There is, also, in this ocean a vast tract of floating seaweed, called by
sailors the Sargasso Sea,--covering a region as large as France,--and this
has been thought by many to mark the place of a sunken island. There are
also many islands, such as the Azores, which have been supposed at
different times to be fragments of Atlantis; and besides all this, the
remains of the vanished island have been looked for in all parts of the
world. Some writers have thought it was in Sweden, others in Spitzbergen,
others in Africa, in Palestine, in America. Since the depth of the
Atlantic has been more thoroughly sounded, a few writers have maintained
that the inequalities of its floor show some traces of the submerged
Atlantis, but the general opinion of men of science is quite the other
way. The visible Atlantic islands are all, or almost all, they say, of
volcanic origin; and though there are ridges in the bottom of the ocean,
they do not connect the continents.

At any rate, this was the original story of Atlantis, and the legends
which follow in these pages have doubtless all grown, more or less, out of
this first tale which Socrates told.



II

TALIESSIN OF THE RADIANT BROW

In times past there were enchanted islands in the Atlantic Ocean, off the
coast of Wales, and even now the fishermen sometimes think they see them.
On one of these there lived a man named Tegid Voel and his wife called
Cardiwen. They had a son, the ugliest boy in the world, and Cardiwen
formed a plan to make him more attractive by teaching him all possible