PART II. THE DELUGE.

CHAPTER I.

THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS DESCRIBED IN THE DELUGE LEGENDS.

Having demonstrated, as we think successfully, that there is no
improbability in the statement of Plato that a large island, almost a
continent, existed in the past in the Atlantic Ocean, nay, more, that it
is a geological certainty that it did exist; and having further shown
that it is not improbable but very possible that it may have sunk
beneath the sea in the manner described by Plato, we come now to the
next question, Is the memory of this gigantic catastrophe preserved
among the traditions of mankind? We think there can be no doubt that an
affirmative answer must be given to this question.

An event, which in a few hours destroyed, amid horrible convulsions, an
entire country, with all its vast population-that Population the
ancestors of the great races of both continents, and they themselves the
custodians of the civilization of their age-could not fail to impress
with terrible force the minds of men, and to project its gloomy shadow
over all human history. And hence, whether we turn to the Hebrews, the
Aryans, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Cushites, or the inhabitants of
America, we find everywhere traditions of the Deluge; and we shall see
that all these traditions point unmistakably to the destruction of
Atlantis.

Francois Lenormant says (Contemp. Rev., Nov., 1879):

"The result authorizes us to affirm the story of the Deluge to be a