“And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked
How first this world and face of things began,
And what before thy memory was done
From the beginning.”
THE existence of the Continent of Atlantis is an hypothesis, but so was the existence of Lemuria, and there are scientists today of international repute who firmly believe that a continent once existed in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and India, and the proof is not wanting.
On the island of Madagascar are found thirty-three species of monkeys called Lemurs, which are not found in Africa, nor in any other part of the globe except Ceylon, India, and the Malay Archipelago. Because these Lemurs are found only in that region, Sclater, the English Zoologist, has called the sunken continent “Lemuria.” Between Madagascar and India are a number of submerged banks of less than a thousand fathoms deep, which a slight elevation would make comparatively easy stages of communication between Madagascar and India for all animals. An elevation of three hundred feet would unite Java, Sumatra and Borneo, into one great peninsula of the Asiatic continent.
The island of Madagascar is two hundred and fifty miles wide and a thousand miles long, and is separated from Africa by the Mozambique channel, only two hundred and fifty miles wide. Africa has monkeys, apes and baboons; also lions, leopards, hyenas, zebras, rhinoceri, elephants, buffalo, giraffes, and many species of deer and antelope; but strange to say, not one of these is found in Madagascar, or anything like unto them, and yet Madagascar is only two hundred and fifty miles away. There are in Madagascar, according to Wallace’s “Island Life,” and Dr. Hartlaub’s “Birds of Madagascar,” one hundred species of land birds, and only four or five have any kindred in Africa; but in Malaysia and India we find identical species, and on the islands of Mauritius, Rodriguez, Bourbon and the Seychelles group, we find so many curious birds without wings with kindred in Madagascar, we know that the islands at some time have been connected, else how could birds without wings get from one to the other? There are five species of lizards which are found in Mauritius, Bourbon, Rodriguez and Ceylon, and even to the Philippine Islands.
The Mascarine group contains a thousand and fifty-eight species of plants, of which sixty-six are found in Africa but not in Asia, and eighty-six are found in Asia but not in Africa, showing a closer relationship to Asia than to Africa. Milne-Edwards has even surmised a Mascarine continent, to include all the outlaying islands around Madagascar. Beccari, in his work on the distribution of palms, after noting the difficulty of the dispersion of the fruits, reaches the conclusion that, when we find two congeneric species of palms on widely separated lands, it is reasonable to infer that the lands have once been united. On the Mascarine Islands, in Ceylon, the Nicobars, at Singapore, on the Malaccas, New Guinea, in Australia and Polynesia, occur various species of Phycosperma, all very difficult of dissemination, and hence could only have reached their present habitat by being connected by intervening lands now in the ocean bed.
Winchell in his “Pre-Adamites” states among his principles: 1. The doctrine of Pre-Adamites is entirely consonant with the fundamental principles of Biblical christianity; 2. A chain of profound relationship runs through the constitution of all races, and they may be genealogically connected; 3. The initial point of the genealogical line may be located in Lemuria. Peschell in his “Races of Man,” says: “This continent which would correspond with the Indian Ethiopia of Claudius Ptolemaus, is required by anthropology, for we can then conceive how the inferior populations of Australia and India, the Papuans of the East Indian Islands, and lastly, the Negroes, would thus be enabled to reach their present abode by dry land. The selection of this spot is far more orthodox than it might at first glance appear, for we here find ourselves in the neighborhood of the four enigmatical rivers of the Scriptural Eden,—in the vicinity of the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris and Indus. By the gradual submergence of Lemuria, the expulsion from Paradise would also be inexorably accomplished.” To this he adds the argument of such ecclesiastical writers as Lactautius, the venerable Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, Cosmos Indiclopleustes, and the anonymous geographer of Ravenna.
I go thus into detail to show that men believe in the submerged continent of Lemuria, though they have never seen it, but cannot explain the presence of plants and animals on widely separated islands except by supposing they were once connected. If we could establish a similar relationship with Atlantis, the matter would explain itself. From the presence of rock salt, sand and sea-shells on the desert of Sahara, we know that it was once the bottom of the ocean, and the cause of its rising might have been the submergence of Lemuria, or vice versa, and the submergence of Atlantis may have had a counter result elsewhere. Charles Martins says that: “By the rules of hydrography and botany, the Azores, the Canaries and Madeira are the remains of a great continent which formerly united Europe to North America.”[G]
However, Atlantis does not have to stand altogether on theory. The governments of the world have gone about it in a practical manner, which is worthy of notice.
In 1873, Her Majesty’s ship Challenge made soundings in the Atlantic off the north coast of Africa, and in 1874 the German frigate, Gazelle, made further soundings in the same regions, and in 1877 Commodore Gorringe of the U. S. sloop Gettysburg, discovered, about a hundred miles from the Strait of Gibraltar, an immense bed of pink coral in thirty-two fathoms of water. Corals never work in water deeper than two hundred feet, so at last here is proof positive that there are sunken islands there. These various soundings, when located on a map, indicate the existence of an extended bank of comparatively shallow water, in the midst of which the Canaries and the Madeiras rise to the surface.
The location of the newly discovered mountains in the Atlantic, lies within the fifteen thousand fathom line, and here is probably the stump of the ancient Atlantis.
FINIS.
