identifications of tribes, persons, and places find an echo which may be called modern in Hakluyt's map of 1587,2 illustrating Peter Martyr, which shows the Cape Verde Islands as Hesperides and Gorgades vel Medusiae. But this, though curious, is, of course, irrelevant as corroboration. Diodorus himself was a long way from his material in point of time, but from him we may at least possibly catch some glimmer of the origin of the mythical narratives, some refraction of the events that suggested them.

EARLY ACCOUNTS OF BIG SHIPS

Small coasting, and incidentally sea-ranging, vessels must be of great antiquity, for the record of great ships capable of carrying hundreds of men and prolonging their voyages for years extends very far back indeed. We may recall the Scriptural item incidentally given of the fleets of Hiram, King of Tyre, and Solomon, King of Israel: "For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks."3 Tharshish is generally understood to have been Tar-tessus by the Guadalquivir beyond the western end of the Mediterranean. The elements of these exotic cargoes indicate, rather, traffic across the eastern seas. No doubt "ship of Tarshish" had come (like the term East Indiaman) to have a secondary meaning, distinguishing, wherever used, a special type of great vessel of ample capacity and equipment, named from the long voyage westward to Spain, in which it was first conspicuously engaged. But this would carry back we know not how many centuries the era of huge ships sailing from Phoenicia toward the Atlantic and seemingly able to go anywhere; with the certainty that lesser craft had long anticipated them on the nearer laps of the journey at least.

Corroboration is found in the utterances of a Chinese observer, later in date but apparently dealing with a continuing size and condition. "There is a great sea [the Mediterranean], and to the west of this sea there are countless countries, but Mu-lan-p'i [Mediterranean Spain] is the one country which is visited by the big ships. . . Putting to sea from T'o-pan-ti [the Suez of today] . . . after sailing due west for full an hundred days, one reaches this country. A single one of these (big) ships of theirs carries several thousand men, and on board they have stores of wine and provisions, as well as weaving looms. If one speaks of big ships, there are none so big at those of Mu-lan-p'i."4

This statement is credited to only a hundred years before Marco Polo. One naturally suspects some exaggeration. But a parallel account, nearly as expansive and very circumstantial, is given in the same work concerning giant vessels sailing in the opposite direction some six hundred years earlier. It begins: "The ships that sail the Southern Sea and south of it are like houses. When their sails are spread they are like great clouds in the sky." Professor Holmes, drawing attention to these passages (which he quotes), very justly observes, "who shall say that the mastery of the sea known to have been attained in the Orient 500 A. D. had not been achieved long prior to that date?"5

The Atlantis Legend

We may be safe in styling Atlantis (Ch. II) the earliest mythical island of which we have any knowledge or suggestion, since Plato's narrative, written more than 400 years before Christ, puts the time of its destruction over 9,000 years earlier still. It seems pretty certain that there never was any such mighty and splendid island empire contending against Athens and later ruined by earthquakes and engulfed by the ocean. Atlantis may fairly be set down as a figment of dignified philosophic romance, owing its birth partly to various legendary hints and reports of seismic and volcanic action but much more to the glorious achievements of Athens in the Persian War and the apparent need of explaining a supposed shallow part of the Atlantic known to be obstructed and now named the Sargasso Sea. Perhaps Plato never intended that any one should take it as literally true, but his story undoubtedly influenced maritime expectations and legends during medieval centuries. It cannot be said that any map unequivocally shows Atlantis; but it may be that this is because Atlantis vanished once for all in the climax of the recital.

Phoenician Exploration

It may be that Phoenician exploration in Atlantic waters was well developed before 1100 B.C., when the Phoenicians are alleged to have founded Cadiz on the ocean front of southern Spain; but its development at any rate could not have been greatly retarded after that. The new city promptly grew into one of the notable marts of the world, able during a long period to fit out her own fleets and extend her commerce anywhere. It is greatly to be regretted that we have no record of her discoveries. Carthage, a younger but still ancient Tyrian colony, farther from the scene of western action, was not less enterprising and in time quite eclipsed her; but at last she fell utterly, as did Tyre itself, whereas Cadiz, though no longer eminent, continues to exist. However, in her prime Carthage ranged the seas pretty widely; according to Diodorus Siculus, she was much at home in Madeira,6 and her coins have been found off the shore of distant Corvo of the Azores. But it cannot be said that any of the Phoenician cities, older or newer, has left any traces of exploration among Atlantic islands other than these or added any mythical islands to maps or legends, unless through successors translating into another language. The crowning achievement of the Phoenicians, so far as we know, was the circumnavigation of Africa by mariners in the service of Pharaoh Necho some 700 years before Christ. This would naturally have brought them en route into contact with the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, and they would be likely to pass on to the Egyptians and Greeks a report of the attributes of those islands partly embodied in names that might adhere.

The Greeks and Romans

We know that the Greeks of Pythias' time coasted as far north as Britain and probably Scandinavia and had most likely made the acquaintance still earlier of the Fortunate Islands (two or more of the Canary group), similarly following downward the African shore. Long afterward the Roman Pliny knew Madeira and her consorts as the Purple Islands; Sertorius contemplated a possible refuge in them or other Atlantic island neighbors; and Plutarch wrote confidently of an island far west of Britain and a great continent beyond the sea where Saturn slept. Other almost prophetic utterances of the kind have been culled from classical authors, but they have mostly the air of speculation. It cannot be said that the Greeks or Romans devoted much energy to the remoter reaches of the ocean.

Irish Sea-Roving

Ireland was never subject to Rome, though influenced by Roman trade and culture. From prehistoric times the Irish had done some sea roving, as their Imrama, or sea sagas, attest; and this roving was greatly stimulated in the first few centuries of conversion to Christianity by an abounding access of religious zeal. Irish monks seem to have settled in Iceland before the end of the eighth century and even to have sailed well beyond it. There are good reasons for believing that they had visited most of the islands of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes. We cannot suppose that this rather reckless persistency ended there in such a period of expansion. It is quite possible that we owe to this trait the Island of Brazil, in the latitude of southern Ireland, as an American souvenir on so many medieval maps (Ch. IV). It is certain that the "Navigatio" of St. Brendan scattered,St. Brandan Islands, real or fanciful, over the ocean wastes of a credulous cartography (Ch. III).

The Norsemen

A little later Scandinavians followed along the northern route, finding convenient stopping points in the Faroes and Iceland, discovered Greenland, and planted two settlements on its southwestern shore in the last quarter of the tenth century (Ch. VII). Some of their ruins, a less number of inscriptions, and many fragmentary relics and residua are found, so that we can form a good idea of their manner of life. Such as it was, it endured more than four hundred years. To contemporary and slightly later geography Greenland appeared most often as a far-flung promontory of Europe, jutting down on the western side of the great water; but sometimes it was thought of as an oceanic island, with greater or less shifting of location, and seems to be responsible for divers mythical Green Islands of various maps and languages.

Less than a quarter of a century after their first landing the Norse Greenlanders became aware of a more temperate coast line to the southwest, the better part of which they called Vinland, or Wineland, but all of which we now name America. Perhaps Leif Ericsson brought the first report of it as the result of an accidental landfall close to the year iooo A. D. Not long afterward, Thorfinn Karlsefni with three ships and 160 people attempted to colonize a part of the region. The venture failed, owing chiefly to the hostility of the Indians at the most favorable point. The visitors, however, made the acquaintance of the typical American Atlantic shore line of beach and sand dune which stretches from Cape Cod to the tip of Florida with one or two slight interruptions and one or two fragmentary minor northward extensions. The Norsemen or some predecessor had observed and named the three great zones of territory which must always have existed. Among investigators there has been general concurrence as to their discovery of Labrador and Newfoundland, to which most would add Cape Breton Island and more or less of the coast beyond. It has appeared to me that they made their chief abode in the New World on the shore of Passamaquoddy Bay behind Grand Manan Island and Grand Manan Channel, with the racing ocean streams of the mouth of the Bay of Fundy; and that they found this site inclement in winter and tried to remove to a land-locked bay of southern New England but were baffled and withdrew. My reasons have been pretty fully set forth in "Early Norse Visits to North America"7 For the present it is enough to say that the discovered regions seem sometimes to have been thought of as a continuous coast line, sometimes as separate islands more or less at sea. But they did not get upon the maps in any shape until several centuries later.

Moorish Voyages

The Moors who conquered Spain took up the task of Atlantic exploration from that coast after a time. Its islands appear in divers of the Arabic maps. In particular we know through Edrisi,8 the most celebrated name of Arabic geography, of the extraordinary voyage of the Moorish Magrurin of Lisbon, who set out at some undefined time before the middle of the twelfth century to cross the Sea of Darkness and Mystery. They touched upon the Isle of Sheep and other islands which were or were to become notable in sea mythology. Perhaps these islands were real, but they are not capable of certain identification now. These Moorish adventurers seem to have reached the Sargasso Sea and to have changed their course in order to avoid its impediments, attaining finally what may have been one of the Canary Islands, where they suffered a short imprisonment and whence, after release, they followed the coast of Africa homeward. Edrisi about 1154 wrought a world map in silver (long lost) for King Robert of Sicily and also wrote a famous geography illustrated by a world map and separate sectional or climatic maps. He devotes some space to Atlantic islands and their legends, shows a few of them, and believes in twenty-seven thousand; but the very few copies of his work which remain were made at different periods and in different nations, and their maps disagree surprisingly; so that it is not practicable to restore with certainty what he originally depicted. He seems to have had at least some acquaintance with the authentic island groups from the Cape Verde Islands to the Azores and Britain. The fantastic legends he appends to some of them do not seem to have greatly affected the prevailing European lore of that kind.

Italian Exploration

The Italians of the thirteenth century undertook similar explorations and temporarily occupied at least one of the Canary Islands, Lanzarote, which still bears, corrupted, the name of its Genoese invader, Lancelota Maloessel, of about 1470. On early fourteenth-century maps and some later ones the cross of Genoa is conspicuously marked on this island in commemoration of the exploit. It was probably at this period that Italian names were applied to most of the Azores and to other islands of the eastern groups. A few of these names still persist, for example, Porto Santo and Corvo; but others, after the rediscovery, gave way to Portuguese equivalents or substitutes. Thus Legname was translated into Madeira, and Li Conigi (Rabbit Island) became more prettily Flores (Island of Flowers). About 1285 the Genoese also sent out an expedition9 "to seek the east by way of the west" under the brothers Vivaldi, who promptly vanished with all their men. Long afterward another expedition picked up on the African coast one who claimed to be a survivor; and it is probable that the Genoese expedition attempted to sail around Africa but came upon disaster before it was far on its way. The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italians undoubtedly added many islands to the maps or secured their places there; but we have no evidence that they passed westward beyond the middle of the Atlantic.

Bretons and Basques

The Bretons shared in the Irish monk voyages, their Saint Malo appearing in tradition sometimes as a companion of Saint Brendan, sometimes as an imitator or competitor. Also their fishermen, with the Basques, from an early time had pushed out into remote regions of the sea. The Pizigani map of 136710 (Fig. 2) represents a Breton voyage of adventure and disaster near one of les îles fantastiques, appearing for the first time thereon. Their presence on the American shore in the years shortly following Cabot's discovery is commemorated by Cape Breton Island.

The Zeno Story

It has been alleged that two Venetian brothers, Antonio and Nicolò Zeno, in the service of an earl of the northern islands, took part with him about 1400 A.D. in certain explorations westward, he being incited thereto by the report of a fisherman, who claimed to have spent many years as a castaway and captive in regions southwest of Greenland. The Zeno narrative, dealt with later (Ch. IX), was accompanied by a map (Fig. 19), which exercised a great influence during a long period on all maps that succeeded it, adding several islands never before heard of. Both map and narrative are recognized as spurious or at best so corrupted by misunderstandings and transformed by rough treatment and a post-Columbian attempt at reconstruction as to be wholly unreliable. It is, indeed, possible that a fisherman of the Faroes made an involuntary sojourn in Newfoundland and elsewhere in America from about 1375 or 1380 onward and that his story induced the ruler of certain northern islands to sail westward and investigate. But both features are very dubious, and at any rate nothing was accomplished except the confusion of geography.

Portuguese Discovery

This brings us down to the rise of Portuguese nautical endeavor, which seems to have begun earlier than has generally been supposed but became most conspicuous under the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator. Its achievements included the rediscovery of Madeira and the Azores, which in many quarters had been forgotten, the exploration of the African coast, the accidental discovery or rediscovery of South American Brazil by Cabral, and the voyage of Vasco da Gama to India around the Cape of Good Hope. Perhaps we might insert in the list the discovery of Antillia. At any rate, it got on the map with a Portuguese name in the first half of the fifteenth century, and several other islands accompanied it. They all certainly seem to be American and West Indian.

Columbus, Vespucius, and Cabot

Incidentally the Portuguese activity stimulated the enthusiasm of Columbus, guided his plans, and contributed to the eminent success of his great undertaking. In Antillia it provided a first goal, which he believed to be nearer than it really was. He fully meant to attain it and probably really did so, but without recognizing Antillia in Cuba or Hispaniola, for he thought he had missed it on the way and left it far behind. Vignaud insists that Columbus did not aim at Asia until after he actually reached the West Indies but sought to attain Antillia only.11 However this may be, there is no doubt that he found in the island a notable prompting to his supreme adventure.

The discoveries of Columbus, Vespucius, and Cabot, with their immediate followers, heralded the opening of an effective knowledge of the western world and the ocean world to the centers of civilization. Thereafter the delineation of new islands did not cease but for a long time rather multiplied; yet they had little significance or importance, being chiefly the products of fancy, optical illusion, or error in reckoning. One of the latest worth considering is the island of Buss (Ch. XII), reported where there is no land by a separated vessel of Frobisher's expedition near the end of the sixteenth century. Afterward it was known as the Sunken Land of Bus, or Buss, to the grave concern of mariners.

We are reasonably secure against such imposition now, though perhaps it is not yet impossible. The old mythical or apocryphal islands, too, are gone from standard maps and most others, though you may yet find in cartographic work of little authority one or two of the more tenacious specimens making a final stand.

1The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, in 15 Books, to which are added the fragments of Diodorus, and those published by H. Valesius, I. Rhodomannus, and F. Ursinus, transl. by G. Booth, Esq., 2 vols., London, 1814; reference in Vol. 1, Bk. 3. Ch. 4, p. 195, and Bk. 4, Ch. 1, pp. 235 and 243

2 A. E. Nordenskiöld: Facsimile-Atlas to the Early History of Cartography, transl. by J. A. Ekelöf and C. R. Markham, Stockholm, 1889. p. 131.

3 I Kings, 10:22.

4 Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Entitled Chu-fan-chi, transl. and annotated by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 142.

5 W. H. Holmes: Handbook of Aboriginal American Antiquities, Bur. of Amer. Ethnology, Bull. 60, Part I, Smithsonian Instn., Washington, D. C., 1919, p. 27.

6 Historical Library, Vol. I, Bk. 5, Ch. 2, p. 309.

7 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 59, No. 19, Washington, D. C., 1913. See also: Recent History and Present Status of the Vinland Problem, Geogr. Rev., Vol. II, 1921, pp. 265-282.

8 Edrisi's "Geography," in two versions, the first based on two, the second on four manuscripts, viz.: (1) P. A. Jaubert (translator): Géographie d'Edrisi, traduite de l'Arabe en Français, 2 vols. (Recueil de Voyages et de Memoirea public par la Société de Géographie, Vols. 5 and 6), Paris, 1836 and 1840; reference in Vol. 2, p. 27; (2) R. Dozy and M. J. De Goeje (translators): Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne par Edrisi: Texte arabe publié pour la premiere fois d'apres les man. de Paris et d'Oxford, Leiden, 1866.

9 M. d'Avezac: Notice des découvertes faites au Moyen Age dans l'Océan Atlantique antérieurement aux grandes explorations portugaises du quinzième siècle, Paris, 1845, p. 23.

10 [E. F.] Jomard: Les monuments de la géographie, ou recueil d'anciennes cartes europiennes et orientales . . . , Paris, [1842-62], Pl. X, I.

CHAPTER IIATLANTIS

About 2,300 years ago Plato wrote of a great and populous island empire in the outer (Atlantic) ocean, which had warred against Athens more than 9,000 years before his time and been suddenly engulfed by a natural cataclysm. According to his statement of the case this prodigious phenomenon, with all the splendor of national achievement that shortly preceded it, had been quite forgotten by the Athenians; but the tradition was recorded in the sacred books of the priests of Sais at the head of. the Nile delta and was related by these Egyptians to Solon of Athens when he visited them apparently somewhere near 550 B. C. Solon embodied it, or began to embody it, in a poem (all trace of which is lost) and also related it to Dropides, his friend. It is probably to be understood that he further communicated it to this friend in some written form, for we find Critias in a dialogue with Socrates represented by Plato as declaring: "My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession."1 If so, it has vanished.

Elements of Fact and Fancy in Plato's Tale of Atlantis

It is evident that the Atlantis tale must be treated either as mainly historical, with presumably some distortions and exaggerations, or as fiction necessarily based in some measure (like all else of its kind) on living or antiquated facts. Certainly no one will go the length of accepting it as wholly true as it stands. But, even eliminating all reference to the god Poseidon and his plentiful demigod progeny, we are left with divers essential features which credulity can hardly swallow. Atlantis is too obviously an earlier and equally colossal Persia, western instead of eastern, overrunning the Mediterranean until checked by the intrepid stand of the great Athenian republic. The supreme authentic glory of Athens was the overthrow of Xerxes and his generals. Had this been otherwise we must believe that we should not have heard of the baffled invasion by Atlantis. Again, we are asked to accept Athens, contrary to all other information, as a dominant military state more than 9,500 years before Christ, when presumably its people, if existent, were exceedingly primitive and unformidable. Moreover, the sudden submergence of so vast a region as the imagined Atlantis would be an event without parallel in human annals, besides being pretty certain to leave marks on the rest of the world which could be recognized even now.