Note 7 — Chapter I

In the Atlantic Ocean, over against the Pillars of Hercules, lay an island larger than Asia and Africa taken together, and in its vicinity were other islands. The ocean in which these islands were situated was surrounded on every side by main-land; and the Mediterranean, compared with it, resembled a mere harbor or narrow entrance. Nine thousand years before the time of Plato this island of Atlantis was both thickly settled and very powerful. Its sway extended over Africa as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as the Tyrrhenian Sea. The further progress of its conquests, however, was checked by the Athenians, who, partly with the other Greeks, partly by themselves, succeeded in defeating these powerful invaders, the natives of Atlantis. After this a violent earthquake, which lasted for the space of a day and a night, and was accompanied with inundations of the sea, caused the islands to sink; and for a long period subsequent to this, the sea in that quarter was impassable by reason of the slime and shoals.—Plato, Tim., 24-29, 296; Crit., 108-110, 39, 43. The learned Gessner is of opinion that the Isle of Ceres, spoken of in a poem of very high antiquity, attributed to Orpheus, was a fragment of Atlantis. Kircher, in his "Mundus Subterraneus," and Beckman, in his "History of Islands," suppose the Atlantis to have been an island extending from the Canaries to the Azores; that it was really ingulfed in one of the convulsions of the globe, and that those small islands are mere fragments of it. Gosselin, in his able research into the voyages of the ancients, supposes the Atlantis of Plato to have been nothing more nor less than one of the nearest of the Canaries, viz, Fortaventura or Lancerote. Carli and many others find America in the Atlantis, and adduce many plausible arguments in support of their assertion.—Carli, Letters Amer.; Fr. transl., ii., 180. M. Bailly, in his "Letters sur l'Atlantide de Platon," maintains the existence of the Atlantides, and their island Atlantis, by the authorities of Homer, Sanchoniathon, and Diodorus Siculus, in addition to that of Plato. Manheim maintains very strenuously that Plato's Atlantis is Sweden and Norway. M. Bailly, after citing many ancient testimonies, which concur in placing this famous isle in the north, quotes that of Plutarch, who confirms these testimonies by a circumstantial description of the Isle of Ogygia, or the Atlantis, which he represents as situated in the north of Europe. The following is the theory of Buffon: after citing the passage relating to the Atlantis, from Plato's "Timæus," he adds, "This ancient tradition is not devoid of probability. The lands swallowed up by the waters were, perhaps, those which united Ireland to the Azores, and the Azores to the Continent of America; for in Ireland there are the same fossils, the same shells, and the same sea bodies as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe."—Buffon's Nat. Hist., by Smellie, vol. i., p. 507.