earth. We have seen the whole coast of South America lifted up bodily
ten or fifteen feet and let down again in an hour. We have seen the
Andes sink 220 feet in seventy years. . . Vast transpositions have taken
place in the coast-line of China. The ancient capital, located, in all
probability, in an accessible position near the centre of the empire,
has now become nearly surrounded by water, and its site is on the
peninsula of Corea. . . . There was a time when the rocky barriers of
the Thracian Bosphorus gave way and the Black Sea subsided. It had
covered a vast area in the north and east. Now this area became drained,
and was known as the ancient Lectonia: it is now the prairie region of
Russia, and the granary of Europe."

There is ample geological evidence that at one time the entire area of
Great Britain was submerged to the depth of at least seventeen hundred
feet. Over the face of the submerged land was strewn thick beds of sand,
gravel, and clay, termed by geologists "the Northern Drift." The British
Islands rose again from the sea, bearing these water-deposits on their
bosom. What is now Sicily once lay deep beneath the sea: A subsequently
rose 3000 feet above the sea-level. The Desert of Sahara was once under
water, and its now burning sands are a deposit of the sea.

Geologically speaking, the submergence of Atlantis, within the
historical period, was simply the last of a number of vast changes, by
which the continent which once occupied the greater part of the Atlantic
had gradually sunk under the ocean, while the new lands were rising on
both sides of it.

We come now to the second question, Is it possible that Atlantis could
have been suddenly destroyed by such a convulsion of nature as is
described by Plato? The ancients regarded this part of his story as a