Author Description

The student of tradition will not readily encounter in the annals of his science a legend so persistent or so powerful in the appeal it makes to human imagination as that which tells of a great island-continent sunk fathoms deep beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. With the passing of generations credence in the former existence of such a region, instead of dwindling into a shadowy and inchoate myth, has assumed an appearance of scientific probability which compels the respectful attention of the serious geologist and folklorist. Within the past half-century a great and growing body of proof has by degrees gathered round a nucleus of conjecture. Expeditions fitted out by successive governments, American and European, have dragged the ocean-bed in search of the relics of a submerged land. Learned biologists have assured us that it is impossible toaccount for the similarities of certain forms of life in Western Europe and Eastern America otherwise than by assuming the existence of a former terrestrial connection between these regions. The folklores of the opposing European and American littorals are rich in memories of an ancient cataclysm, which precipitated the wreck of an oceanic culture from which their peoples believed themselves to have drawn the elements of progress. Indeed the testimony in favour of the existence of an Atlantean continent has now assumed proportions so formidable as to give pause to even the most dogmatic of those who once flatly rejected it as fabulous. The gradual growth of certainty in relation to the Atlantean theory closely resembles the process by which the existence of an American continent became increasingly clear to European men of science. The opponents of the belief in a western hemisphere laid stress upon the circumstance that the whole fabric of proof concerning it rested upon a traditional basis. They laughed to scorn the notion that the tales of the Island of Brasil, or of St Brandan's Isle might have some foundation in fac