The Antediluvian World

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CALABRIAN PEASANTS INGULFED BY CREVASSES (1783).

The Gulf of Santorin, in the Grecian Archipelago, has been for two
thousand years a scene of active volcanic operations. Pliny informs us
that in the year 186 B.C. the island of "Old Kaimeni," or the Sacred
Isle, was lifted up from the sea; and in A.D. 19 the island of "Thia"
(the Divine) made its appearance. In A.D. 1573 another island was
created, called "the small sunburnt island." In 1848 a volcanic
convulsion of three months' duration created a great shoal; an
earthquake destroyed many houses in Thera, and the sulphur and hydrogen
issuing from the sea killed 50 persons and 1000 domestic animals. A
recent examination of these islands shows that the whole mass of
Santorin has sunk, since its projection from the sea, over 1200 feet.

The fort and village of Sindree, on the eastern arm of the Indus, above
Luckput, was submerged in 1819 by an earthquake, together with a tract
of country 2000 square miles in extent.

"In 1828 Sir A. Burnes went in a boat to the ruins of Sindree, where a
single remaining tower was seen in the midst of a wide expanse of sea.
The tops of the ruined walls still rose two or three feet above the
level of the water; and, standing on one of these, he could behold
nothing in the horizon but water, except in one direction, where a blue
streak of land to the north indicated the Ullah Bund. This scene," says
Lyell ("Principles of Geology," p. 462), "presents to the imagination a
lively picture of the revolutions now in progress on the earth-a waste
of waters where a few years before all was land, and the only land
visible consisting of ground uplifted by a recent earthquake."

We give from Lyell's great work the following curious pictures of the
appearance of the Fort of Sindree before and after the inundation.

FORT OF SINDEE, ON THE EASTERN BRANCH OF THE INDUS, BEFORE IT WAS
SUBMERGED BY THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1819.

In April, 1815, one of the most frightful eruptions recorded in history
occurred in the province of Tomboro, in the island of Sumbawa, about two
hundred miles from the eastern extremity of Java. It lasted from April
5th to July of that year; but was most violent on the 11th and 12th of
July. The sound of the explosions was heard for nearly one thousand
miles. Out of a population of 12,000, in the province of Tombora, only
twenty-six individuals escaped. "Violent whirlwinds carried up men,
horses, and cattle into the air, tore up the largest trees by the
roots, and covered the whole sea with floating timber." (Raffles's
"History of Java," vol. i., p. 28.) The ashes darkened the air; "the
floating cinders to the westward of Sumatra formed, on the 12th of
April, a mass two feet thick and several miles in extent, through which
ships with difficulty forced their way." The darkness in daytime was
more profound than the blackest night. "The town called Tomboro, on the
west side of Sumbawa, was overflowed by the sea, which encroached upon
the shore, so that the water remained permanently eighteen feet deep in
places where there was land before". The area covered by the convulsion
was 1000 English miles in circumference. "In the island of Amboyna, in
the same month and year, the ground opened, threw out water and then
closed again." (Raffles's "History of Java," vol. i., p. 25.)

VIEW OF THE FORT OF SINDREE FROM THE WEST IN MARCH, 1839.

But it is at that point of the European coast nearest to the site of
Atlantis at Lisbon that the most tremendous earthquake of modern times
has occurred. On the 1st of November, 1775, a sound of thunder was heard
underground, and immediately afterward a violent shock threw down the
greater part of the city. In six minutes 60,000 persons perished. A
great concourse of people had collected for safety upon a new quay,
built entirely of marble; but suddenly it sunk down with all the people
on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. A
great number of small boats and vessels anchored near it, and, full of
people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these
wrecks ever rose again to the surface; the water where the quay went
down is now 600 feet deep. The area covered by this earthquake was very
great. Humboldt says that a portion of the earth's surface, four times
as great as the size of Europe, was simultaneously shaken. It extended
from the Baltic to the West Indies, and from Canada to Algiers. At eight
leagues from Morocco the ground opened and swallowed a village of 10,000
inhabitants, and closed again over them.

It is very probable that the centre of the convulsion was in the bed of
the Atlantic, at or near the buried island of Atlantis, and that it was
a successor of the great earth throe which, thousands of years before,
had brought destruction upon that land.

ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS IN 1737.

Ireland also lies near the axis of this great volcanic area, reaching
from the Canaries to Iceland, and it has been many times in the past the
seat of disturbance. The ancient annals contain numerous accounts of
eruptions, preceded by volcanic action. In 1490, at the Ox Mountains,
Sligo, one occurred by which one hundred persons and numbers of cattle
were destroyed; and a volcanic eruption in May, 1788, on the hill of
Knocklade, Antrim, poured a stream of lava sixty yards wide for
thirty-nine hours, and destroyed the village of Ballyowen and all the
inhabitants, save a man and his wife and two children. ("Amer. Cyclop.,"
art. Ireland.)

While we find Lisbon and Ireland, east of Atlantis, subjected to these
great earthquake shocks, the West India Islands, west of the same
centre, have been repeatedly visited in a similar manner. In 1692
Jamaica suffered from a violent earthquake. The earth opened, and great
quantities of water were cast out; many people were swallowed up in
these rents; the earth caught some of them by the middle and squeezed
them to death; the heads of others only appeared above-ground. A tract
of land near the town of Port Royal, about a thousand acres in extent,
sunk down in less than one minute, and the sea immediately rolled in.

The Azore Islands are undoubtedly the peaks of the mountains of
Atlantis. They are even yet the centre of great volcanic activity. They
have suffered severely from eruptions and earthquakes. In 1808 a volcano
rose suddenly in San Jorge to the height of 3500 feet, and burnt for six
days, desolating the entire island. In 1811 a volcano rose from the sea,
near San Miguel, creating an island 300 feet high, which was named
Sambrina, but which soon sunk beneath the sea. Similar volcanic
eruptions occurred in the Azores in 1691 and 1720.

Along a great line, a mighty fracture in the surface of the globe,
stretching north and south through the Atlantic, we find a continuous
series of active or extinct volcanoes. In Iceland we have Oerafa, Hecla,
and Rauda Kamba; another in Pico, in the Azores; the peak of Teneriffe;
Fogo, in one of the Cape de Verde Islands: while of extinct volcanoes we
have several in Iceland, and two in Madeira; while Fernando de Noronha,
the island of Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan d'Acunha are all of
volcanic origin. ("Cosmos," vol. v., p. 331.)

The following singular passage we quote entire from Lyell's Principles
of Geology," p. 436:

"In the Nautical Magazine for 1835, p. 642, and for 1838, p. 361, and in
the Comptes Rendus, April, 1838, accounts are given of a series of
volcanic phenomena, earthquakes, troubled water, floating scoria, and
columns of smoke, which have been observed at intervals since the middle
of the last century, in a space of open sea between longitudes 20 deg.
and 22' W., about half a degree south of the equator. These facts, says
Mr. Darwin, seem to show that an island or archipelago is in process of
formation in the middle of the Atlantic. A line joining St. Helena and
Ascension would, if prolonged, intersect this slowly nascent focus of
volcanic action. Should land be eventually formed here, it will not be
the first that has been produced by igneous action in this ocean since
it was inhabited by the existing species of testacea. At Porto Praya, in
St. Jago, one of the Azores, a horizontal, calcareous stratum occurs,
containing shells of recent marine species, covered by a great sheet of
basalt eighty feet thick. It would be difficult to estimate too highly
the commercial and political importance which a group of islands might
acquire if, in the next two or three thousand years, they should rise in
mid-ocean between St. Helena and Ascension."

These facts would seem to show that the great fires which destroyed
Atlantis are still smouldering in the depths of the ocean; that the vast
oscillations which carried Plato's continent beneath the sea may again
bring it, with all its buried treasures, to the light; and that even the
wild imagination of Jules Verne, when he described Captain Nemo, in his
diving armor, looking down upon the temples and towers of the lost
island, lit by the fires of submarine volcanoes, had some groundwork of
possibility to build upon.

But who will say, in the presence of all the facts here enumerated, that
the submergence of Atlantis, in some great world-shaking cataclysm, is
either impossible or improbable? As will be shown hereafter, when we
come to discuss the Flood legends, every particular which has come down
to us of the destruction of Atlantis has been duplicated in some of the
accounts just given.

We conclude, therefore: 1. That it is proven beyond question, by
geological evidence, that vast masses of land once existed in the region
where Atlantis is located by Plato, and that therefore such an island
must have existed; 2. That there is nothing improbable or impossible in
the statement that it was destroyed suddenly by an earthquake "in one
dreadful night and day."

CHAPTER. V.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE SEA.

Suppose we were to find in mid-Atlantic, in front of the Mediterranean,
in the neighborhood of the Azores, the remains of an immense island,
sunk beneath the sea--one thousand miles in width, and two or three
thousand miles long--would it not go far to confirm the statement of
Plato that, "beyond the strait where you place the Pillars of Hercules,
there was an island larger than Asia (Minor) and Libya combined," called
Atlantis? And suppose we found that the Azores were the mountain peaks
of this drowned island, and were torn and rent by tremendous volcanic
convulsions; while around them, descending into the sea, were found
great strata of lava; and the whole face of the sunken land was covered
for thousands of miles with volcanic debris, would we not be obliged to
confess that these facts furnished strong corroborative proofs of the
truth of Plato's statement, that "in one day and one fatal night there
came mighty earthquakes and inundations which ingulfed that mighty
people? Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea; and then that sea became
inaccessible on account of the quantity of mud which the ingulfed island
left in its place."

MAP OF ATLANTIS, WITH ITS ISLANDS AND CONNECTING RIDGES, FROM DEEP-SEA
SOUNDINGS

And all these things recent investigation has proved conclusively.
Deep-sea soundings have been made by ships of different nations; the
United States ship Dolphin, the German frigate Gazelle, and the British
ships Hydra, Porcupine, and Challenger have mapped out the bottom of the
Atlantic, and the result is the revelation of a great elevation,
reaching from a point on the coast of the British Islands southwardly to
the coast of South America, at Cape Orange, thence south-eastwardly to
the coast of Africa, and thence southwardly to Tristan d'Acunha. I give
one map showing the profile of this elevation in the frontispiece, and
another map, showing the outlines of the submerged land, on page 47. It
rises about 9000 feet above the great Atlantic depths around it, and in
the Azores, St. Paul's Rocks, Ascension, and Tristan d'Acunha it reaches
the surface of the ocean.

Evidence that this elevation was once dry land is found in the fact that
"the inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface, could never
have been produced in accordance with any laws for the deposition of
sediment, nor by submarine elevation; but, on the contrary, must have
been carved by agencies acting above the water level." (Scientific
American, July 28th, 1877.)

Mr. J. Starke Gardner, the eminent English geologist, is of the opinion
that in the Eocene Period a great extension of land existed to the west
of Cornwall. Referring to the location of the "Dolphin" and "Challenger"
ridges, he asserts that "a great tract of land formerly existed where
the sea now is, and that Cornwall, the Scilly and Channel Islands,
Ireland and Brittany, are the remains of its highest summits." (Popular
Science Review, July, 1878.)

Here, then, we have the backbone of the ancient continent which once
occupied the whole of the Atlantic Ocean, and from whose washings Europe
and America were constructed; the deepest parts of the ocean, 3500
fathoms deep, represent those portions which sunk first, to wit, the
plains to the east and west of the central mountain range; some of the
loftiest peaks of this range--the Azores, St. Paul's, Ascension, Tristan
d'Acunba--are still above the ocean level; while the great body of
Atlantis lies a few hundred fathoms beneath the sea. In these
"connecting ridges" we see the pathway which once extended between the
New World and the Old, and by means of which the plants and animals of
one continent travelled to the other; and by the same avenues black men
found their way, as we will show hereafter, from Africa to America, and
red men from America to Africa.

And, as I have shown, the same great law which gradually depressed the
Atlantic continent, and raised the lands east and west of it, is still
at work: the coast of Greenland, which may be regarded as the northern
extremity of the Atlantic continent, is still sinking "so rapidly that
ancient buildings on low rock-islands are now submerged, and the
Greenlander has learned by experience never to build near the water's
edge," ("North Amer. of Antiq.," p. 504.) The same subsidence is going
on along the shore of South Carolina and Georgia, while the north of
Europe and the Atlantic coast of South America are rising rapidly. Along
the latter raised beaches, 1180 miles long and from 100 to 1300 feet
high, have been traced.

When these connecting ridges extended from America to Europe and Africa,
they shut off the flow of the tropical waters of the ocean to the north:
there was then no "Gulf Stream;" the land-locked ocean that laved the
shores of Northern Europe was then intensely cold; and the result was
the Glacial Period. When the barriers of Atlantis sunk sufficiently to
permit the natural expansion of the heated water of the tropics to the
north, the ice and snow which covered Europe gradually disappeared; the
Gulf Stream flowed around Atlantis, and it still retains the circular
motion first imparted to it by the presence of that island.

The officers of the Challenger found the entire ridge of Atlantis
covered with volcanic deposits; these are the subsided mud which, as
Plato tells us, rendered the sea impassable after the destruction of the
island.

It does not follow that, at the time Atlantis was finally ingulfed, the
ridges connecting it with America and Africa rose above the water-level;
these may have gradually subsided into the sea, or have gone down in
cataclysms such as are described in the Central American books. The
Atlantis of Plato may have been confined to the "Dolphin Ridge" of our
map.

ANCIENT ISLANDS BETWEEN ATLANTIS AND THE MEDITERRANEAN, FROM DEEP-SEA
SOUNDINGS

The United States sloop Gettysburg has also made some remarkable
discoveries in a neighboring field. I quote from John James Wild (in
Nature, March 1st, 1877, p. 377):

"The recently announced discovery by Commander Gorringe, of the United
States sloop Gettysburg, of a bank of soundings bearing N. 85 deg. W.,
and distant 130 miles from Cape St. Vincent, during the last voyage of
the vessel across the Atlantic, taken in connection with previous
soundings obtained in the same region of the North Atlantic, suggests
the probable existence of a submarine ridge or plateau connecting the
island of Madeira with the coast of Portugal, and the probable subaerial
connection in prehistoric times of that island with the south-western
extremity of Europe." . . . "These soundings reveal the existence of a
channel of an average depth of from 2000 to 3000 fathoms, extending in a
northeasterly direction from its entrance between Madeira and the Canary
Islands toward Cape St. Vincent. . . . Commander Gorringe, when about
150 miles from the Strait of Gibraltar, found that the soundings
decreased from 2700 fathoms to 1600 fathoms in the distance of a few
miles. The subsequent soundings (five miles apart) gave 900, 500, 400,
and 100 fathoms; and eventually a depth of 32 fathoms was obtained, in
which the vessel anchored. The bottom was found to consist of live pink
coral, and the position of the bank in lat. 36 deg. 29' N., long. 11
deg. 33' W."

The map on page 51 shows the position of these elevations. They must
have been originally islands;--stepping-stones, as it were, between
Atlantis and the coast of Europe.

Sir C. Wyville Thomson found that the specimens of the fauna of the
coast of Brazil, brought up in his dredging-machine, are similar to
those of the western coast of Southern Europe. This is accounted for by
the connecting ridges reaching from Europe to South America.

A member of the Challenger staff, in a lecture delivered in London, soon
after the termination of the expedition, gave it as his opinion that the
great submarine plateau is the remains of "the lost Atlantis."

CHAPTER VI.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE FLORA AND FAUNA.

Proofs are abundant that there must have been at one time uninterrupted
land communication between Europe and America. In the words of a writer
upon this subject,

"When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one
cannot but be struck with their identity; all or nearly all belong to
the same genera, while many, even of the species, are common to both
continents. This is most important in its bearing on our theory, as
indicating that they radiated from a common centre after the Glacial
Period. . . . The hairy mammoth, woolly-haired rhinoceros, the Irish
elk, the musk-ox, the reindeer, the glutton, the lemming, etc., more or
less accompanied this flora, and their remains are always found in the
post-glacial deposits of Europe as low down as the South of France. In
the New World beds of the same age contain similar remains, indicating
that they came from a common centre, and were spread out over both
continents alike." (Westminster Review, January, 1872, p. 19.)

Recent discoveries in the fossil beds of the Bad Lands of Nebraska prove
that the horse originated in America. Professor Marsh, of Yale College,
has identified the several preceding forms from which it was developed,
rising, in the course of ages, from a creature not larger than a fox
until, by successive steps, it developed into the true horse. How did
the wild horse pass from America to Europe and Asia if there was not
continuous land communication between the two continents? He seems to
have existed in Europe in a wild state prior to his domestication by man.

The fossil remains of the camel are found in India, Africa, South
America, and in Kansas. The existing alpacas and llamas of South America
are but varieties of the camel family.

The cave bear, whose remains are found associated with the hones of the
mammoth and the bones and works of man in the caves of Europe, was
identical with the grizzly bear of our Rocky Mountains. The musk-ox,
whose relics are found in the same deposits, now roams the wilds of
Arctic America. The glutton of Northern Europe, in the Stone Age, is
identical with the wolverine of the United States. According to
Rutimeyer, the ancient bison (Bos priscus) of Europe was identical with
the existing American buffalo. "Every stage between the ancient cave
bison and the European aurochs can be traced." The Norway elk, now
nearly extinct, is identical with the American moose. The Cervus
Americanus found in Kentucky was as large as the Irish elk, which it
greatly resembled. The lagomys, or tailless hare, of the European eaves,
is now found in the colder regions of North America. The reindeer, which
once occupied Europe as far down as France, was the same as the reindeer
of America. Remains of the cave lion of Europe (Felix speloae), a larger
beast than the largest of the existing species, have been found at
Natchez, Mississippi. The European cave wolf was identical with the
American wolf.

Cattle were domesticated among the people of Switzerland during the
earliest part of the Stone Period (Darwin's "Animals Under
Domestication," vol. i., p. 103), that is to say, before the Bronze Age
and the Age of Iron. Even at that remote period they had already, by
long-continued selection, been developed out of wild forms akin to the
American buffalo. M. Gervais ("Hist. Nat. des Mammifores," vol. xi., p.
191) concludes that the wild race from which our domestic sheep was
derived is now extinct. The remains of domestic sheep are found in the
debris of the Swiss lake-dwellings during the Stone Age. The domestic
horse, ass, lion, and goat also date back to a like great antiquity. We
have historical records 7000 years old, and during that time no similar
domestication of a wild animal has been made. This fact speaks volumes
as to the vast period, of time during which man must have lived in a
civilized state to effect the domestication of so many and such useful
animals.

And when we turn from the fauna to the flora, we find the same state of
things.

An examination of the fossil beds of Switzerland of the Miocene Age
reveals the remains of more than eight hundred different species of
flower-bearing plants, besides mosses, ferns, etc. The total number of
fossil plants catalogued from those beds, cryptogamous as well as
phaenogamous, is upward of three thousand. The majority of these species
have migrated to America. There were others that passed into Asia,
Africa, and even to Australia. The American types are, however, in the
largest proportion. The analogues of the flora of the Miocene Age of
Europe now grow in the forests of Virginia, North and South Carolina,
and Florida; they include such familiar examples as magnolias,
tulip-trees, evergreen oaks, maples, plane-trees, robinas, sequoias,
etc. It would seem to be impossible that these trees could have migrated
from Switzerland to America unless there was unbroken land communication
between the two continents.

It is a still more remarkable fact that a comparison of the flora of the
Old World and New goes to show that not only was there communication by
land, over which the plants of one continent could extend to another,
but that man must have existed, and have helped this transmigration, in
the case of certain plants that were incapable of making the journey
unaided.

Otto Kuntze, a distinguished German botanist, who has spent many years
in the tropics, announces his conclusion that "In America and in Asia
the principal domesticated tropical plants are represented by the same
species." He instances the Manihot utilissima, whose roots yield a fine
flour; the tarro (Colocasia esculenta), the Spanish or red pepper, the
tomato, the bamboo, the guava, the mango-fruit, and especially the
banana. He denies that the American origin of tobacco, maize, and the
cocoa-nut is proved. He refers to the Paritium tiliaceum, a malvaceous
plant, hardly noticed by Europeans, but very highly prized by the
natives of the tropics, and cultivated everywhere in the East and West
Indies; it supplies to the natives of these regions so far apart their
ropes and cordage. It is always seedless in a cultivated state. It
existed in America before the arrival of Columbus.

But Professor Kuntze pays especial attention to the banana, or plantain.
The banana is seedless. It is found throughout tropical Asia and Africa.
Professor Kuntze asks, "In what way was this plant, which cannot stand a
voyage through the temperate zone, carried to America?" And yet it was
generally cultivated in America before 1492. Says Professor Kuntze, "It
must be remembered that the plantain is a tree-like, herbaceous plant,
possessing no easily transportable bulbs, like the potato or the dahlia,
nor propagable by cuttings, like the willow or the poplar. It has only a
perennial root, which, once planted, needs hardly any care, and yet
produces the most abundant crop of any known tropical plant." He then
proceeds to discuss how it could have passed from Asia to America. He
admits that the roots must have been transported from one country to the
other by civilized man. He argues that it could not have crossed the
Pacific from Asia to America, because the Pacific is nearly thrice or
four times as wide as the Atlantic. The only way he can account for the
plantain reaching America is to suppose that it was carried there when
the North Pole had a tropical climate! Is there any proof that civilized
man existed at the North Pole when it possessed the climate of Africa?

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