The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1894-06-15
ANCIENT AMERTCA.
Supposed to Have Been Atlantis
Powerful Empire
According to an Egyptian. Legend tn,
Whole Continent Was EnSulfed
in the Sea by Convulsion
OF Nature.


OF Nature.
In volume entitled s'The Lost At
lantis, by the late Sir Daniel Wilson
president of the university of Toronto
an interesting study is made of tn,
legends which suggest that Americ.
was known to the ancients. II two O.
Plato,s dialogues, the Timaeus anC
Critias, it is related that Solon, the
great Athenian law-giver, during
visit he made to Sais, in Egypt, sorns
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
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 inhabitants Al
ready in Solon's time the destruction OF
Atlantis was described as a remote
event, ''white with age.''
Has this legend a basis of fact? It
cannot be accepted as a whole, it ap-
pears, because the Atlantic, in the opin-
ion of geologists, has been substantial
ly what it is for many millions of years
Geology shows evidences of local up
heavals, but none of the submergence
OF extensive continental areas. Sir Dan
iel accordingly feels compelled to reject
the sinking of Atlantis as a detail of
the story invented to account for the
cessation of intercourse with it. The
cody of the story he is disposed to ac-
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
Iantic, visiting England 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 the
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 if not the first of the
ancient eEapires.
Sir Daniel affirns that the ancient
maritime races of the Orient frequently
made voyages far out into the. Atlantic.
In the reign of Pharaoh-Necho, ell
COS B. c., after the decline of Egyptian
maritime enterprise, Phoenieian fleet
was employed to circumnayigate Africa.
Hanno, the Carthaginian, 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
refers.
When the Egyptians ceased to rove
the sea Atlantis was lost to view at Sais
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.
''It would not" he says, sin any degree |
surprise me to learn of the discovery OF |
a genuine Phoenician or other inscrip-
tion 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 it would furnish a |
substantial 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 vast continent lying be-
yond the pillars of Hercules The |
speculation is an attractive one and |
adds interest to the study of the antiqui- |
ties of Central America. Il