Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1911-05-16

OF runs water over lnelr SUBMITS
without regard to human plans or am
bitions.
Plato in his "Timaeus" relates that
all Egyptian priest told Solon that
Atlantis was q flourishing land, larg-
er than Libya or Asia Minor, 5000
years before Greece was a world
power. Some scholars are persuaded
that Plato was exercising his imag-
ination. Others are just as certain
that these ancient geographers had
the Canary Islands or America or
Scandinavia in mind, and still others
point to the geological evidence and
claim that real continent has gone
down in the Atlantic within historic
| times.
A line Of extinct and active vol
canoes beneath the surface of the At
lantic divides the sea longitudinally
into two great basins. Under their
influence the sea bottom may have
risen and fallen appreciably many
times. There is nothing to disprove
the existence of Atlantis, but there Is
also no record of the civilization that
Is supposed to have perished with it.
There are also medieval legends of
the disappearance Of the town Of
Vineta into the waters off the coast
of Holstein. Fishermen say that on
clear days when the sea is smooth
they can look down into the waters
and see the peaked roofs Of q city Of
the middle ages and that the tolling
Of the bells in the church spires
comes family up to them as they are
moved by the submarine currents.
Similar to this Is the story of the town
Of Wendigstadt.
The famous island of Juan Fernan-
dez, where Alexander Selkirk, the
Scotch buccaneer, lived in solitude
from 1904 until 1909, has recently
gone the way of lands consecrated to
the sea. 1t lies about 420 miles west
Of Valparaiso. and though Robinson
Crusoe's island was located in fiction
off the mouth of the Orinoco, on the
east coast of South America, it Is gen.
orally taken for granted that Defoe
had Selkirk's island and story in
mind when he wrote his famous novel.
Juan Fernandez was small island of
considerable altitude and most likely
Of volcanic origin. In 1877 the is
land was leased by the government to
a Swiss who proposed planting a
colony there. A few years ago the
whole island went down as the re-
suit of some shifting of the volcanic
sea bottom, and the colony was at an
end.
While the populOus Atlantic coast
is sinking and the sea threatens to
overflow everything east of the Allie
ghanies at some remote period q new
continent Is being born off the coast
Of Alaska, geologists tell us, so that
in time Asia and America may once
more be a single continent, as they
are sometimes supposed to have been
in the age when the Mongolian tribes
first came out of Asia and developed
into the American Indian.
Archaeologists who have studied
the prehistoric barrows and mounds
on the islands in the British channel
are convinced that men built stone
villages on the land that Is now the
channel bottom before the British
isles and the continent were separat-
ed. If this is true, there are doubt
less whole prehistoric cities, stone
circles tombs and towers on the chan
mel bottom.
In 1872 the former city Of Kingston,
Jamaica, went to make up a part of
the sea floor, and while a new city
rose upon the new shores, the old
town is now given up to the amphi-
bious gentry In 1907 the sea swal-
lowed up an adjacent section Of the
coast and the residents of the island
are never certain that the whole is
land will not go down some day in an
hour like a scuttled ship. In 1851
20 leagues Of the coast Of San Do
mingo suddenly dropped, the waters
rushed in, and where there had been
Iapparantly imperishable land and
! rock, there Is now a bay. In 1862
60 square miles of coast in Hindustan
disappeared and has ever since re-
manned submerged with it's towns and
villages.
There are countries which have de-
veloped elaborate civilizations in the
face of constant danger of an over
flow. Half of Holland lies below the
sea level and is kept from forming
perfectly normal sea bottom by a line
of slender dikes. If the low countries
should experience seismic disturb
dikes 1t would be a gigantic engineer
ing feat for whatever remained Of
the Netherlands to recover the sub
merged half from the sea, and rich
cities with their priceless art treas
ures, not forgetting several million
human lives. would be irrevocably
lost.
The whole country about the Dead
Sea Is far below the level Of the wa
ters on the west of the Lebanon hills,
and a wrinkling Of the earth crust
that would let the Mediterranean In
would convert the Holy Land into a
archipelago.
The sea, implacable as it seems, has
it's own laws of compensation, how
ever. For every inch of coast, for
every island that it swallows up it
lays bare a corresponding amount Of
terra firma in some other quarter.
The famous Graham isle, as the Eng
lish call it, or Insel Ferdinandez, as
the Germans named it, which came up
from the sea off the coast of Sicily in
1881, is an example of this system Of
compensations. BY volcanic action a
great peak Of rock was forced high
above the sea level to the astonish-
ment Of mariners. The action Of the
waves Of the lava formation gradually
split the crater, and after some years
the peak was reduced to q shoal
In the Pacific 1t is no novelty for
ships to see new islands in their
course upon every trip and equally
common for old landmarks, islands
where pearl fisheries have built their
stations and natives their villages dis
appear under the whimsical dictation
Of the ocean.
Jules Verne's Mysterious Island"
under which Captain Memo was lodg-
ed in his submarine, which disap-
peared through the action OF volcanic
steam, is duplicated i'm a hundred Of
these short lived plots Of earth, coral
and rock, upon which life Is indeed
ecarious.-Chicago Tribune.