rash Phaëton dead and buried, Jove repairs, with especial "his own Arcadia."

care,

It must not be forgotten that Phaëton was the son of Merops; and Theopompus tells us that the people who inhabited Atlantis were the Meropes, the people of Merou. And the Greek traditions* show that the human race issued from Upa-Merou; and the Egyptians claim that their ancestors came from the Island of Mero; and among the Hindoos the land of the gods and the godlike men was Meru.

And here it is, we are told, where in deep caves, and from the scas, receding under the great heat, the human race, crying out for mercy, with uplifted and blistered hands, survived the cataclysm.

And Ovid informs us that this land, "with a mighty trembling, sank down a little" in the ocean, and the Gothic and Briton (Druid) legends tell us of a prolongation of Western Europe which went down at the same time.

In the Hindoo legends the great battle between Rama and Ravana, the sun and the comet, takes place on an island, the Island of Lanka, and Rama builds a stone bridge sixty miles long to reach the island.

In the Norse legends Asgard lies to the west of Europe; communication is maintained with it by the bridge Bifrost. Gylfe goes to visit Asgard, as Herodotus and Solon went to visit Egypt: the outside barbarian was curious to behold the great civilized land. There he asks He is told: t

many questions, as Herodotus and Solon did.

"The earth is round, and without it round about lies the deep ocean."

*"Atlantis," p. 171.

The Fooling of Gylfe-The Creation of the World--The Younger Edda.

The earth is Ovid's earth; it is Asgard. It is an island, surrounded by the ocean :

"And along the outer strand of that sea they gave lands for the giant-races to dwell in; and against the attack of restless giants they built a burg within the sea and around the earth."

This proves that by "the earth" was not meant the whole globe; for here we see that around the outside margin of that ocean which encircled Asgard, the mothercountry had given lands for colonies of the giant-races, the white, large, blue-eyed races of Northern and Western Europe, who were as restless" and as troublesome then to their neighbors as they are now and will be to the end of time.

66

And as the Elder and Younger Edda claim that the Northmen were the giant races, and that their kings were of the blood of these Asas; and as the bronze-using people advanced, (it has been proved by their remaius,*) into Scandinavia from the southwest, it is clear that these legends do not refer to some mythical island in the Indian Seas, or to the Pacific Ocean, but to the Atlantic: the west coasts of Europe were "the outer strand" where these white colonies were established; the island was in the Atlantic; and, as there is no body of submerged land in that ocean with roots or ridges reaching out to the continents east and west, except the mass of which the Azores Islands constitute the mountain-tops, the conclusion is irresistible that here was Atlantis; here was Lanka; here was "the island of the innocent," here was Asgard.

And the Norse legends describe this "Asgard" as a land of temples and plowed fields, and a mighty civilized race. And here it is that Ragnarok comes. It is from the

*Du Chaillu's "Land of the Midnight Sun," vol. i, pp. 343, 345, etc.

people of Asgard that the wandering Gylfe learns all that he tells about Ragnarok, just as Solon learned from the priests of Sais the story of Atlantis. And it is here in Asgard that, as we have seen, "during Surt's fire two persons, called Lif and Lifthraser, a man and a woman, concealed themselves in Hodmimer's holt," and afterward repeopled the world.

We leave Europe and turn to India.

In the Bagaveda-Gita Krishna recalls to the memory of his disciple Ardjouna the legend as preserved in the sacred books of the Veda.

We are told :

"The earth was covered with flowers; the trees bent under their fruit; thousands of animals sported over the plains and in the air; white elephants roved unmolested under the shade of gigantic forests, and Brahma perceived that the time had come for the creation of man to inhabit this dwelling-place." *

This is a description of the glorious world of the Tertiary Age, during which, as scientific researches have proved, the climate of the tropics extended to the Arctic. Circle.

Brahma makes man, Adima, (Adam,) and he makes a companion for him, Héva, (Eve).

They are upon an island. Tradition localizes the legend by making this the Island of Ceylon.

"Adima and Héva lived for some time in perfect happiness-no suffering came to disturb their quietude; they had but to stretch forth their hands and pluck from surrounding trees the most delicious fruits-but to stoop and gather rice of the finest quality."

This is the same Golden Age represented in Genesis, when Adam and Eve, naked, but supremely happy, lived

* Jacolliet, "The Bible in India," p. 195.

upon the fruits of the garden, and knew neither sorrow nor suffering, neither toil nor hunger.

But one day the evil-one came, as in the Bible legend; the Prince of the Rakchasos (Raknaros-Ragnarok ?) came, and broke up this paradise. Adima and Héva leave their island; they pass to a boundless country; they fall upon an evil time; "trees, flowers, fruits, birds, vanish in an instant, amid terrific clamor" ;* the Drift has come; they are in a world of trouble, sorrow, poverty, and toil.

And when we turn to America we find the legends looking, not westward, but eastward, to this same islandrefuge of the race.

When the Navajos come out of the cave the white race goes east, and the red-men go west; so that the Navajos inhabit a country west of their original habitat, just as the Jews inhabit one east of it.

"Let me conclude," says the legend, "by telling how the Navajos came by the seed they now cultivate. All the wise men being one day assembled, a Turkey-Hen came flying from the direction of the morning star, and shook from her feathers an ear of blue corn into the midst of the company; and in subsequent visits brought all the other seeds they possess."

In the Peruvian legends the civilizers of the race came from the east, after the cave-life.

So that these people not only came from the east, but they maintained intercourse for some time afterward with the parent-land.

On page 174, ante, we learn that the Iroquois believed that when Joskeha renewed the world, after the great battle with Darkness, he learned from the great tortoise * Jacolliet, "The Bible in India," p. 198. + Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 83.

-always the image of an island-how to make fire, and taught the Indians the art. And in their legends the battle between the White One and the Dark One took place in the east near the great ocean.

Dr. Brinton says, speaking of the Great Hare, Manibozho:

"In the oldest accounts of the missionaries he was alleged to reside toward the east, and in the holy formula of the meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine-lodge, the east is summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, and there at the edge of the earth, where the sun rises, on the shore of the infinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house, and sends the luminaries forth on their daily journey."*

That is to say, in the east, in the surrounding ocean of the east, to wit, in the Atlantic, this god, (or godlike race,) has his house, his habitation, upon a land surrounded by the ocean, to wit, an island; and there his power and his civilization are so great that he controls the movements of the sun, moon, and stars; that is to say, he fixes the measure of time by the movements of the sun and moon, and he has mapped out the heavenly bodies into constellations.

In the Miztec legend, (see page 214, ante,) we find the people praying to God to gather the waters together and enlarge the land, for they have only "a little garden" to inhabit in the waste of waters. This meant an island.

In the Arabian legends we have the scene of the catastrophe described as an island west of Arabia, and it requires two years and a half of travel to reach it. It is the land of bronze.

In the Hindoo legend of the battle between Rama, the

* Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 177.