The San Francisco call., 1896-10-04


memory of all their sacred ceremonies
should be lost" These men who OWNED
the coming of the floods were not Egyp-
Trans, who never had any floods, except the
periodical rising oil the Nile. They were
rather the last remnants of the Allan
teans-those races ich science IS Begin
n1ng to believe lived and breathed bef re
the so-called historic period. Charles
Gould. the well-known geologist, says:
Can we suppose that we have at all ex-
hausted the great museum o. nature? Have
We, in fact penetrated yet beyond It's ante
chambers? Does the written history OF man.
comprising few thousand years, embrace the
! whole course OF his intelligent existence? Or
have we in the long mythical era, extending
over hundreds of thousands of years ana re-
corded on the chronologies of Chaldea and OF
! emma, shadowy mementos of prehistoric man,
handed down by tradition and perhaps trans
ported by few survivors to existing lands
! from others. which ke the tabled (?i Atlantis
of Plato, may have been submerged, or the
scene of some joint catastrophe which de-
stroyed them ali with their civilization?
Modern research and effort have gone
| far to demonstrate the truth of Plato's
| statements. aud many are the scientific
| writer's who have added something to q
| carer understanding of Atlantis; yet
| there are S, me who are skeptical or luxe
warm concerning the facts. But if one
will take the time to carefully go over the
! facts and mass of proofs presented by Mr..
| Donnelly in his book entitled atlantis:
| The Antediluvian World, " he can scarcely
remain in doubt about the existence or
| rise and fall of Atlantis In the present
sketch one can do little more than point
out the most important facts as CLEANED
| from various sources concerning the an
! cent world thai now lies buried beneath
the Atlantic Ocean. Those who are in
| terested in the small Atlantic island, its
divisions into land and water, the places,
| the temples, the statues of gold, the foun-
tains, and springs, and baths, should read
| Plato's description:
! The military and naval establish ments,
| the race courses and docks, the gardens and
streets all come in for share in the de-
scription. The whole country was stated
to be very lofty and precipitous on the
side of the sea. but the country imme-
diately about ana surrounding the city
was q level plane. itself surrounded by
mountain chains. y And the place
was smooth and level and of oblong shape,
lying north and south, 5000 stadia in one
direction and 1000 in tie other.
| They surrounded the plain by an enor-
nous canal or dixie, 101 feet deep, 606 feet
broad and 1850 miles in length"
| In other places Plato gives the entire
size of the island of Poseidonis as about
the same as that assigned above to the
plain around the city alone. 1t seems
then that one statement refers to the
great continent and the other to the small
remnant--PIato's island.
| The standing army of Atlantis is given
as upward of ZOO 600 men; it's navy as
1900 ships and 240, 900 men. Such state
ments are not applicable to a small island
| state of about the size of Ireland. Con-
corning the people, he says:
For many generations, as long as the divine
nature las ed in them, they were obedient to
| the laws. They possessed true and in every
| way great spirits practicing gentleness and
wisdom. They despised everything but virtue,
| and thinking lightly on the possession of gold
and other property, they were not intoxicated
| by luxury nor did wealth deprive them of
/ their self-control. But when the
divine nature began to fade and became
diluted with too much of the mortal mixture,
they being unable to bear their fortunes, be-
came unseemly, losing their fairest and most
| precious gifts. Then a most honorable race
| becoming wretched, retribution follows.
The early Atlanteans, we are told, were,
| like the Lemurians, from whom they de-
| scended, giants, but smaller than the early,
| third race Cyclops. 1t is probable that the
| Atlanteans were early twenty-seven feet high
and eight feet across the shoulders, but they
gradually diminished in size.
The term "Atlantean" must not mislead the
i reader to regard them one race only or
| even a nation. 1t is as though one said
"Aslatics." Many, multityped and various
were the Atlanteans. who represented several
humanities and almost countless number of
races and nations, more varied, indeed, than
would be the Europeans were their name to
| be given indiscriminately to the five now ex-
isting parts of the world. There were brown,
! red, yellow white and black Atlanteans.
giants and dwarfs las some African tribes are
even now.
1t is from the Atlanteans that the early
Aryans got their knowledge of ''the
bundle of wonderful things" mentioned
in the Mahabharata. 1t is from them that
they learned aeronautics (the knowledge
OF flying in air vebicles) and therefore
their great arts of meteorography and me-
teorology. II is from them that they in
herited their most valuable science of the
hidden existence of precious and other
stones; of chemistry, or rather alchemy,
of mneralogy, geology, physics and as
tronomy.
1t is stated that the Atlanteans learned
the secret and hidden laws of nature, and
the more evil among them used or mis-
used their knowledge for base purposes.
1t is even claimed that they had obtained
the keys to some of the most arcane laws
OF magnetism and electricity, to which
the x ray is as childs play. They may
even have known of that most mysterious
force called '.vril" by Bulwer.
In fact, their knowledge had risen to
such a height that they were virtually
gods, until some OF them, by prostituting
their powers to unworthy ends, became
sorcerers and demons. Then comes the
record of wars, bloodshed and ruin, cul-
minating in great catastrophe. and the
sinking of the continent, the elect of the
nations seeking other lands.
1t is of this cataclysm, the submersion
of the great continent OF Atlantis, that the
old records say that "the ends of the earth
got loose " and upon this catastrophe have