of fifty sovereigns (all I had), a knife, pistol and two copies of my
precious book, the third copy, alas! I had left behind in my hurry."

After giving a few unimportant details as to his life on board ship,
Maitland went on to say:--

"Owing to a succession of storms the _Peterkin_ was driven out of her
course, and after narrowly escaping being dashed to pieces on the
Florida reefs, Lat. 24-1/2° N., Long. 82° W., we ran ashore with the
loss of only two lives--the second mate and cabin boy--on the Isthmus
of Yucatan, close to the estuary of a river.[1] Here we were forced to
spend nearly a year, during which time I made several journeys of
exploration into the interior of the continent. In the course of one
of my rambles amid a dense mass of tropical foliage, I suddenly found
myself face to face with a gigantic stone Sphinx, which I at once
recognized and identified. It was Tat-Nuada, an Atlantean deity,
elaborately described in one of the burned books. Much excited, I set
to work, and, after clearing the base of the idol of fungi and other
vegetable growth adhering to it, discovered a superscription in
Atlantean dialect to the effect that the image had been set up there
by one Hullir--to commemorate the destruction of Atlantis, of which
catastrophe Hullir believed himself and his family, _i.e._ his wife
Ozilmeave and daughters, Taramoo and Nikétoth, and the crew of his
yacht, the _Chaac-molré_ (ten in number), the sole survivors.

"Here, then, to my unutterable joy, was strong corroborative evidence
of the great disaster narrated in detail in the manuscripts I had
found in Inisturk Island. The existence of Atlantis was now thoroughly
substantiated. On all sides of me I stumbled across further evidences
of these early settlers. Here, standing in bold outline on a slight