In short, I fail to see why this story of Plato, told as history,
derived from the Egyptians, a people who, it is known, preserved most
ancient records, and who were able to trace their existence back to a
vast antiquity, should have been contemptuously set aside as a fable by
Greeks, Romans, and the modern world. It can only be because our
predecessors, with their limited knowledge of the geological history of
the world, did not believe it possible that any large part of the
earth's surface could have been thus suddenly swallowed up by the sea.

Let us then first address ourselves to that question.

CHAPTER IV.

WAS SUCH A CATASTROPHE POSSIBLE?

All that is needed to answer this question is to briefly refer to some
of the facts revealed by the study of geology.

In the first place, the earth's surface is a record of successive
risings and fallings of the land. The accompanying picture represents a
section of the anthracite coal-measures of Pennsylvania. Each of the
coal deposits here shown, indicated by the black lines, was created when
the land had risen sufficiently above the sea to maintain vegetation;
each of the strata of rock, many of them hundreds of feet in thickness,
was deposited under water. Here we have twenty-three different changes
of the level of the land during the formation of 2000 feet of rock and
coal; and these changes took place over vast areas, embracing thousands
of square miles.