The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1890-07-20
LOST CONTINENT.
nottom Of the Pacific Once
Occupied by People.
1emuRIA. DEEP IN THE SEA.
s.,.nders OF Hawaii, Java and FIJI De-
seendants of the Ancient Inhabitants
of the Drowned World.
x,l,I.m churchill in pIttsburg Dispatch.

8. roetes and bounds where now the rest
Ia ocean rolls and taxes its name from
M continent it has drowned. Their elders
- ~ of the lost civilization whose ruins
nov lie upon the sea bed thickly crusted
ritb dull crystals of salt and the strange
xrovfhs of the dark depths. In the lost
Iflant;s which Plato taught and which his
I.tast follower has restored instinct with
ia. they find solution for every mystery
nat sfares upon them from four CONT
nents-Europe. Africa and the two Ameri-
cas.
Bat who can oft-hand draw the lines of
Iemuria? 1t is just as much continent
3 the famed Atlantis, but who knows its
former place upon the globe? It Is, too.
suaken beneath the ail-deyeuring waves of
ocean, but its spires yet tower here and
there by hundreds above the sea, to show
where il once was. But who can lay his
finger on the instructive bali and turn its
proper part to view and say that here Lee
muria lay ages ago when Atlantis
raised its shores from other waves. The
tvo lost continents are theories of the sage.
dim fgmenEs of ancient tradition handed
down from the fathers none know how.
One rests upon base solid as the other.
81, there the likeness ends. Atlantis is a
name familiar on the lips of all; Lemuria
rarely strikes the eve save of some book
worm grubbing in dusty folios OF reconcile
story.
Lemuria is the dro 9ned continent of the
Pacific, as Atlantis is of the other sea. The
nsp may be made to show its former lines.
Between the two tropics and stretching
westward from the 10th west meridian.
the char will show the Pacific dotted with
Islands, small at first, but growing larger
toward the west, until the several chains
weep together in compact archipelago.
uoxuing through the narrow Malay seas
md Spreading out uron the Indian ocean
ii scattered groups again. Around these
isl6nds draw bounding line, and there
Iemnria Is marked to sight. and contro-
vsrsiallsts will battle long upon every
eroup included. as is their wont. TO fight
fhtir hardest battles over points that solved
one way or the other can have no possible
bearing on anything at all. Thus, this
poor, forgotten continent has been fished
40 from the depths only to be sunk again
under the load of theories laid upon it to
account for myriad vexing facts which
puzze students OF the island world.
These are some culled at random from o
long list of others. With people of differ
ent race and speech, widely separated by
leagues of barren sea, why should some
half hundred words be the same, and
those the names of simplest necessaries7
Thus the numerals stretch out across the
uea With scarce change, water is wal
wherever you may chance to find il, and
land, ii not benua pure and simple, Is SO
ciose to it that the change may pass for
careless INSTRUMENTATION. And sky-at
the eastern verge Of the Lemurian CONT.
nent 1t Is found as lani in Hawaii; at the
southern edge it is rangi in New Z.aland,
and so through langi in + il. 1t reaches
langil 10 the Java seas, and grows to lani-
hitra in distant Madagascar. But how
these worda have Travelled over MANY
thousand miles of trackless sea is ques-
ton for whose solution this continent has
been raised and sunk again.
then, too. these peonle have q uniform
-fredillonsd whence they came, and its
name u the same. though modified by the
lips that frame it. Hawaiians say their
mthers came from an oiaer Hawaii lying
inthe remote west; Samoan story points
20 On ancient western Savaii, whose name
TIER largest island bears; Maori memory
u New Zealand recalls a VOYAGE from
HAwaiki; the scattered threads meet in
Java, where the name is still the same, and
q last the slender cord stretches Gear
aefoss the Indian ocean TO the African
nsba, where 1t hopelessly loses itself in the
ten lost tribes of Israel. Those ten lost
tribes, forever vanished from the page of
history, and yet forever trying to appear
mere, there and verywhere-smali wonder
g . that instead of wrestling with their
problem the student deems 1t simpler TO
drag the ocean bottom.
Word puzzes are not the only puzzles of
ne Islands OF the South Seas. Faint and
paming traditions OF ancient voyages, dim,
uansubstaniial. are not the only trace of
distant ages which remain. The past has
come down TO the present in enduring
Stone, but who first set those rock memoir
iAls IN place, how many ages they have
watched creeping across the sen, no man
amhy say. Tor the memory OF the builders
nss Iaded out OF every human mind, and
me stone gives no clew. Scattered here
anu tnere across the sea these stone me-
I.sa. may be found, mysterious to the
w nnlse man, mysterious 10 the native who
mas : lost the art of working stone, if indeed
re ever had it. The present people of the
iAands could never have faced huge blocks
ana cur their edges so true that after all
we lapse OF unknown ages the try-square
SHOWS the work to have been done by
sAiliui masons. These. then. are not the
men VINO swung block on block into
.massy walls, each block weighing many
:, IN the Tubuai or Austral group lying to
u: south OF Tahiti is the island of Rapa
~, Little Rtpa. horseshoe of steep
mh ;s embracing tiny bay. Here
.sh SHOWS rising terraces of stone one
love the other, there another hill is
ssankea with stone that upholds stone
aasked path winding in a spiral to the
summit where is built a solid platform of
SS,uge rocks. Across a valley between the
az. Is thrown broad causeway. So on
~ aho NH the stone is found dressed to
snspe, and the people of the island simply
sas' ihey were there when our fathers
.anae mere; they must have been there
sin ns, The beginning of the world"
.ne stones are black and the very hard
~ rock. the smallest fully 10 feet in
'Trahglh by 8 and upon the smaller end.
49, nave been dressed 10 SO true sur
.soe tnat they rest in place without a bit
s = mur'ar, and yet the seam remains SO
o,ose ,hal one could not even slip a sheet
~ paper In between the stones. When
ssaese terraces are of less extent they are
SNOW as maraeS, and the theory has been
Iiuvaheed that they have a religious mean
,'.s as affairs, but 1t is difficult TO find any
p.oper proof of such n theory. Built OF
sone carefully dressed and closely titted,
sssh IA some cases mortised intot the course
..'ow, these maraes are found far and
sue upon the Pacific islands, sometimes
s,aaroanded by the houses OF modern
gvnns, often buried III the forests in the
hon. Vi 'iol''oai 'ese'"-
~. IA many OF the islands at the present
! s'ale me body OF a dead chief is buried in
n snlai marae. The corpse Is laid upon
nc ground, and around and over il is
STE rectangular earn of undressed
l,one, Tue whole being about ten feet long
T. T. nan MS many in breadth and height.
49, us proportion 10 the dignity of the
salei below the tumulus has larger diman-
. ..ons' ana IN some cases q second and
smaller aaa one is built upon 1t.
A.. s1 pss upon The hrlnA OF a sheer cliff on
me- slan island of Makaya one such tu-