There is ample geological evidence that at one time the entire area of Great Britain was submerged to the depth of at least seventeen hundred feet. Over the face of the submerged land was strewn thick beds of sand, gravel, and clay, termed by geologists "the Northern Drift." The British Islands rose again from the sea, bearing these water-deposits on their bosom. What is now Sicily once lay deep beneath the sea: It subsequently rose 3000 feet above the sea-level. The Desert of Sahara was once under water, and its now burning sands are a deposit of the sea.
Geologically speaking, the submergence of Atlantis, within the historical period, was simply the last of a number of vast changes, by which the continent which once occupied the greater part of the Atlantic had gradually sunk under the ocean, while the new lands were rising on both sides of it.
We come now to the second question, Is it possible that Atlantis could have been suddenly destroyed by such a convulsion of nature as is described by Plato? The ancients regarded this part of his story as a fable. With the wider knowledge which scientific research has afforded the modern world, we can affirm that such an event is not only possible, but that the history of even the last two centuries has furnished us with striking parallels for it. We now possess the record of numerous islands lifted above the waters, and others sunk beneath the waves, accompanied by storms and earthquakes similar to those which marked the destruction of Atlantis.
In 1783 Iceland was visited by convulsions more tremendous than any recorded in the modern annals of that country. About a month previous to the eruption on the main-land a submarine volcano burst forth in the sea, at a distance of thirty miles from the shore. It ejected so much pumice that the sea was covered with it for a distance of 150 miles, and ships were considerably impeded in their course. A new island was thrown up, consisting of high cliffs, which was claimed by his Danish Majesty, and named "Nyöe," or the New Island; but before a year had elapsed it sunk beneath the sea, leaving a reef of rocks thirty fathoms under water.
The earthquake of 1783 in Iceland destroyed 9000 people out of a population of 50,000; twenty villages were consumed by fire or inundated by water, and a mass of lava thrown out "greater than the entire bulk of Mont Blanc."
On the 8th of October, 1822, a great earthquake occurred on the island of Java, near the mountain of Galung Gung. "A loud explosion was heard, the earth shook, and immense columns of hot water and boiling mud, mixed with burning brimstone, ashes, and lapilli, of the size of nuts, were projected from the mountain like a water-spout, with such prodigious violence that large quantities fell beyond the river Tandoi, which is forty miles distant…. The first eruption lasted nearly five hours; and on the following days the rain fell in torrents, and the rivers, densely charged with mud, deluged the country far and wide. At the end of four days (October 12th), a second eruption occurred, more violent than the first, in which hot water and mud were again vomited, and great blocks of basalt were thrown to the distance of seven miles from the volcano. There was at the same time a violent earthquake, the face of the mountain was utterly changed, its summits broken down, and one side, which had been covered with trees, became an enormous gulf in the form of a semicircle. Over 4000 persons were killed and 114 villages destroyed." (Lyell's "Principles of Geology," p. 430.)
In 1831 a new island was born in the Mediterranean, near the coast of Sicily. It was called Graham's Island. It came up with an earthquake, and "a water-spout sixty feet high and eight hundred yards in circumference rising from the sea." In about a month the island was two hundred feet high and three miles in circumference; it soon, however, sank beneath the sea.
The Canary Islands were probably a part of the original empire of Atlantis. On the 1st of September, 1730, the earth split open near Yaiza, in the island of Lancerota. In one night a considerable hill of ejected matter was thrown up; in a few days another vent opened and gave out a lava stream which overran several villages. It flowed at first rapidly, like water, but became afterward heavy and slow, like honey. On the 11th of September more lava flowed out, covering up a village, and precipitating itself with a horrible roar into the sea. Dead fish floated on the waters in indescribable multitudes, or were thrown dying on the shore; the cattle throughout the country dropped lifeless to the ground, suffocated by putrid vapors, which condensed and fell down in drops. These manifestations were accompanied by a storm such as the people of the country had never known before. These dreadful commotions lasted for five years. The lavas thrown out covered one-third of the whole island of Lancerota.
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.
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.)
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.
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° 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."
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 débris, 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."
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.
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° 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° 29' N., long. 11° 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."
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 bones 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 caves, 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 speloæ), 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 phænogamous, 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?
Is it not more reasonable to suppose that the plantain, or banana, was cultivated by the people of Atlantis, and carried by their civilized agricultural colonies to the east and the west? Do we not find a confirmation of this view in the fact alluded to by Professor Kuntze in these words: "A cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have been under culture for a very long period—we have not in Europe a single exclusively seedless, berry-bearing, cultivated plant—and hence it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants were cultivated as early as the beginning of the middle of the Diluvial Period."
Is it possible that a plant of this kind could have been cultivated for this immense period of time in both Asia and America? Where are the two nations, agricultural and highly civilized, on those continents by whom it was so cultivated? What has become of them? Where are the traces of their civilization? All the civilizations of Europe, Asia, and Africa radiated from the Mediterranean; the Hindoo-Aryans advanced from the north-west; they were kindred to the Persians, who were next-door neighbors to the Arabians (cousins of the Phoenicians), and who lived along-side of the Egyptians, who had in turn derived their civilization from the Phoenicians.
It would be a marvel of marvels if one nation, on one continent, had cultivated the banana for such a vast period of time until it became seedless; the nation retaining a peaceful, continuous, agricultural civilization during all that time. But to suppose that two nations could have cultivated the same plant, under the same circumstances, on two different continents, for the same unparalleled lapse of time, is supposing an impossibility.
We find just such a civilization as was necessary, according to Plato, and under just such a climate, in Atlantis and nowhere else. We have found it reaching, by its contiguous islands, within one hundred and fifty miles of the coast of Europe on the one side, and almost touching the West India Islands on the other, while, by its connecting ridges, it bound together Brazil and Africa.
But it may be said these animals and plants may have passed from Asia to America across the Pacific by the continent of Lemuria; or there may have been continuous land communication at one time at Behring's Strait. True; but an examination of the flora of the Pacific States shows that very many of the trees and plants common to Europe and the Atlantic States are not to be seen west of the Rocky Mountains. The magnificent magnolias, the tulip-trees, the plane-trees, etc., which were found existing in the Miocene Age in Switzerland, and are found at the present day in the United States, are altogether lacking on the Pacific coast. The sources of supply of that region seem to have been far inferior to the sources of supply of the Atlantic States. Professor Asa Gray tells us that, out of sixty-six genera and one hundred and fifty-five species found in the forests cast of the Rocky Mountains, only thirty-one genera and seventy-eight species are found west of the mountains. The Pacific coast possesses no papaw, no linden or basswood, no locust-trees, no cherry-tree large enough for a timber tree, no gum-trees, no sorrel-tree, nor kalmia; no persimmon-trees, not a holly, only one ash that may be called a timber tree, no catalpa or sassafras, not a single elm or hackberry, not a mulberry, not a hickory, or a beech, or a true chestnut. These facts would seem to indicate that the forest flora of North America entered it from the east, and that the Pacific States possess only those fragments of it that were able to struggle over or around the great dividing mountain-chain.
We thus see that the flora and fauna of America and Europe testify not only to the existence of Atlantis, but to the fact that in an earlier age it must have extended from the shores of one continent to those of the other; and by this bridge of land the plants and animals of one region passed to the other.
The cultivation of the cotton-plant and the manufacture of its product was known to both the Old and New World. Herodotus describes it (450 B.C.) as the tree of India that bears a fleece more beautiful than that of the sheep. Columbus found the natives of the West Indies using cotton cloth. It was also found in Mexico and Peru. It is a significant fact that the cotton-plant has been found growing wild in many parts of America, but never in the Old World. This would seem to indicate that the plant was a native of America; and this is confirmed by the superiority of American cotton, and the further fact that the plants taken from America to India constantly degenerate, while those taken from India to America as constantly improve.
There is a question whether the potato, maize, and tobacco were not cultivated in China ages before Columbus discovered America. A recent traveller says, "The interior of China, along the course of the Yang-tse-Kiang, is a land full of wonders. In one place piscicultural nurseries line the banks for nearly fifty miles. All sorts of inventions, the cotton-gin included, claimed by Europeans and Americans, are to be found there forty centuries old. Plants, yielding drugs of great value, without number, the familiar tobacco and potato, maize, white and yellow corn, and other plants believed to be indigenous to America, have been cultivated there from time immemorial."
Bonafous ("Histoire Naturelle du Mais," Paris, 1826) attributes a European or Asiatic origin to maize. The word maize, (Indian corn) is derived from mahiz or mahis, the name of the plant in the language of the Island of Hayti. And yet, strange to say, in the Lettish and Livonian languages, in the north of Europe, mayse signifies bread; in Irish, maise is food, and in the Old High German, maz is meat. May not likewise the Spanish maiz have antedated the time of Columbus, and borne testimony to early intercommunication between the people of the Old and New Worlds?
It is to Atlantis we must look for the origin of nearly all our valuable plants. Darwin says ("Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. i., p. 374), "It has often been remarked that we do not owe a single useful plant to Australia, or the Cape of Good Hope—countries abounding to an unparalleled degree with endemic species—or to New Zealand, or to America south of the Plata; and, according to some authors, not to America north of Mexico." In other words, the domesticated plants are only found within the limits of what I shall show hereafter was the Empire of Atlantis and its colonies; for only here was to be found an ancient, long-continuing civilization, capable of developing from a wild state those plants which were valuable to man, including all the cereals on which to-day civilized man depends for subsistence. M. Alphonse de Candolle tells us that we owe 33 useful plants to Mexico, Peru, and Chili. According to the same high authority, of 157 valuable cultivated plants 85 can be traced back to their wild state; as to 40, there is doubt as to their origin; while 32 are utterly unknown in their aboriginal condition. ("Geograph. Botan. Raisonnée," 1855, pp. 810-991.) Certain roses—the imperial lily, the tuberose and the lilac—are said to have been cultivated from such a vast antiquity that they are not known in their wild state. (Darwin, "Animals and Plants," vol. i., p. 370.) And these facts are the more remarkable because, as De Candolle has shown, all the plants historically known to have been first cultivated in Europe still exist there in the wild state. (Ibid.) The inference is strong that the great cereals—wheat, oats, barley, rye, and maize—must have been first domesticated in a vast antiquity, or in some continent which has since disappeared, carrying the original wild plants with it.
Darwin quotes approvingly the opinion of Mr. Bentham ("Hist. Notes Cult. Plants"), "as the result of all the most reliable evidence that none of the Ceralia—wheat, rye, barley, and oats—exist or have existed truly wild in their present state." In the Stone Age of Europe five varieties of wheat and three of barley were cultivated. (Darwin, "Animals and Plants," vol. i., p. 382.) He says that it may be inferred, from the presence in the lake habitations of Switzerland of a variety of wheat known as the Egyptian wheat, and from the nature of the weeds that grew among their crops, "that the lake inhabitants either still kept up commercial intercourse with some southern people, or had originally proceeded as colonists from the south." I should argue that they were colonists from the land where wheat and barley were first domesticated, to wit, Atlantis. And when the Bronze Age came, we find oats and rye making their appearance with the weapons of bronze, together with a peculiar kind of pea. Darwin concludes (Ibid., vol. i., p. 385) that wheat, barley, rye, and oats were either descended from ten or fifteen distinct species, "most of which are now unknown or extinct," or from four or eight species closely resembling our present forms, or so "widely different as to escape identification;" in which latter case, he says, "man must have cultivated the cereals at an enormously remote period," and at that time practised "some degree of selection."
Rawlinson ("Ancient Monarchies," vol. i., p. 578) expresses the opinion that the ancient Assyrians possessed the pineapple. "The representation on the monuments is so exact that I can scarcely doubt the pineapple being intended." (See Layard's "Nineveh and Babylon," p. 338.) The pineapple (Bromelia ananassa) is supposed to be of American origin, and unknown to Europe before the time of Columbus; and yet, apart from the revelations of the Assyrian monuments, there has been some dispute upon this point. ("Amer. Cyclop.," vol. xiii., p. 528.)
It is not even certain that the use of tobacco was not known to the colonists from Atlantis settled in Ireland in an age long prior to Sir Walter Raleigh. Great numbers of pipes have been found in the raths and tumuli of Ireland, which, there is every reason to believe, were placed there by men of the Prehistoric Period. The illustration on p. 63 represents some of the so-called "Danes' pipes" now in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy. The Danes entered Ireland many centuries before the time of Columbus, and if the pipes are theirs, they must have used tobacco, or some substitute for it, at that early period. It is probable, however, that the tumuli of Ireland antedate the Danes thousands of years.
Compare these pipes from the ancient mounds of Ireland with the accompanying picture of an Indian pipe of the Stone Age of New Jersey. ("Smithsonian Rep.," 1875, p. 342.)
Recent Portuguese travellers have found the most remote tribes of savage negroes in Africa, holding no commercial intercourse with Europeans, using strangely shaped pipes, in which they smoked a plant of the country. Investigations in America lead to the conclusion that tobacco was first burnt as an incense to the gods, the priest alone using the pipe; and from this beginning the extraordinary practice spread to the people, and thence over all the world. It may have crossed the Atlantic in a remote age, and have subsequently disappeared with the failure of retrograding colonists to raise the tobacco-plant.
Having demonstrated, as we think successfully, that there is no improbability in the statement of Plato that a large island, almost a continent, existed in the past in the Atlantic Ocean, nay, more, that it is a geological certainty that it did exist; and having further shown that it is not improbable but very possible that it may have sunk beneath the sea in the manner described by Plato, we come now to the next question, Is the memory of this gigantic catastrophe preserved among the traditions of mankind? We think there can be no doubt that an affirmative answer must be given to this question.
An event, which in a few hours destroyed, amid horrible convulsions, an entire country, with all its vast population—that Population the ancestors of the great races of both continents, and they themselves the custodians of the civilization of their age—could not fail to impress with terrible force the minds of men, and to project its gloomy shadow over all human history. And hence, whether we turn to the Hebrews, the Aryans, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Cushites, or the inhabitants of America, we find everywhere traditions of the Deluge; and we shall see that all these traditions point unmistakably to the destruction of Atlantis.
François Lenormant says (Contemp. Rev., Nov., 1879):
"The result authorizes us to affirm the story of the Deluge to be a universal tradition among all branches of the human race, with the one exception, however, of the black. Now, a recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and before the dispersion of the families from which the principal races were to spring; for it would be at once improbable and uncritical to admit that, at as many different points of the globe as we should have to assume in order to explain the wide spread of these traditions, local phenomena so exactly alike should have occurred, their memory having assumed an identical form, and presenting circumstances that need not necessarily have occurred to the mind in such cases.
"Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not primitive, but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect of an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of Oceania. There will still remain three great races to which it is undoubtedly peculiar, who have not borrowed it from each other, but among whom the tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient times, and these three races are precisely the only ones of which the Bible speaks as being descended from Noah—those of which it gives the ethnic filiation in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation, which I hold to be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact value to the tradition as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the other hand, it may lead to giving it a more limited geographical and ethnological significance….
"But, as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three races—Aryan, or Indo-European, Semitic, or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic, or Cushite—that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity—before the ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia they together inhabited."
Such profound scholars and sincere Christians as M. Schoebel (Paris, 1858), and M. Omalius d'Halloy (Bruxelles, 1866), deny the universality of the Deluge, and claim that "it extended only to the principal centre of humanity, to those who remained near its primitive cradle, without reaching the scattered tribes who had already spread themselves far away in almost desert regions. It is certain that the Bible narrative commences by relating facts common to the whole human species, confining itself subsequently to the annals of the race peculiarly chosen by the designs of Providence." (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Anc. Hist. of the East," p. 44.) This theory is supported by that eminent authority on anthropology, M. de Quatrefages, as well as by Cuvier; the Rev. R. p. Bellynck, S.J., admits that it has nothing expressly opposed to orthodoxy.
Plato identifies "the great deluge of all" with the destruction of Atlantis. The priest of Sais told Solon that before "the great deluge of all" Athens possessed a noble race, who performed many noble deeds, the last and greatest of which was resisting the attempts of Atlantis to subjugate them; and after this came the destruction of Atlantis, and the same great convulsion which overwhelmed that island destroyed a number of the Greeks. So that the Egyptians, who possessed the memory of many partial deluges, regarded this as "the great deluge of all."
We give first the Bible history of the Deluge, as found in Genesis (chap. vi. to chap. viii.):
"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
"And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
["These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.]
"The earth also was corrupt before God; and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind; two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
"Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
"And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
"And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
"And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
"And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.
"And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.
"And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh mouth, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the mouth, were the tops of the mountains seen.
"And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark; for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. Then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came in to him in the evening, and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the dove, which returned not again unto him any more.
"And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.
"And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.
"And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
"And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth: neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
Let us briefly consider this record.
It shows, taken in connection with the opening chapters of Genesis:
1. That the land destroyed by water was the country in which the civilization of the human race originated. Adam was at first naked (Gen., chap. iii., 7); then he clothed himself in leaves; then in the skins of animals (chap. iii., 21): he was the first that tilled the earth, having emerged from a more primitive condition in which he lived upon the fruits of the forest (chap. ii., 16); his son Abel was the first of those that kept flocks of sheep (chap. iv., 2); his son Cain was the builder of the first city (chap. iv., 17); his descendant, Tubal-cain, was the first metallurgist (chap. iv., 22); Jabal was the first that erected tents and kept cattle (chap. iv., 20); Jubal was the first that made musical instruments. We have here the successive steps by which a savage race advances to civilization. We will see hereafter that the Atlanteans passed through precisely similar stages of development.
2. The Bible agrees with Plato in the statement that these Antediluvians had reached great populousness and wickedness, and that it was on account of their wickedness God resolved to destroy them.
3. In both cases the inhabitants of the doomed land were destroyed in a great catastrophe by the agency of water; they were drowned.
4. The Bible tells us that in an earlier age, before their destruction, mankind had dwelt in a happy, peaceful, sinless condition in a Garden of Eden. Plato tells us the same thing of the earlier ages of the Atlanteans.
6. In both the Bible history and Plato's story the destruction of the people was largely caused by the intermarriage of the superior or divine race, "the sons of God," with an inferior stock, "the children of men," whereby they were degraded and rendered wicked.
We will see hereafter that the Hebrews and their Flood legend are closely connected with the Phoenicians, whose connection with Atlantis is established in many ways.
It is now conceded by scholars that the genealogical table given in the Bible (Gen., chap. x.) is not intended to include the true negro races, or the Chinese, the Japanese, the Finns or Lapps, the Australians, or the American red men. It refers altogether to the Mediterranean races, the Aryans, the Cushites, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians. "The sons of Ham" were not true negroes, but the dark-brown races. (See Winchell's "Preadamites," chap. vii.)
If these races (the Chinese, Australians, Americans, etc.) are not descended from Noah they could not have been included in the Deluge. If neither China, Japan, America, Northern Europe, nor Australia were depopulated by the Deluge, the Deluge could not have been universal. But as it is alleged that it did destroy a country, and drowned all the people thereof except Noah and his family, the country so destroyed could not have been Europe, Asia, Africa, America, or Australia, for there has been no universal destruction of the people of those regions; or, if there had been, how can we account for the existence to-day of people on all of those continents whose descent Genesis does not trace back to Noah, and, in fact, about whom the writer of Genesis seems to have known nothing?
We are thus driven to one of two alternative conclusions: either the Deluge record of the Bible is altogether fabulous, or it relates to some land other than Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia, some land that was destroyed by water. It is not fabulous; and the land it refers to is not Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia—but Atlantis. No other land is known to history or tradition that was overthrown in a great catastrophe by the agency of water; that was civilized, populous, powerful, and given over to wickedness.
That high and orthodox authority, François Lenormant, says ("Ancient Hist. of the East," vol. i., p. 64), "The descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, so admirably catalogued by Moses, include one only of the races of humanity, the white race, whose three chief divisions he gives us as now recognized by anthropologists. The other three races—yellow, black, and red—have no place in the Bible list of nations sprung from Noah." As, therefore, the Deluge of the Bible destroyed only the land and people of Noah, it could not have been universal. The religious world does not pretend to fix the location of the Garden of Eden. The Rev. George Leo Haydock says, "The precise situation cannot be ascertained; how great might be its extent we do not know;" and we will see hereafter that the unwritten traditions of the Church pointed to a region in the west, beyond the ocean which bounds Europe in that direction, as the locality in which "mankind dwelt before the Deluge."
It will be more and more evident, as we proceed in the consideration of the Flood legends of other nations, that the Antediluvian World was none other than Atlantis.
We have two versions of the Chaldean story—unequally developed, indeed, but exhibiting a remarkable agreement. The one most anciently known, and also the shorter, is that which Berosus took from the sacred books of Babylon, and introduced into the history that he wrote for the use of the Greeks. After speaking of the last nine antediluvian kings, the Chaldean priest continues thus.
"Obartès Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra) reigned eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the Great Deluge took place, the history of which is told in the sacred documents as follows: Cronos (Ea) appeared to him in his sleep, and announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios (the Assyrian month Sivan—a little before the summer solstice) all men should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to writing, and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then to build a vessel, and to enter it with his family and dearest friends; to place in this vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds to enter it; lastly, to prepare everything for navigation. And when Xisuthros inquired in what direction he should steer his bark, he was answered, 'toward the gods,' and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.
"Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and five broad; he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and embarked his wife, his children, and his intimate friends.
"The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros loosed some of the birds. These, finding no food nor place to alight on, returned to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but they returned again to the vessel, their feet full of mud. Finally, loosed the third time, the birds came no more back. Then Xisuthros understood that the earth was bare. He made an opening in the roof of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a mountain. He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot, who worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the gods; at the same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him.
"Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel, not seeing Xisutbros return, descended too, and began to seek him, calling him by his name. They saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard commanding them piety toward the gods; that he, indeed, was receiving the reward of his piety in being carried away to dwell thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and that his wife, his daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honor. The voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and, conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at Sippara in order to transmit them to men. It added that the country in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon, disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities, built temples, and restored Babylon."
"By the side of this version," says Lenormant, "which, interesting though it be, is, after all, second-hand, we are now able to place an original Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh, and now in the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chant of the great epic of the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name has not as yet been made out with certainty, being attacked by disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult the patriarch saved from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to which the gods have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He asks Khasisatra to reveal the secret of the events which led to his obtaining the privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is induced to relate the cataclysm.
"By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of the palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the narrative with hardly any breaks. These three copies were, by order of the King of Assyria, Asshurbanabal, made in the eighth century B.C., from a very ancient specimen in the sacerdotal library of the town of Uruk, founded by the monarchs of the first Chaldean empire. It is difficult precisely to fix the date of the original, copied by Assyrian scribes, but it certainly goes back to the ancient empire, seventeen centuries at least before our era, and even probably beyond; it was therefore much anterior to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with Abraham. The variations presented by the three existing copies prove that the original was in the primitive mode of writing called the hieratic, a character which must have already become difficult to decipher in the eighth century B.C., as the copyists have differed as to the interpretation to be given to certain signs, and in other cases have simply reproduced exactly the forms of such as they did not understand. Finally, it results from a comparison of these variations, that the original, transcribed by order of Asshurbanabal, must itself have been a copy of some still more ancient manuscript, it, which the original text had already received interlinear comments. Some of the copyists have introduced these into their text, others have omitted them. With these preliminary observations, I proceed to give integrally the narrative ascribed in the poem to Khasisatra:
"'I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my preservation—and tell to thee the decision of the gods.
"'The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on the Euphrates—it was ancient, and in it [men did not honor] the gods. [I alone, I was] their servant, to the great gods—[The gods took counsel on the appeal of] Ann—[a deluge was proposed by] Bel—[and approved by Nabon, Nergal and] Adar.
"'And the god [Ea], the immutable lord, repeated this command in a dream.—I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he said to me:—" Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu—thou, build a vessel and finish it [quickly].—[By a deluge] I will destroy substance and life.—Cause thou to go up into the vessel the substance of all that has life.—The vessel thou shall build—600 cubits shall be the measure of its length—and 60 cubits the amount of its breadth and of its height. [Launch it] thus on the ocean, and cover it with a roof."—I understood, and I said to Ea, my lord:—"[The vessel] that thou commandest me to build thus—[when] I shall do it,—young and old [shall laugh at me.]"—[Ea opened his mouth and] spoke.—He said to me, his servant:—"[If they laugh at thee] thou shalt say to them:—[shall be punished] he who has insulted me, [for the protection of the gods] is over me.— … like to caverns … — … I will exercise my judgment on that which is on high and that which is below … — … Close the vessel … — … At a given moment that I shall cause thee to know,—enter into it, and draw the door of the ship toward thee.—Within it, thy grains, thy furniture, thy provisions, thy riches, thy men-servants, and thy maid-servants, and thy young people—the cattle of the field, and the wild beasts of the plain that I will assemble—and that I will send thee, shall be kept behind thy door."—Khasisatra opened his mouth and spoke;—he said to Ea, his lord:—"No one has made [such a] ship.—On the prow I will fix … —I shall see … and the vessel … —the vessel thou commandest me to build [thus] which in…."
"'On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.—In its covering fourteen in all were its rafters—fourteen in all did it count above.—I placed its roof, and I covered it.—I embarked in it on the sixth day; I divided its floors on the seventh;—I divided the interior compartments on the eighth. I stopped up the chinks through which the water entered in;—I visited the chinks, and added what was wanting.—I poured on the exterior three times 3600 measures of asphalte,—and three times 3600 measures of asphalte within.—Three times 3600 men, porters, brought on their heads the chests of provisions.—I kept 3600 chests for the nourishment of my family,—and the mariners divided among themselves twice 3600 chests.—For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;—I instituted [rations] for each day.—In [anticipation of the need of] drinks, of barrels, and of wine—[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of a river, [of provisions] in quantity like to the dust of the earth.—[To arrange them in] the chests I set my hand to.— … of the sun … the vessel was completed.— … strong and—I had carried above and below the furniture of the ship.—[This lading filled the two-thirds.]
"'All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver I gathered together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered—all that I possessed of the substance of life of every kind I gathered together.—I made all ascend into the vessel; my servants, male and female,—the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the plains, and the sons of the people, I made them all ascend.
"'Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined, and he announced it in these terms:—"In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door."—The fixed moment had arrived, which he announced in these terms:—"In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven."—When the evening of that day arrived, I was afraid,—I entered into the vessel and shut my door.—In shutting the vessel, to Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot,—I confided this dwelling, with all that it contained.
"'Mu-sheri-ina-namari—rose from the foundations of heaven in a black cloud;—Ramman thundered in the midst of the cloud,—and Nabon and Sharru marched before;—they marched, devastating the mountain and the plain;—Nergal the powerful dragged chastisements after him;—Adar advanced, overthrowing;—before him;—the archangels of the abyss brought destruction,—in their terrors they agitated the earth.—The inundation of Ramman swelled up to the sky,—and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed into a desert.
"'They broke … of the surface of the earth like…;—[they destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.—The terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven]. The brother no longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In heaven—the gods became afraid of the water-spout, and—sought a refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.—The gods were stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like dogs.—Ishtar wailed like a child, the great goddess pronounced her discourse:—"Here is humanity returned into mud, and—this is the misfortune that I have announced in the presence of the gods.—So I announced the misfortune in the presence of the gods,—for the evil I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are mine.—I am the mother who gave birth to men, and—like to the race of fishes, there they are filling the sea;—and the gods, by reason of that—which the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with me."—The gods on their seats were seated in tears,—and they held their lips closed, [revolving] future things.
"'Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and the diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible water-spout—which had assailed after the fashion of an earthquake—grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively observing—and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto sea-weeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I wept;-and my tears came over my face.
"'I looked at the regions bounding the sea: toward the twelve points of the horizon; not any continent.—The vessel was borne above the land of Nizir,—the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over.—A day and a second day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;—the third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;—the fifth and sixth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over. At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a dove. The dove went, turned, and—found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went, turned, and—found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent out and loosed a raven; the raven went and saw the corpses on the waters; it ate, rested, turned, and came not back.