Tensas gazette. [volume] (St. Joseph, La.) 1886-current, 1894-08-10
ANCIENT AMERICA.
Supposed to Eavs Deen Atlanta
G Powerful Empire.
According to an Egyptian Legend the
Whole Continent Was EnsuIfed
In the Sea by q Convulsion
OF Nature.

In a volume entitled 1.-THE Lost At
lantis," by the late Sir Daniel Wilson
president of the university Of Toronto
an interesting study is made of the
legends which suggest that America
was known to the ancicnts. In two OF
Platos dialogues, the Timaeus and
Critias. it is related that Scion, the
great Athenian law-giver, during a
visit he made to Sais, in Egypt, some
thirty -four hundred years ago, was in.
formed by the priests of the former
existence, west of the strait of Gibral.
tar, of an island continent in the At
lantic ocean, says the Baltimore Sun.
This continent, Atlantis, the seat of
a powerful empire, according to the
story, was engulfed in the sea by some
convulsion of nature, with the result.
OF course, of destroying its hundreds of
cities and millions of inha bitants. AL
ready in Solon's time the destruction of
Atlantis was described as q remote
event, white with age"
Has this legend basis of factp II
cannot be accepted as a whole, it ap-
pears, because the Atlantic. in the opin.
ion of biologists. has been substantial
ly what it Is for many millions of years.
Geology shows evidences of local ND
heavais, but none Of the submergence
OF extensive continental areas. Sir Dam
lei accordingly feels compelled to reject
the sinking of Atlantis as q detail Of
the story invented to account for the
cessation of intercourse with il. The
body of the story he is disposed to &C.
cept- Atlantis was America, which con-
tinent the earlier Egyptians had discov-
cred during their period of adventurous
maritime enterprise. There are many
evidences of Egyptian domination
around the Mediterranean before the
Trojan war Their ships sailed the At
lantlc, visiting Eng land for tin and ex-
ploring the coast of Africa toward and
beyond the equator in search of gold.
Their vessels might readily have been
carried we stward by ocean currents to
Brazil and Central America. In tho
year 1900 of our era Pedro Alvares de
Cabral, the Portuguese admiral. while
sailing southwark along the west coast
Of Africa, was carried by the equatorial
current so far out of his course that he
accidentally discovered Brazil. What
befell the Portuguese admiral in 1900
might readily, Sir Daniel thinks, have
befallen Egyptian admirals thousands
of years before. Egypt when first re-
vealed to US In history was already far
gone in its decline. Its people had lost
the spirit which impelled them to their
first discoveries and to their acquisition
of the greatest ii not the lrst of the
ancient en-; Tres.
Sir Daniel afirms that the ancient
maritime races of the Orient frequently
made voyages far out into the Atlantic.
In the reign of Pharaoh Necho, Gil
Cos b. c., after the decline of Egyptian
maritime enterprise. Phoenician feet
Sas employed to circumnavigate Africa.
Hauno, the Carthagipian, is said to
have reached the Indian ocean by the
route around the cape, as Vasco de
Cana did later, in 1897. Enterprise has
its pulsations-its periods of expansion
and contraction. There are, it is seen,
indications that the discovery of Amer
lea was within the reach of the Egyp-
tians at the period to which the story of
Atlantis refers.
When the Egyptians ceased to rove
the sea Atlantis was lost to view at sails
and became dim legend Evidences of
Egyptian intercourse with it are to be
sought, according to the author, among
the ruined cities of Central America.
Such evidences may yet be forthcoming.
ut would not" he says. lin any degree
surprise me to learn of the discovery of
q genuine Phoenician or other inscrip-
ton or some hoard of Assyrian cry
phons or shekels of the merchant
princes of Tyre, that had knowledge of
the sea- being recovered among the
still unexplored treasures of the buried
empire of Montezuma or the long-de-
serted ruins of Central America Such
a discovery would scarcely be more sur
prising than that of the Punic boards
found at Corvo, the most westerly island
of the Azores Yet 1t would furnish q
basis for the legend of At
lantis. There is nothing improbable in
the idea that it rests on some historic
basis In which the fall of an Iberian or
other aggressive power in the western
Mediterranean has mingled with other
and equally vague traditions of inter
course with a vast continent lying be-
yond the pillars of Hercules" The
speculation is an attractive one and
adds interest TO the study of the antiqui-
Lies of Central America.