The extent of country covered by the commerce of the Phoenicians represents to some degree the area of the old Atlantean Empire. Their colonies and trading-posts extended east and west from the shores of the Black Sea, through the Mediterranean to the west coast of Africa and of Spain, and around to Ireland and England; while from north to south they ranged from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. They touched every point where civilization in later ages made its appearance. Strabo estimated that they had three hundred cities along the west coast of Africa. When Columbus sailed to discover a new world, or re-discover an old one, he took his departure from a Phoenician seaport, founded by that great race two thousand five hundred years previously. This Atlantean sailor, with his Phoenician features, sailing from an Atlantean port, simply re-opened the path of commerce and colonization which had been closed when Plato's island sunk in the sea. And it is a curious fact that Columbus had the antediluvian world in his mind's eye even then, for when he reached the mouth of the Orinoco he thought it was the river Gihon, that flowed out of Paradise, and he wrote home to Spain, "There are here great indications suggesting the proximity of the earthly Paradise, for not only does it correspond in mathematical position with the opinions of the holy and learned theologians, but all other signs concur to make it probable."

Sanchoniathon claims that the learning of Egypt, Greece, and Judaea was derived from the Phoenicians. It would appear probable that, while other races represent the conquests or colonizations of Atlantis, the Phoenicians succeeded to their arts, sciences, and especially their commercial supremacy; and hence the close resemblances which we have found to exist between the Hebrews, a branch of the Phoenician stock, and the people of America.

Upon the Syrian sea the people live Who style themselves Phoenicians. . . . These were the first great founders of the world— Founders of cities and of mighty states— Who showed a path through seas before unknown. In the first ages, when the sons of men Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned To each his first department; they bestowed Of land a portion and of sea a lot, And sent each wandering tribe far off to share A different soil and climate. Hence arose The great diversity, so plainly seen, 'Mid nations widely severed.

Dyonysius of Susiana, A.D. 3.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOD ODIN, WODEN, OR WOTAN.

In the Scandinavian mythology the chief god was Odin, the Woden, Wotan, or Wuotan of the Germans. He is represented with many of the attributes of the Greek god Zeus, and is supposed by some to be identical with him. He dwelt with the twelve AEsir, or gods, upon Asgard, the Norse Olympus, which arose out of Midgard, a land half-way between the regions of frost and fire (to wit, in a temperate climate). The Scandinavian Olympus was probably Atlantis. Odin is represented as a grave-looking elderly man with a long beard, carrying in his hand a spear, and accompanied by two dogs and two ravens. He was the father of poetry, and the inventor of Runic writing.

The Chiapenese of Central America (the people whose language we have seen furnishing such remarkable resemblances to Hebrew) claim to have been the first people of the New World. Clavigero tells us ("Hist. Antiq. del Messico," Eng. trans., 1807, vol. i.) that according to the traditions of the Chiapenese there was a Votan who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge; he was one of those who undertook to build the tower that should reach to heaven. The Lord ordered him to people America. "He came from the East." He brought seven families with him. He had been preceded in America by two others, Igh and Imox. He built a great city in America called "Nachan," City of the Serpents (the serpent that tempted Eve was Nahash), from his own race, which was named Chan, a serpent. This Nachan is supposed to have been Palenque. The date of his journey is placed in the legends in the year 3000 of the world, and in the tenth century B.C. He also founded three tributary monarchies, whose capitals were Tulan, Mayapan, and Chiquimala. He wrote a book containing a history of his deeds, and proofs that he belonged to the tribe of Chanes (serpents). He states that "he is the third of the Votans; that he conducted seven families from Valum-Votan to this continent, and assigned lands to them; that he determined to travel until he came to the root of heaven and found his relations, the Culebres, and made himself known to them; that he accordingly made four voyages to Chivim; that he arrived in Spain; that he went to Rome; that he saw the house of God building; that he went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored; that he marked it, and that he passed by the houses of the thirteen Culebres. He relates that, in returning from one of his voyages, he found seven other families of the Tzequil nation who had joined the first inhabitants, and recognized in them the same origin as his own, that is, of the Culebres; he speaks of the place where they built the first town, which from its founders received the name of Tzequil; he affirms that, having taught them the refinement of manners in the use of the table, table-cloths, dishes, basins, cups, and napkins, they taught him the knowledge of God and his worship; his first ideas of a king, and obedience to him; that he was chosen captain of all these united families."

It is probable that Spain and Rome are interpolations. Cabrera claims that the Votanites were Carthaginians. He thinks the Chivim of Votan were the Hivim, or Givim, who were descended of Heth, son of Canaan, Phoenicians; they were the builders of Accaron, Azotus, Ascalon, and Gaza. The Scriptures refer to them as Hivites (Givim) in Deuteronomy (chap. ii., verse 32), and Joshua (chap. xiii., verse 4). He claims that Cadmus and his wife Hermione were of this stock; and according to Ovid they were metamorphosed into snakes (Culebres). The name Hivites in Phoenician signifies a snake.

Votan may not, possibly, have passed into Europe; he may have travelled altogether in Africa. His singular allusion to "a way which the Culebres had bored" seems at first inexplicable; but Dr. Livingstone's last letters, published 8th November, 1869, in the "Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society," mention that "tribes live in underground houses in Rua. Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long, and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The 'writings' therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings of animals, and not letters; otherwise I should have gone to see them. People very dark, well made, and outer angle of eyes slanting inward."

And Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his famous exploration of the sources of the Nile, tells of a tunnel or subway under the river Kaoma, on the highway between Loowemba and Marunga, near Lake Tanganyika. His guide Manua describes it to him:

"I asked Manua if he had ever seen any country resembling it. His reply was, 'This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south of the Lake Tanganyika, when travelling with an Arab's caravan from Unjanyembeh. There is a river there called the Kaoma, running into the lake, the sides of which are similar in precipitousness to the rocks before us.' I then asked, 'Do the people cross this river in boats?' 'No; they have no boats; and even if they had, the people could not land, as the sides are too steep: they pass underneath the river by a natural tunnel, or subway.' He and all his party went through it on their way from Loowemba to Ooroongoo, and returned by it. He described its length as having taken them from sunrise till noon to pass through it, and so high that, if mounted upon camels, they could not touch the top. Tall reeds, the thickness of a walking-stick, grew inside, the road was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide—four hundred yards—that they could see their way tolerably well while passing through it. The rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means. Water never came through from the river overhead; it was procured by digging wells. Manua added that the people of Wambweh take shelter in this tunnel, and live there with their families and cattle, when molested by the Watuta, a warlike race, descended from the Zooloo Kafirs.

But it is interesting to find in this book of Votan, however little reliance we may place in its dates or details, evidence that there was actual intercourse between the Old World and the New in remote ages.

Humboldt remarks:

"We have fixed the special attention of our readers upon this Votan, or Wodan, an American who appears of the same family with the Wods or Odins of the Goths and of the people of Celtic origin. Since, according to the learned researches of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably the same person, it is curious to see the names of Bondvar, Wodansday, and Votan designating in India, Scandinavia, and in Mexico the day of a brief period." ("Vues des Cordilleras," p. 148, ed. 1810.)

There are many things to connect the mythology of the Gothic nations with Atlantis; they had, as we have seen, flood legends; their gods Krodo and Satar were the Chronos and Saturn of Atlantis; their Baal was the Bel of the Phoenicians, who were closely connected with Poseidon and Atlas; and, as we shall see hereafter, their language has a distinct relationship with the tongues of the Arabians, Cushites, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians.

CHAPTER V.

THE PYRAMID, THE CROSS, AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

No fact is better established than the reverence shown to the sign of the Cross in all the ages prior to Christianity. We cannot do better than quote from an able article in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1870, upon this question:

"From the dawn of organized Paganism in the Eastern world to the final establishment of Christianity in the Western, the Cross was undoubtedly one of the commonest and most sacred of symbolical monuments; and, to a remarkable extent, it is so still in almost every land where that of Calvary is unrecognized or unknown. Apart from any distinctions of social or intellectual superiority, of caste, color, nationality, or location in either hemisphere, it appears to have been the aboriginal possession of every people in antiquity—the elastic girdle, so to say, which embraced the most widely separated heathen communities—the most significant token of a universal brotherhood, to which all the families of mankind were severally and irresistibly drawn, and by which their common descent was emphatically expressed, or by means of which each and all preserved, amid every vicissitude of fortune, a knowledge of the primeval happiness and dignity of their species. Where authentic history is silent on the subject, the material relics of past and long since forgotten races are not wanting to confirm and strengthen this supposition. Diversified forms of the symbol are delineated more or less artistically, according to the progress achieved in civilization at the period, on the ruined walls of temples and palaces, on natural rocks and sepulchral galleries, on the hoariest monoliths and the rudest statuary; on coins, medals, and vases of every description; and, in not a few instances, are preserved in the architectural proportions of subterranean as well as superterranean structures, of tumuli as well as fanes. The extraordinary sanctity attaching to the symbol, in every age and under every variety of circumstance, justified any expenditure incurred in its fabrication or embellishment; hence the most persistent labor, the most consummate ingenuity, were lavished upon it. Populations of essentially different culture, tastes, and pursuits—the highly-civilized and the demi-civilized, the settled and nomadic—vied with each other in their efforts to extend the knowledge of its exceptional import and virtue among their latest posterities. The marvellous rock-hewn caves of Elephanta and Ellora, and the stately temples of Mathura and Terputty, in the East, may be cited as characteristic examples of one laborious method of exhibiting it; and the megalithic structures of Callernish and Newgrange, in the West, of another; while a third may be instanced in the great temple at Mitzla, 'the City of the Moon,' in Ojaaca, Central America, also excavated in the living rock, and manifesting the same stupendous labor and ingenuity as are observable in the cognate caverns of Salsette—of endeavors, we repeat, made by peoples as intellectually as geographically distinct, and followers withal of independent and unassociated deities, to magnify and perpetuate some grand primeval symbol. . . .

"Of the several varieties of the Cross still in vogue, as national or ecclesiastical emblems, in this and other European states, and distinguished by the familiar appellations of St. George, St. Andrew, the Maltese, the Greek, the Latin, etc., etc., there is not one among them the existence of which may not be traced to the remotest antiquity. They were the common property of the Eastern nations. No revolution or other casualty has wrought any perceptible difference in their several forms or delineations; they have passed from one hemisphere to the other intact; have survived dynasties, empires, and races; have been borne on the crest of each successive wave of Aryan population in its course toward the West; and, having been reconsecrated in later times by their lineal descendants, are still recognized as military and national badges of distinction. . . .

Among the earliest known types is the crux ansata, vulgarly called 'the key of the Nile,' because of its being found sculptured or otherwise represented so frequently upon Egyptian and Coptic monuments. It has, however, a very much older and more sacred signification than this. It was the symbol of symbols, the mystical Tau, 'the bidden wisdom,' not only of the ancient Egyptians but also of the Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Mexicans, Peruvians, and of every other ancient people commemorated in history, in either hemisphere, and is formed very similarly to our letter T, with a roundlet, or oval, placed immediately above it. Thus it was figured on the gigantic emerald or glass statue of Serapis, which was transported (293 B.C.) by order of Ptolemy Soter from Sinope, on the southern shores of the Black Sea, re-erected within that famous labyrinth which encompassed the banks of Lake Moeris, and destroyed by the victorious army of Theodosius (A.D. 389), despite the earnest entreaties of the Egyptian priesthood to spare it, because it was the emblem of their god and of 'the life to come.' Sometimes, as may be seen on the breast of an Egyptian mummy in the museum of the London University, the simple T only is planted on the frustum of a cone; and sometimes it is represented as springing from a heart; in the first instance signifying goodness; in the second, hope or expectation of reward. As in the oldest temples and catacombs of Egypt, so this type likewise abounds in the ruined cities of Mexico and Central America, graven as well upon the most ancient cyclopean and polygonal walls as upon the more modern and perfect examples of masonry; and is displayed in an equally conspicuous manner upon the breasts of innumerable bronze statuettes which have been recently disinterred from the cemetery of Juigalpa (of unknown antiquity) in Nicaragua."

When the Spanish missionaries first set foot upon the soil of America, in the fifteenth century, they were amazed to find the Cross was as devoutly worshipped by the red Indians as by themselves, and were in doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious labors of St. Thomas or to the cunning device of the Evil One. The hallowed symbol challenged their attention on every hand and in almost every variety of form. It appeared on the bass-reliefs of ruined and deserted as well as on those of inhabited palaces, and was the most conspicuous ornament in the great temple of Gozumel, off the coast of Yucatan. According to the particular locality, and the purpose which it served, it was formed of various materials—of marble and gypsum in the open spaces of cities and by the way-side; of wood in the teocallis or chapels on pyramidal summits and in subterranean sanctuaries; and of emerald or jasper in the palaces of kings and nobles.

When we ask the question how it comes that the sign of the Cross has thus been reverenced from the highest antiquity by the races of the Old and New Worlds, we learn that it is a reminiscence of the Garden of Eden, in other words, of Atlantis.

Professor Hardwicke says:

"All these and similar traditions are but mocking satires of the old Hebrew story—jarred and broken notes of the same strain; but with all their exaggerations they intimate how in the background of man's vision lay a paradise of holy joy—a paradise secured from every kind of profanation, and made inaccessible to the guilty; a paradise full of objects that were calculated to delight the senses and to elevate the mind a paradise that granted to its tenant rich and rare immunities, and that fed with its perennial streams the tree of life and immortality."

To quote again from the writer in the Edinburgh Review, already cited;

"Its undoubted antiquity, no less than its extraordinary diffusion, evidences that it must have been, as it may be said to be still in unchristianized lands, emblematical of some fundamental doctrine or mystery. The reader will not have failed to observe that it is most usually associated with water; it was 'the key of the Nile,' that mystical instrument by means of which, in the popular judgment of his Egyptian devotees, Osiris produced the annual revivifying inundations of the sacred stream; it is discernible in that mysterious pitcher or vase portrayed on the brazen table of Bembus, before-mentioned, with its four lips discharging as many streams of water in opposite directions; it was the emblem of the water-deities of the Babylonians in the East and of the Gothic nations in the West, as well as that of the rain-deities respectively of the mixed population in America. We have seen with what peculiar rites the symbol was honored by those widely separated races in the western hemisphere; and the monumental slabs of Nineveh, now in the museums of London and Paris, show us how it was similarly honored by the successors of the Chaldees in the eastern. . . .

ANCIENT IRISH CROSS—PRE-CHRISTIAN—KILNABOY.

"In Egypt, Assyria, and Britain it was emblematical of creative power and eternity; in India, China, and Scandinavia, of heaven and immortality; in the two Americas, of rejuvenescence and freedom from physical suffering; while in both hemispheres it was the common symbol of the resurrection, or 'the sign of the life to come;' and, finally, in all heathen communities, without exception, it was the emphatic type, the sole enduring evidence, of the Divine Unity. This circumstance alone determines its extreme antiquity—an antiquity, in all likelihood, long antecedent to the foundation of either of the three great systems of religion in the East. And, lastly, we have seen how, as a rule, it is found in conjunction with a stream or streams of water, with exuberant vegetation, and with a bill or a mountainous region—in a word, with a land of beauty, fertility, and joy. Thus it was expressed upon those circular and sacred cakes of the Egyptians, composed of the richest materials-of flour, of honey, of milk—and with which the serpent and bull, as well as other reptiles and beasts consecrated to the service of Isis and their higher divinities, were daily fed; and upon certain festivals were eaten with extraordinary ceremony by the people and their priests. 'The cross-cake,' says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 'was their hieroglyph for civilized land;' obviously a land superior to their own, as it was, indeed, to all other mundane territories; for it was that distant, traditional country of sempiternal contentment and repose, of exquisite delight and serenity, where Nature, unassisted by man, produces all that is necessary for his sustentation."

And this land was the Garden of Eden of our race. This was the Olympus of the Greeks, where

"This same mild season gives the blooms to blow, The buds to harden and the fruits to grow."

In the midst of it was a sacred and glorious eminence—the umbilicus orbis terrarum—"toward which the heathen in all parts of the world, and in all ages, turned a wistful gaze in every act of devotion, and to which they hoped to be admitted, or, rather, to be restored, at the close of this transitory scene."

In this "glorious eminence" do we not see Plato's mountain in the middle of Atlantis, as he describes it:

"Near the plain and in the centre of the island there was a mountain, not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter, who was named Cleito. Poseidon married her. He enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all around, making alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water . . . so that no man could get to the island. . . . He brought streams of water under the earth to this mountain-island, and made all manner of food to grow upon it. This island became the seat of Atlas, the over-king of the whole island; upon it they built the great temple of their nation; they continued to ornament it in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who came before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and beauty. . . . And they had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates—as is not likely ever to be again."

The gardens of Alcinous and Laertes, of which we read in Homeric song, and those of Babylon, were probably transcripts of Atlantis. "The sacred eminence in the midst of a 'superabundant, happy region figures more or less distinctly in almost every mythology, ancient or modern. It was the Mesomphalos of the earlier Greeks, and the Omphalium of the Cretans, dominating the Elysian fields, upon whose tops, bathed in pure, brilliant, incomparable light, the gods passed their days in ceaseless joys."

"The Buddhists and Brahmans, who together constitute nearly half the population of the world, tell us that the decussated figure (the cross), whether in a simple or a complex form, symbolizes the traditional happy abode of their primeval ancestors—that 'Paradise of Eden toward the East,' as we find expressed in the Hebrew. And, let us ask, what better picture, or more significant characters, in the complicated alphabet of symbolism, could have been selected for the purpose than a circle and a cross: the one to denote a region of absolute purity and perpetual felicity; the other, those four perennial streams that divided and watered the several quarters of it?" (Edinburgh Review, January, 1870.)

And when we turn to the mythology of the Greeks, we find that the origin of the world was ascribed to Okeanos, the ocean. The world was at first an island surrounded by the ocean, as by a great stream:

"It was a region of wonders of all kinds; Okeanos lived there with his wife Tethys: these were the Islands of the Blessed, the gardens of the gods, the sources of nectar and ambrosia, on which the gods lived. Within this circle of water the earth lay spread out like a disk, with mountains rising from it, and the vault of heaven appearing to rest upon its outer edge all around." (Murray's "Manual of Mythology," pp. 23, 24, et seq.)

On the mountains dwelt the gods; they had palaces on these mountains, with store-rooms, stabling, etc.

"The Gardens of the Hesperides, with their golden apples, were believed to exist in some island of the ocean, or, as it was sometimes thought, in the islands off the north or west coast of Africa. They were far famed in antiquity; for it was there that springs of nectar flowed by the couch of Zeus, and there that the earth displayed the rarest blessings of the gods; it was another Eden." (Ibid., p. 156.)

Homer described it in these words:

"Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime, The fields are florid with unfading prime, From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow. Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow; But from the breezy deep the blessed inhale The fragrant murmurs of the western gale."

"It was the sacred Asgard of the Scandinavians, springing from the centre of a fruitful land, which was watered by four primeval rivers of milk, severally flowing in the direction of the cardinal points, 'the abode of happiness, and the height of bliss.' It is the Tien-Chan, 'the celestial mountain-land, . . . the enchanted gardens' of the Chinese and Tartars, watered by the four perennial fountains of Tychin, or Immortality; it is the hill-encompassed Ila of the Singhalese and Thibetians, 'the everlasting dwelling-place of the wise and just.' It is the Sineru of the Buddhist, on the summit of which is Tawrutisa, the habitation of Sekra, the supreme god, from which proceed the four sacred streams, running in as many contrary directions.

It is the Slavratta, 'the celestial earth,' of the Hindoo, the summit of his golden mountain Meru, the city of Brahma, in the centre of Jambadwipa, and from the four sides of which gush forth the four primeval rivers, reflecting in their passage the colorific glories of their source, and severally flowing northward, southward, eastward, and westward."

It is the Garden of Eden of the Hebrews:

"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." (Gen. ii., 8-1-5.)

As the four rivers named in Genesis are not branches of any one stream, and head in very different regions, it is evident that there was an attempt, on the part of the writer of the Book, to adapt an ancient tradition concerning another country to the known features of the region in which he dwelt.

Josephus tells us (chap. i., p. 41), "Now the garden (of Eden) was watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts." Here in the four parts we see the origin of the Cross, while in the river running around the whole earth we have the wonderful canal of Atlantis, described by Plato, which was "carried around the whole of the plain," and received the streams which came down from the mountains. The streams named by Josephus would seem to represent the migrations of people from Atlantis to its colonies. "Phison," he tells us, "denotes a multitude; it ran into India; the Euphrates and Tigris go down into the Red Sea while the Geon runs through Egypt."

We are further told (chap. ii., p. 42) that when Cain, after the murder of. Abel, left the land of Adam, "he travelled over many countries" before he reached the land of Nod; and the land of Nod was to the eastward of Adam's home. In other words, the original seat of mankind was in the West, that is to say, in the direction of Atlantis. Wilson tells us that the Aryans of India believed that they originally came "from the West." Thus the nations on the west of the Atlantic look to the east for their place of origin; while on the east of the Atlantic they look to the west: thus all the lines of tradition converge upon Atlantis.

But here is the same testimony that in the Garden of Eden there were four rivers radiating from one parent stream. And these four rivers, as we have seen, we find in the Scandinavian traditions, and in the legends of the Chinese, the Tartars, the Singhalese, the Thibetians, the Buddhists, the Hebrews, and the Brahmans.

And not only do we find this tradition of the Garden of Eden in the Old World, but it meets us also among the civilized races of America. The elder Montezuma said to Cortez, "Our fathers dwelt in that happy and prosperous place which they called Aztlan, which means whiteness. . . . In this place there is a great mountain in the middle of the water which is called Culhuacan, because it has the point somewhat turned over toward the bottom; and for this cause it is called Culhuacan, which means 'crooked mountain.'" He then proceeds to describe the charms of this favored land, abounding in birds, game, fish, trees, "fountains enclosed with elders and junipers, and alder-trees both large and beautiful." The people planted "maize, red peppers, tomatoes, beans, and all kinds of plants, in furrows."

Here we have the same mountain in the midst of the water which Plato describes—the same mountain to which all the legends of the most ancient races of Europe refer.

The inhabitants of Aztlan were boatmen. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 325.) E. G. Squier, in his "Notes on Central America," p. 349, says, "It is a significant fact that in the map of their migrations, presented by Gemelli, the place of the origin of the Aztecs is designated by the sign of water, Atl standing for Atzlan, a pyramidal temple with grades, and near these a palm-tree." This circumstance did not escape the attention of Humboldt, who says, "I am astonished at finding a palm-tree near this teocalli. This tree certainly does not indicate a northern origin. . . . The possibility that an unskilful artist should unintentionally represent a tree of which he had no knowledge is so great, that any argument dependent on it hangs upon a slender thread." ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 266.)

The Miztecs, a tribe dwelling on the outskirts of Mexico, had a tradition that the gods, "in the day of obscurity and darkness," built "a sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, in which they male their abode upon a mountain. The rock was called 'The Place of Heaven;' there the gods first abode on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity and darkness. The children of these gods made to themselves a garden, in which they put many trees, and fruit-trees, and flowers, and roses, and odorous herbs. Subsequently there came a great deluge, in which many of the sons and daughters of the gods perished." (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 71.) Here we have a distinct reference to Olympus, the Garden of Plato, and the destruction of Atlantis.

And in Plato's account of Atlantis we have another description of the Garden of Eden and the Golden Age of the world:

"Also, whatever fragrant things there are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers and fruits, grew and thrived in that land; and again the cultivated fruits of the earth, both the edible fruits and other species of food which we call by the name of legumes, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments . . . all these that sacred island, lying beneath the sun, brought forth in abundance. . . . For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well affectioned toward the gods, who were their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, practising gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods were increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by excessive zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost, and friendship perishes with them."

All this cannot be a mere coincidence; it points to a common tradition of a veritable land, where four rivers flowed down in opposite directions from a central mountain-peak. And these four rivers, flowing to the north, south, east, and west, constitute the origin of that sign of the Cross which we have seen meeting us at every point among the races who were either descended from the people of Atlantis, or who, by commerce and colonization, received their opinions and civilization from them.

Let us look at the question of the identity of the Garden of Eden with Atlantis from another point of view:

If the alphabet of the Phoenicians is kindred with the Maya alphabet, as I think is clear, then the Phoenicians were of the same race, or of some race with which the Mayas were connected; in other words, they were from Atlantis.

Now we know that the Phoenicians and Hebrews were of the same stock, used the same alphabet, and spoke almost precisely the same language.

The Phoenicians preserved traditions, which have come down to us in the writings, of Sanchoniathon, of all the great essential inventions or discoveries which underlie civilization. The first two human beings, they tell us, were Protogonos and Aion (Adam and 'Havath), who produce Genos and Genea (Qen and Qenath), from whom again are descended three brothers, named Phos, Phur, and Phlox (Light, Fire, and Flame), because they "have discovered how to produce fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and have taught the use of this element." In another fragment, at the origin of the human race we see in succession the fraternal couples of Autochthon and Technites (Adam and Quen—Cain?), inventors of the manufacture of bricks; Agros and Agrotes (Sade and Ced), fathers of the agriculturists and hunters; then Amynos and Magos, "who taught to dwell in villages and rear flocks."

The connection between these Atlantean traditions and the Bible record is shown in many things. For instance, "the Greek text, in expressing the invention of Amynos, uses the words kw'mas kai' poi'mnas, which are precisely the same as the terms ohel umiqneh, which the Bible uses in speaking of the dwellings of the descendants of Jabal (Gen., chap. iv., v. 20). In like manner Lamech, both in the signification of his name and also iv the savage character attributed to him by the legend attached to his memory, is a true synonyme of Agrotes."

"And the title of A?lh~tai, given to Agros and Agrotes in the Greek of the Phoenician history, fits in wonderfully with the physiognomy of the race of the Cainites in the Bible narrative, whether we take a?lh~tai simply as a Hellenized transcription of the Semitic Elim, 'the strong, the mighty,' or whether we take it in its Greek acceptation, 'the wanderers;' for such is the destiny of Cain and his race according to the very terms of the condemnation which was inflicted upon him after his crime (Gen. iv., 14), and this is what is signified by the name of his grandson 'Yirad. Only, in Sanchoniathon the genealogy does not end with Amynos and Magos, as that of the Cainites in the Bible does with the three sons of Lamech. These two personages are succeeded by Misor and Sydyk, 'the released and the just,' as Sanchoniathon translates them, but rather the 'upright and the just' (Mishor and Cuedueq), 'who invent the use of salt.' To Misor is born Taautos (Taut), to whom we owe letters; and to Sydyk the Cabiri or Corybantes, the institutors of navigation." (Lenormant, "Genealogies between Adam and the Deluge." Contemporary Review, April, 1880.)

We have, also, the fact that the Phoenician name for their goddess Astynome (Ashtar No'ema), whom the Greeks called Nemaun, was the same as the name of the sister of the three sons of Lamech, as given in Genesis—Na'emah, or Na'amah.

If, then, the original seat of the Hebrews and Phoenicians was the Garden of Eden, to the west of Europe, and if the Phoenicians are shown to be connected, through their alphabets, with the Central Americans, who looked to an island in the sea, to the eastward, as their starting-point, the conclusion becomes irresistible that Atlantis and the Garden of Eden were one and the same.

The Pyramid.—Not only are the Cross and the Garden of Eden identified with Atlantis, but in Atlantis, the habitation of the gods, we find the original model of all those pyramids which extend from India to Peru.

This singular architectural construction dates back far beyond the birth of history. In the Puranas of the Hindoos we read of pyramids long anterior in time to any which have survived to our day. Cheops was preceded by a countless host of similar erections which have long since mouldered into ruins.

If the reader will turn to page 104 of this work he will see, in the midst of the picture of Aztlan, the starting-point of the Aztecs, according to the Botturini pictured writing, a pyramid with worshippers kneeling before it.

Fifty years ago Mr. Faber, in his "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," placed artificial tumuli, pyramids, and pagodas in the same category, conceiving that all were transcripts of the holy mountain which was generally supposed to have stood in the centre of Eden; or, rather, as intimated in more than one place by the Psalmist, the garden itself was situated on an eminence. (Psalms, chap. iii., v. 4, and chap. lxviii., vs. 15, 16, 18.)

The pyramid is one of the marvellous features of that problem which confronts us everywhere, and which is insoluble without Atlantis.

The Arabian traditions linked the pyramid with the Flood. In a manuscript preserved in the Bodleian Library, and translated by Dr. Sprenger, Abou Balkhi says:

"The wise men, previous to the Flood, foreseeing an impending Judgment from heaven, either by submersion or fire, which would destroy every created thing, built upon the tops of the mountains in Upper Egypt many pyramids of stone, in order to have some refuge against the approaching calamity. Two of these buildings exceeded the rest in height, being four hundred cubits, high and as many broad and as many long. They were built with large blocks of marble, and they were so well put together that the joints were scarcely perceptible. Upon the exterior of the building every charm and wonder of physic was inscribed."

This tradition locates these monster structures upon the mountains of Upper Egypt, but there are no buildings of such dimensions to be found anywhere in Egypt. Is it not probable that we have here another reference to the great record preserved in the land of the Deluge? Were not the pyramids of Egypt and America imitations of similar structures in Atlantis? Might not the building of such a gigantic edifice have given rise to the legends existing on both continents in regard to a Tower of Babel?

How did the human mind hit upon this singular edifice—the pyramid? By what process of development did it reach it? Why should these extraordinary structures crop out on the banks of the Nile, and amid the forests and plains of America? And why, in both countries, should they stand with their sides square to the four cardinal points of the compass? Are they in this, too, a reminiscence of the Cross, and of the four rivers of Atlantis that ran to the north, south, east, and west?

"There is yet a third combination that demands a specific notice. The decussated symbol is not unfrequently planted upon what Christian archaeologists designate 'a calvary,' that is, upon a mount or a cone. Thus it is represented in both hemispheres. The megalithic structure of Callernish, in the island of Lewis before mentioned, is the most perfect example of the practice extant in Europe. The mount is preserved to this day. This, to be brief, was the recognized conventional mode of expressing a particular primitive truth or mystery from the days of the Chaldeans to those of the Gnostics, or from one extremity of the civilized world to the other. It is seen in the treatment of the ash Yggdrasill of the Scandinavians, as well as in that of the Bo-tree of the Buddhists. The prototype was not the Egyptian, but the Babylonian crux ansata, the lower member of which constitutes a conical support for the oval or sphere above it. With the Gnostics, who occupied the debatable ground between primitive Christianity and philosophic paganism, and who inscribed it upon their tombs, the cone symbolized death as well as life. In every heathen mythology it was the universal emblem of the goddess or mother of heaven, by whatsoever name she was addressed—whether as Mylitta, Astarte, Aphrodite, Isis, Mata, or Venus; and the several eminences consecrated to her worship were, like those upon which Jupiter was originally adored, of a conical or pyramidal shape. This, too, is the ordinary form of the altars dedicated to the Assyrian god of fertility. In exceptional instances the cone is introduced upon one or the other of the sides, or is distinguishable in the always accompanying mystical tree." (Edinburgh Review, July, 1870.)

If the reader will again turn to page 104 of this work he will see that the tree appears on the top of the pyramid or mountain in both the Aztec representations of Aztlan, the original island-home of the Central American races.

The writer just quoted believes that Mr. Faber is correct in his opinion that the pyramid is a transcript of the sacred mountain which stood in the midst of Eden, the Olympus of Atlantis. He adds:

"Thomas Maurice, who is no mean authority, held the same view. He conceived the use to which pyramids in particular were anciently applied to have been threefold-namely, as tombs, temples, and observatories; and this view he labors to establish in the third volume of his 'Indian Antiquities.' Now, whatever may be their actual date, or with whatsoever people they may have originated, whether in Africa or Asia, in the lower valley of the Nile or in the plains of Chaldea, the pyramids of Egypt were unquestionably destined to very opposite purposes. According, to Herodotus, they were introduced by the Hyksos; and Proclus, the Platonic philosopher, connects them with the science of astronomy—a science which, he adds, the Egyptians derived from the Chaldeans. Hence we may reasonably infer that they served as well for temples for planetary worship as for observatories. Subsequently to the descent of the shepherds, their hallowed precincts were invaded by royalty, from motives of pride and superstition; and the principal chamber in each was used as tombs."

The pyramidal imitations, dear to the hearts of colonists of the sacred mountain upon which their gods dwelt, was devoted, as perhaps the mountain itself was, to sun and fire worship. The same writer says:

"That Sabian worship once extensively prevailed in the New World is a well-authenticated fact; it is yet practised to some extent by the wandering tribes on the Northern continent, and was the national religion of the Peruvians at the time of the Conquest. That it was also the religion of their more highly civilized predecessors on the soil, south of the equator more especially, is evidenced by the remains of fire-altars, both round and square, scattered about the shores of lakes Umayu and Titicaca, and which are the counterparts of the Gueber dokh mehs overhanging the Caspian Sea. Accordingly, we find, among these and other vestiges of antiquity that indissolubly connected those long-since extinct populations in the New with the races of the Old World, the well-defined symbol of the Maltese Cross. On the Mexican feroher before alluded to, and which is most elaborately carved in bass-relief on a massive piece of polygonous granite, constituting a portion of a cyclopean wall, the cross is enclosed within the ring, and accompanying it are four tassel-like ornaments, graved equally well. Those accompaniments, however, are disposed without any particular regard to order, but the four arms of the cross, nevertheless, severally and accurately point to the cardinal quarters. The same regularity is observable on a much smaller but not less curious monument, which was discovered some time since in an ancient Peruvian huaca or catacomb—namely, a syrinx or pandean pipe, cut out of a solid mass of lapis ollaris, the sides of which are profusely ornamented, not only with Maltese crosses, but also with other symbols very similar in style to those inscribed on the obelisks of Egypt and on the monoliths of this country. The like figure occurs on the equally ancient Otrusco black pottery. But by far the most remarkable example of this form of the Cross in the New World is that which appears on a second type of the Mexican feroher, engraved on a tablet of gypsum, and which is described at length by its discoverer, Captain du Paix, and depicted by his friend, M. Baradere. Here the accompaniments—a shield, a hamlet, and a couple of bead-annulets or rosaries—are, with a single exception, identical in even the minutest particular with an Assyrian monument emblematical of the Deity. . . .

"No country in the world can compare with India for the exposition of the pyramidal cross. There the stupendous labors of Egypt are rivalled, and sometimes surpassed. Indeed, but for the fact of such monuments of patient industry and unexampled skill being still in existence, the accounts of some others which have long since disappeared, having succumbed to the ravages of time and the fury of the bigoted Mussulman, would sound in our ears as incredible as the story of Porsenna's tomb, which 'o'ertopped old Pelion,' and made 'Ossa like a wart.' Yet something not very dissimilar in character to it was formerly the boast of the ancient city of Benares, on the banks of the Ganges. We allude to the great temple of Bindh Madhu, which was demolished in the seventeenth century by the Emperor Aurungzebe. Tavernier, the French baron, who travelled thither about the year 1680, has preserved a brief description of it. The body of the temple was constructed in the figure of a colossal cross (i. e., a St. Andrew's Cross), with a lofty dome at the centre, above which rose a massive structure of a pyramidal form. At the four extremities of the cross there were four other pyramids of proportionate dimensions, and which were ascended from the outside by steps, with balconies at stated distances for places of rest, reminding us of the temple of Belus, as described in the pages of Herodotus. The remains of a similar building are found at Mhuttra, on the banks of the Jumna. This and many others, including the subterranean temple at Elephanta and the caverns of Ellora and Salsette, are described at length in the well-known work by Maurice; who adds that, besides these, there was yet another device in which the Hindoo displayed the all-pervading sign; this was by pyramidal towers placed crosswise. At the famous temple of Chillambrum, on the Coromandel coast, there were seven lofty walls, one within the other, round the central quadrangle, and as many pyramidal gate-ways in the midst of each side which forms the limbs of a vast cross."

In Mexico pyramids were found everywhere. Cortez, in a letter to Charles V., states that he counted four hundred of them at Cholula. Their temples were on those "high-places." The most ancient pyramids in Mexico are at Teotihuacan, eight leagues from the city of Mexico; the two largest were dedicated to the sun and moon respectively, each built of cut stone, with a level area at the summit, and four stages leading up to it. The larger one is 680 feet square at the base, about 200 feet high, and covers an area of eleven acres. The Pyramid of Cholula, measured by Humboldt, is 160 feet high, 1400 feet square at the base, and covers forty five acres! The great pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, is 746 feet square, 450 feet high, and covers between twelve and thirteen acres. So that it appears that the base of the Teotihuacan structure is nearly as large as that of Cheops, while that of Cholula covers nearly four times as much space. The Cheops pyramid, however, exceeds very much in height both the American structures.

Senor Garcia y Cubas thinks the pyramids of Teotihuacan (Mexico) were built for the same purpose as those of Egypt. He considers the analogy established in eleven particulars, as follows: 1, the site chosen is the same; 2, the structures are orientated with slight variation; 3, the line through the centres of the structures is in the astronomical meridian; 4, the construction in grades and steps is the same; 5, in both cases the larger pyramids are dedicated to the sun; 6, the Nile has "a valley of the dead," as in Teotihuacan there is "a street of the dead;" 7, some monuments in each class have the nature of fortifications; 8, the smaller mounds are of the same nature and for the same purpose; 9, both pyramids have a small mound joined to one of their faces; 10, the openings discovered in the Pyramid of the Moon are also found in some Egyptian pyramids; 11, the interior arrangements of the pyramids are analogous. ("Ensayo de un Estudio.")

It is objected that the American edifices are different in form from the Egyptian, in that they are truncated, or flattened at the top; but this is not an universal rule.

"In many of the ruined cities of Yucatan one or more pyramids have been found upon the summit of which no traces of any building could be discovered, although upon surrounding pyramids such structures could be found. There is also some reason to believe that perfect pyramids have been found in America. Waldeck found near Palenque two pyramids in a state of perfect preservation, square at the base, pointed at the top, and thirty-one feet high, their sides forming equilateral triangles." (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 58.)

Bradford thinks that "some of the Egyptian pyramids, and those which with some reason it has been supposed are the most ancient, are precisely similar to the Mexican teocalli." ("North Americans of Antiquity" p. 423.)

And there is in Egypt another form of pyramid called the mastaba, which, like the Mexican, was flattened on the top; while in Assyria structures flattened like the Mexican are found. "In fact," says one writer, "this form of temple (the flat-topped) has been found from Mesopotamia to the Pacific Ocean." The Phoenicians also built pyramids. In the thirteenth century the Dominican Brocard visited the ruins of the Phoenician city of Mrith or Marathos, and speaks in the strongest terms of admiration of those pyramids of surprising grandeur, constructed of blocks of stone from twenty-six to twenty eight feet long, whose thickness exceeded the stature of a tall man. ("Prehistoric Nations," p. 144.)

"If," says Ferguson, "we still hesitate to pronounce that there was any connection between the builders of the pyramids of Suku and Oajaca, or the temples of Xochialco and Boro Buddor, we must at least allow that the likeness is startling, and difficult to account for on the theory of mere accidental coincidence."

PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT.

The Egyptian pyramids all stand with their sides to the cardinal points, while many of the Mexican pyramids do likewise. The Egyptian pyramids were penetrated by small passage-ways; so were the Mexican. The Pyramid of Teotihuacan, according to Almarez, has, at a point sixty-nine feet from the base, a gallery large enough to admit a man crawling on hands and knees, which extends, inward, on an incline, a distance of twenty feet, and terminates in two square wells or chambers, each five feet square and one of them fifteen feet deep. Mr. Lowenstern states,

PYRAMIDS OF TEOTIHUACAN.

according to Mr. Bancroft ("Native Races," vol. iv., p. 533), that "the gallery is one hundred and fifty-seven feet long, increasing in height to over six feet and a half as it penetrates the pyramid; that the well is over six feet square, extending (apparently) down to the base and up to the summit; and that other cross-galleries are blocked up by debris." In the Pyramid of Cheops there is a similar opening or passage-way forty-nine feet above the base; it is three feet eleven inches high, and three feet five and a half inches wide; it leads down a slope to a sepulchral chamber or well, and connects with other passage-ways leading up into the body of the pyramid.

THE GREAT MOUND, NEAR MIAMISBURG, OHIO.

In both the Egyptian the American pyramids the outside of the structures was covered with a thick coating of smooth, shining cement.

Humboldt considered the Pyramid of Cholula of the same type as the Temple of Jupiter Belus, the pyramids of Meidoun Dachhour, and the group of Sakkarah, in Egypt.

GREAT PYRAMID OF XCOCH.

In both America and Egypt the pyramids were used as places of sepulture; and it is a remarkable fact that the system of earthworks and mounds, kindred to the pyramids, is found even in England. Silsbury Hill, at Avebury, is an artificial mound one hundred and seventy feet high. It is connected with ramparts, avenues (fourteen hundred and eighty yards long), circular ditches, and stone circles, almost identical with those found in the valley of the Mississippi. In Ireland the dead were buried in vaults of stone, and the earth raised over them in pyramids flattened on the top. They were called "moats" by the people. We have found the stone vaults at the base of similar truncated pyramids in Ohio. There can be no doubt that the pyramid was a developed and perfected mound, and that the parent form of these curious structures is to be found in Silsbury Hill, and in the mounds of earth of Central America and the Mississippi Valley.

We find the emblem of the Cross in pre-Christian times venerated as a holy symbol on both sides of the Atlantic; and we find it explained as a type of the four rivers of the happy island where the civilization of the race originated.

We find everywhere among the European and American nations the memory of an Eden of the race, where the first men dwelt in primeval peace and happiness, and which was afterward destroyed by water.

We find the pyramid on both sides of the Atlantic, with its four sides pointing, like the arms of the Cross, to the four cardinal points-a reminiscence of Olympus; and in the Aztec representation of Olympos (Aztlan) we find the pyramid as the central and typical figure.

Is it possible to suppose all these extraordinary coincidences to be the result of accident? We might just as well say that the similarities between the American and English forms of government were not the result of relationship or descent, but that men placed in similar circumstances had spontaneously and necessarily reached the same results.

CHAPTER VI.

GOLD AND SILVER THE SACRED METALS OF ATLANTIS.

Money is the instrumentality by which man is lifted above the limitations of barter. Baron Storch terms it "the marvellous instrument to which we are indebted for our wealth and civilization."

It is interesting to inquire into the various articles which have been used in different countries and ages as money. The following is a table of some of them:

Articles of Utility.

- -+ India Cakes of tea. + - - China Pieces of silk. - -+ Abyssinia Salt. + - - Iceland and Newfoundland Codfish. - -+ Illinois (in early days) Coon-skins. + - - Bornoo (Africa) Cotton shirts. - -+ Ancient Russia Skins of wild animals. + - - West India Islands (1500) Cocoa-nuts. - -+ Massachusetts Indians Wampum and musket-balls. + - - Virginia (1700) Tobacco. - -+ British West India Islands Pins, snuff, and whiskey. + - - Central South America Soap, chocolate, and eggs. - -+ Ancient Romans Cattle. + - - Ancient Greece Nails of copper and iron. - -+ The Lacedemonians Iron. + - - The Burman Empire Lead. - -+ Russia (1828 to 1845) Platinum. + - - Rome (under Numa Pompilius) Wood and leather. - -+ Rome (under the Caesars) Land. + - - Carthaginians Leather. - -+ Ancient Britons Cattle, slaves, brass, and iron. + - - England (under James II.) Tin, gun-metal, and pewter. - -+ South Sea Islands Axes and hammers. + - -

Articles of Ornament.

+ -+ + Ancient Jews Jewels. + -+ + The Indian Islands and Africa Cowrie shells, + -+ +

Conventional Signs.

+ + + Holland (1574) Pieces of pasteboard. + + + China (1200) Bark of the mulberry-tree. + + +

It is evident that every primitive people uses as money those articles upon which they set the highest value—as cattle, jewels, slaves, salt, musket-balls, pins, snuff, whiskey, cotton shirts, leather, axes, and hammers; or those articles for which there was a foreign demand, and which they could trade off to the merchants for articles of necessity—as tea, silk, codfish, coonskins, cocoa-nuts, and tobacco. Then there is a later stage, when the stamp of the government is impressed upon paper, wood, pasteboard, or the bark of trees, and these articles are given a legal-tender character.

When a civilized nation comes in contact with a barbarous people they seek to trade with them for those things which they need; a metal-working people, manufacturing weapons of iron or copper, will seek for the useful metals, and hence we find iron, copper, tin, and lead coming into use as a standard of values—as money; for they can always be converted into articles of use and weapons of war. But when we ask bow it chanced that gold and silver came to be used as money, and why it is that gold is regarded as so much more valuable than silver, no answer presents itself. It was impossible to make either of them into pots or pans, swords or spears; they were not necessarily more beautiful than glass or the combinations of tin and copper. Nothing astonished the American races more than the extraordinary value set upon gold and silver by the Spaniards; they could not understand it. A West Indian savage traded a handful of gold-dust with one of the sailors accompanying Columbus for some tool, and then ran for his life to the woods lest the sailor should repent his bargain and call him back. The Mexicans had coins of tin shaped like a letter T. We can understand this, for tin was necessary to them in hardening their bronze implements, and it may have been the highest type of metallic value among them. A round copper coin with a serpent stamped on it was found at Palenque, and T-shaped copper coins are very abundant in the ruins of Central America. This too we can understand, for copper was necessary in every work of art or utility.

All these nations were familiar with gold and silver, but they used them as sacred metals for the adornment of the temples of the sun and moon. The color of gold was something of the color of the sun's rays, while the color of silver resembled the pale light of the moon, and hence they were respectively sacred to the gods of the sun and moon. And this is probably the origin of the comparative value of these metals: they became the precious metals because they were the sacred metals, and gold was more valuable than silver—just as the sun-god was the great god of the nations, while the mild moon was simply an attendant upon the sun.

The Peruvians called gold "the tears wept by the sun." It was not used among the people for ornament or money. The great temple of the sun at Cuzco was called the "Place of Gold." It was, as I have shown, literally a mine of gold. Walls, cornices, statuary, plate, ornaments, all were of gold; the very ewers, pipes, and aqueducts—even the agricultural implements used in the garden of the temple—were of gold and silver. The value of the jewels which adorned the temple was equal to one hundred and eighty millions of dollars! The riches of the kingdom can be conceived when we remember that from a pyramid in Chimu a Spanish explorer named Toledo took, in 1577, $4,450,284 in gold and silver. ("New American Cyclopaedia," art. American Antiquities.) The gold and silver of Peru largely contributed to form the metallic currency upon which Europe has carried on her commerce during the last three hundred years.

Gold and silver were not valued in Peru for any intrinsic usefulness; they were regarded as sacred because reserved for the two great gods of the nation. As we find gold and silver mined and worked on both sides of the Atlantic at the earliest periods of recorded history, we may fairly conclude that they were known to the Atlanteans; and this view is confirmed by the statements of Plato, who represents a condition of things in Atlantis exactly like that which Pizarro found in Peru. Doubtless the vast accumulations of gold and silver in both countries were due to the fact that these metals were not permitted to be used by the people. In Peru the annual taxes of the people were paid to the Inca in part in gold and silver from the mines, and they were used to ornament the temples; and thus the work of accumulating the sacred metals went on from generation to generation. The same process doubtless led to the vast accumulations in the temples of Atlantis, as described by Plato.

Now, as the Atlanteans carried on an immense commerce with all the countries of Europe and Western Asia, they doubtless inquired and traded for gold and silver for the adornment of their temples, and they thus produced a demand for and gave a value to the two metals otherwise comparatively useless to man—a value higher than any other commodity which the people could offer their civilized customers; and as the reverence for the great burning orb of the sun, master of all the manifestations of nature, was tenfold as great as the veneration for the smaller, weaker, and variable goddess of the night, so was the demand for the metal sacred to the sun ten times as great as for the metal sacred to the moon. This view is confirmed by the fact that the root of the word by which the Celts, the Greeks, and the Romans designated gold was the Sanscrit word karat, which means, "the color of the sun." Among the Assyrians gold and silver were respectively consecrated to the and moon precisely as they were in Peru. A pyramid belonging to the palace of Nineveh is referred to repeatedly in the inscriptions. It was composed of seven stages, equal in height, and each one smaller in area than the one beneath it; each stage was covered with stucco of different colors, "a different color representing each of the heavenly bodies, the least important being at the base: white (Venus); black (Saturn); purple (Jupiter); blue (Mercury); vermillion (Mars); silver (the Moon); and gold (the Sun)." (Lenormant's "Ancient History of the East," vol. i., p. 463.) "In England, to this day the new moon is saluted with a bow or a courtesy, as well as the curious practice of 'turning one's silver,' which seems a relic of the offering of the moon's proper metal." (Tylor's "Anthropology", p. 361.) The custom of wishing, when one first sees the new moon, is probably a survival of moon-worship; the wish taking the place of the prayer.

And thus has it come to pass that, precisely as the physicians of Europe, fifty years ago, practised bleeding, because for thousands of years their savage ancestors had used it to draw away the evil spirits out of the man, so the business of our modern civilization is dependent upon the superstition of a past civilization, and the bankers of the world are to-day perpetuating the adoration of "the tears wept by the sun" which was commenced ages since on the island of Atlantis.

And it becomes a grave question—when we remember that the rapidly increasing business of the world, consequent upon an increasing population, and a civilization advancing with giant steps, is measured by the standard of a currency limited by natural laws, decreasing annually in production, and incapable of expanding proportionately to the growth of the world—whether this Atlantean superstition may not yet inflict more incalculable injuries on mankind than those which resulted from the practice of phlebotomy.

PART V.

THE COLONIES OF ATLANTIS.

CHAPTER I.

THE CENTRAL AMERICAN AND MEXICAN COLONIES.

The western shores of Atlantis were not far distant from the West India Islands; a people possessed of ships could readily pass from island to island until they reached the continent. Columbus found the natives making such voyages in open canoes. If, then, we will suppose that there was no original connection between the inhabitants of the main-land and of Atlantis, the commercial activity of the Atlanteans would soon reveal to them the shores of the Gulf. Commerce implies the plantation of colonies; the trading-post is always the nucleus of a settlement; we have seen this illustrated in modern times in the case of the English East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company. We can therefore readily believe that commercial intercourse between Atlantis and Yucatan, Honduras and Mexico, created colonies along the shores of the Gulf which gradually spread into the interior, and to the high table-lands of Mexico. And, accordingly, we find, as I have already shown, that all the traditions of Central America and Mexico point to some country in the East, and beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people; and this region, known among them as "Aztlan," lived in the memory of the people as a beautiful and happy land, where their ancestors had dwelt in peace for many generations.

Dr. Le Plongeon, who spent four years exploring Yucatan, says:

"One-third of this tongue (the Maya) is pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the offspring of the Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval? . . . The Maya is not devoid of words from the Assyrian."

That the population of Central America (and in this term I include Mexico) was at one time very dense, and had attained to a high degree of civilization, higher even than that of Europe in the time of Columbus, there can be no question; and it is also probable, as I have shown, that they originally belonged to the white race. Desire Charnay, who is now exploring the ruins of Central America, says (North American Review, January, 1881, p. 48), "The Toltecs were fair, robust, and bearded. I have often seen Indians of pure blood with blue eyes." Quetzalcoatl was represented as large, "with a big head and a heavy beard." The same author speaks (page 44) of "the ocean of ruins all around, not inferior in size to those of Egypt" At Teotihuacan he measured one building two thousand feet wide on each side, and fifteen pyramids, each nearly as large in the base as Cheops. "The city is indeed of vast extent . . . the whole ground, over a space of five or six miles in diameter, is covered with heaps of ruins—ruins which at first make no impression, so complete is their dilapidation." He asserts the great antiquity of these ruins, because he found the very highways of the ancient city to be composed of broken bricks and pottery, the debris left by earlier populations. "This continent," he says (page 43), "is the land of mysteries; we here enter an infinity whose limits we cannot estimate. . . . I shall soon have to quit work in this place. The long avenue on which it stands is lined with ruins of public buildings and palaces, forming continuous lines, as in the streets of modern cities. Still, all these edifices and balls were as nothing compared with the vast substructures which strengthened their foundations."

We find the strongest resemblances to the works of the ancient European races: the masonry is similar; the cement is the same; the sculptures are alike; both peoples used the arch; in both continents we find bricks, glassware, and even porcelain (North American Review, December, 1880, pp. 524, 525), "with blue figures on a white ground;" also bronze composed of the same elements of copper and tin in like proportions; coins made of copper, round and T-shaped, and even metallic candlesticks.

Desire Charnay believes that he has found in the ruins of Tula the bones of swine, sheep, oxen, and horses, in a fossil state, indicating an immense antiquity. The Toltecs possessed a pure and simple religion, like that of Atlantis, as described by Plato, with the same sacrifices of fruits and flowers; they were farmers; they raised and wove cotton; they cultivated fruits; they used the sign of the Cross extensively; they cut and engraved precious stones; among their carvings have been found representations of the elephant and the lion, both animals not known in America. The forms of sepulture were the same as among the ancient races of the Old World; they burnt the bodies of their great men, and enclosed the dust in funeral urns; some of their dead were buried in a sitting position, others reclined at full length, and many were embalmed like the Egyptian mummies.

When we turn to Mexico, the same resemblances present themselves.

The government was an elective monarchy, like that of Poland, the king being selected from the royal family by the votes of the nobles of the kingdom. There was a royal family, an aristocracy, a privileged priesthood, a judiciary, and a common people. Here we have all the several estates into which society in Europe is divided.

There were thirty grand nobles in the kingdom, and the vastness of the realm may be judged by the fact that each of these could muster one hundred thousand vassals from their own estates, or a total of three millions. And we have only to read of the vast hordes brought into the field against Cortez to know that this was not an exaggeration.

They even possessed that which has been considered the crowning feature of European society, the feudal system. The nobles held their lands upon the tenure of military service.

But the most striking feature was the organization of the judiciary. The judges were independent even of the king, and held their offices for life. There were supreme judges for the larger divisions of the kingdom, district judges in each of the provinces, and magistrates chosen by the people throughout the country.

There was also a general legislative assembly, congress, or parliament, held every eighty days, presided over by the king, consisting of all the judges of the realm, to which the last appeal lay

"The rites of marriage," says Prescott, "were celebrated with as much formality as in any Christian country; and the institution was held in such reverence that a tribunal was instituted for the sole purpose of determining questions relating to it. Divorces could not be obtained until authorized by a sentence of the court, after a patient hearing of the parties."

Slavery was tolerated, but the labors of the slave were light, his rights carefully guarded, and his children were free. The slave could own property, and even other slaves.

Their religion possessed so many features similar to those of the Old World, that the Spanish priests declared the devil had given them a bogus imitation of Christianity to destroy their souls. "The devil," said they, "stole all he could."

They had confessions, absolution of sins, and baptism. When their children were named, they sprinkled their lips and bosoms with water, and "the Lord was implored to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that was given it before the foundation of the world."

The priests were numerous and powerful. They practised fasts, vigils, flagellations, and many of them lived in monastic seclusion.

The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, had progressed through all the three different modes of writing—the picture-writing, the symbolical, and the phonetic. They recorded all their laws, their tribute-rolls specifying the various imposts, their mythology, astronomical calendars, and rituals, their political annals and their chronology. They wrote on cotton-cloth, on skins prepared like parchment, on a composition of silk and gum, and on a species of paper, soft and beautiful, made from the aloe. Their books were about the size and shape of our own, but the leaves were long strips folded together in many folds.

They wrote poetry and cultivated oratory, and paid much attention to rhetoric. They also had a species of theatrical performances.

Their proficiency in astronomy is thus spoken of by Prescott:

"That they should be capable of accurately adjusting their festivals by the movements of the heavenly bodies, and should fix the true length of the tropical year with a precision unknown to the great philosophers of antiquity, could be the result only of a long series of nice and patient observations, evincing no slight progress in civilization."

"Their women," says the same author, "are described by the Spaniards as pretty, though with a serious and rather melancholy cast of countenance. Their long, black hair might generally be seen wreathed with flowers, or, among the richer people, with strings of precious stones and pearls from the Gulf of California. They appear to have been treated with much consideration by their husbands; and passed their time in indolent tranquillity, or in such feminine occupations as spinning, embroidery, and the like; while their maidens beguiled the hours by the rehearsal of traditionary tales and ballads.

"Numerous attendants of both sexes waited at the banquets. The balls were scented with perfumes, and the courts strewed with odoriferous herbs and flowers, which were distributed in profusion among the guests as they arrived. Cotton napkins and ewers of water were placed before them as they took their seats at the board. Tobacco was them offered, in pipes, mixed with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver. It is a curious fact that the Aztecs also took the dried tobacco leaf in the pulverized form of snuff.

"The table was well supplied with substantial meats, especially game, among which the most conspicuous was the turkey. Also, there were found very delicious vegetables and fruits of every variety native to the continent. Their palate was still further regaled by confections and pastry, for which their maize-flower and sugar furnished them ample materials. The meats were kept warm with chafing-dishes. The table was ornamented with vases of silver and sometimes gold of delicate workmanship. The favorite beverage was chocolatl, flavored with vanilla and different spices. The fermented juice of the maguey, with a mixture of sweets and acids, supplied various agreeable drinks of different degrees of strength."

It is not necessary to describe their great public works, their floating gardens, their aqueducts, bridges, forts, temples,

COMMON FORM OF ARCH, CENTRAL AMERICA.

palaces, and gigantic pyramids, all ornamented with wonderful statuary.

SECTION OF THE TREASURE-HOUSE OF ATREUS AT MYCENAE

We find a strong resemblance between the form of arch used in the architecture of Central America and that of the oldest buildings of Greece. The Palenque arch is made by the gradual overlapping of the strata of the building, as shown in the accompanying cut from Baldwin's "Ancient America," page 100. It was the custom of these ancient architects to fill in the arch itself with masonry, as shown in the picture

ARCH OF LAS MONJAS, PALENQUE, CENTRAL AMERICA

on page 355 of the Arch of Las Monjas, Palenque. If now we took at the representation of the "Treasure-house of Atreus" at Mycenae, on page 354-one of the oldest structures in Greece—we find precisely the same form of arch, filled in in the same way.

Rosengarten ("Architectural Styles," p. 59) says:

"The base of these treasure-houses is circular, and the covering of a dome shape; it does not, however, form an arch, but courses of stone are laid horizontally over one another in such a way that each course projects beyond the one below it, till the space at the highest course becomes so narrow that a single stone covers it. Of all those that have survived to the present day the treasure-house at Atreus is the most venerable."

The same form of arch is found among the ruins of that interesting people, the Etruscans.

"Etruscan vaults are of two kinds. The more curious and probably the most ancient are false arches, formed of horizontal courses of stone, each a little overlapping the other, and carried on until the aperture at the top could be closed by a single superincumbent slab. Such is the construction of the Regulini-Galassi vault, at Cervetere, the ancient Caere." (Rawlinson's "Origin of Nations," p. 117.)

It is sufficient to say, in conclusion, that Mexico, under European rule, or under her own leaders, has never again risen to her former standard of refinement, wealth, prosperity, or civilization.

CHAPTER II.

THE EGYPTIAN COLONY.

What proofs have we that the Egyptians were a colony from Atlantis?

1. They claimed descent from "the twelve great gods," which must have meant the twelve gods of Atlantis, to wit, Poseidon and Cleito and their ten sons.

2. According to the traditions of the Phoenicians, the Egyptians derived their civilization from them; and as the Egyptians far antedated the rise of the Phoenician nations proper, this must have meant that Egypt derived its civilization from the same country to which the Phoenicians owed their own origin. The Phoenician legends show that Misor, from whom, the Egyptians were descended, was the child of the Phoenician gods Amynus and Magus. Misor gave birth to Taaut, the god of letters, the inventor of the alphabet, and Taaut became Thoth, the god of history of the Egyptians. Sanchoniathon tells us that "Chronos (king of Atlantis) visited the South, and gave all Egypt to the god Taaut, that it might be his kingdom." "Misor" is probably the king "Mestor" named by Plato.

3. According to the Bible, the Egyptians were descendants of Ham, who was one of the three sons of Noah who escaped from the Deluge, to wit, the destruction of Atlantis.

4. The great similarity between the Egyptian civilization and that of the American nations.

5. The fact that the Egyptians claimed to be red men.

6. The religion of Egypt was pre-eminently sun-worship, and Ra was the sun-god of Egypt, Rama, the sun of the Hindoos, Rana, a god of the Toltecs, Raymi, the great festival of the sun of the Peruvians, and Rayam, a god of Yemen.

7. The presence of pyramids in Egypt and America.

8. The Egyptians were the only people of antiquity who were well-informed as to the history of Atlantis. The Egyptians were never a maritime people, and the Atlanteans must have brought that knowledge to them. They were not likely to send ships to Atlantis.

9. We find another proof of the descent of the Egyptians from Atlantis in their belief as to the "under-world." This land of the dead was situated in the West—hence the tombs were all placed, whenever possible, on the west bank of the Nile. The constant cry of the mourners as the funeral procession moved forward was, "To the west; to the west." This under-world was beyond the water, hence the funeral procession always crossed a body of water. "Where the tombs were, as in most cases, on the west bank of the Nile, the Nile was crossed; where they were on the eastern shore the procession passed over a sacred lake." (R. S. Poole, Contemporary Review, August, 1881, p. 17.) In the procession was "a sacred ark of the sun."

All this is very plain: the under-world in the West, the land of the dead, was Atlantis, the drowned world, the world beneath the horizon, beneath the sea, to which the peasants of Brittany looked from Cape Raz, the most western cape projecting into the Atlantic. It was only to be reached from Egypt by crossing the water, and it was associated with the ark, the emblem of Atlantis in all lands.

The soul of the dead man was supposed to journey to the under-world by "a water progress" (Ibid., p. 18), his destination was the Elysian Fields, where mighty corn grew, and where he was expected to cultivate the earth; "this task was of supreme importance." (Ibid., p. 19.) The Elysian Fields were the "Elysion" of the Greeks, the abode of the blessed, which we have seen was an island in the remote west. The Egyptian belief referred to a real country; they described its cities, mountains, and rivers; one of the latter was called Uranes, a name which reminds us of the Atlantean god Uranos. In connection with all this we must not forget that Plato described Atlantis as "that sacred island lying beneath the sun." Everywhere in the ancient world we find the minds of men looking to the west for the land of the dead. Poole says, "How then can we account for this strong conviction? Surely it must be a survival of an ancient belief which flowed in the very veins of the race." (Contemporary Review, 1881, p. 19.) It was based on an universal tradition that under "an immense ocean," in "the far west," there was an "under-world," a world comprising millions of the dead, a mighty race, that had been suddenly swallowed up in the greatest catastrophe known to man since he had inhabited the globe.

10. There is no evidence that the civilization of Egypt was developed in Egypt itself; it must have been transported there from some other country. To use the words of a recent writer in Blackwood,

"Till lately it was believed that the use of the papyrus for writing was introduced about the time of Alexander the Great; then Lepsius found the hieroglyphic sign of the papyrus-roll on monuments of the twelfth dynasty; afterward he found the same sign on monuments of the fourth dynasty, which is getting back pretty close to Menes, the protomonarch; and, indeed, little doubt is entertained that the art of writing on papyrus was understood as early as the days of Menes himself. The fruits of investigation in this, as in many other subjects, are truly most marvellous. Instead of exhibiting the rise and progress of any branches of knowledge, they tend to prove that nothing had any rise or progress, but that everything is referable to the very earliest dates. The experience of the Egyptologist must teach him to reverse the observation of Topsy, and to ''spect that nothing growed,' but that as soon as men were planted on the banks of the Nile they were already the cleverest men that ever lived, endowed with more knowledge and more power than their successors for centuries and centuries could attain to. Their system of writing, also, is found to have been complete from the very first. . . .

"But what are we to think when the antiquary, grubbing in the dust and silt of five thousand years ago to discover some traces of infant effort—some rude specimens of the ages of Magog and Mizraim, in which we may admire the germ that has since developed into a wonderful art—breaks his shins against an article so perfect that it equals if it does not excel the supreme stretch of modern ability? How shall we support the theory if it come to our knowledge that, before Noah was cold in his grave, his descendants were adepts in construction and in the fine arts, and that their achievements were for magnitude such as, if we possess the requisite skill, we never attempt to emulate? . . .

"As we have not yet discovered any trace of the rude, savage Egypt, but have seen her in her very earliest manifestations already skilful, erudite, and strong, it is impossible to determine the order of her inventions. Light may yet be thrown upon her rise and progress, but our deepest researches have hitherto shown her to us as only the mother of a most accomplished race. How they came by their knowledge is matter for speculation; that they possessed it is matter of fact. We never find them without the ability to organize labor, or shrinking from the very boldest efforts in digging canals and irrigating, in quarrying rock, in building, and in sculpture."

The explanation is simple: the waters of the Atlantic now flow over the country where all this magnificence and power were developed by slow stages from the rude beginnings of barbarism.

And how mighty must have been the parent nation of which this Egypt was a colony!

Egypt was the magnificent, the golden bridge, ten thousand years long, glorious with temples and pyramids, illuminated and illustrated by the most complete and continuous records of human history, along which the civilization of Atlantis, in a great procession of kings and priests, philosophers and astronomers, artists and artisans, streamed forward to Greece, to Rome, to Europe, to America. As far back in the ages as the eye can penetrate, even where the perspective dwindles almost to a point, we can still see the swarming multitudes, possessed of all the arts of the highest civilization, pressing forward from out that other and greater empire of which even this wonderworking Nile-land is but a faint and imperfect copy.

Look at the record of Egyptian greatness as preserved in her works: The pyramids, still in their ruins, are the marvel of mankind. The river Nile was diverted from its course by monstrous embankments to make a place for the city of Memphis. The artificial lake of Moeris was created as a reservoir for the waters of the Nile: it was four hundred and fifty miles in circumference and three hundred and fifty feet deep, with subterranean channels, flood-gates, locks, and dams, by which the wilderness was redeemed from sterility. Look at the magnificent mason-work of this ancient people! Mr. Kenrick, speaking of the casing of the Great Pyramid, says, "The joints are scarcely perceptible, and not wider than the thickness of silver-paper, and the cement so tenacious that fragments of the casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwithstanding the lapse of so many centuries, and the violence by which they were detached." Look at the ruins of the Labyrinth, which aroused the astonishment of Herodotus; it had three thousand chambers, half of them above ground and half below—a combination of courts, chambers, colonnades, statues, and pyramids. Look at the Temple of Karnac, covering a square each side of which is eighteen hundred feet. Says a recent writer, "Travellers one and all appear to have been unable to find words to express the feelings with which these sublime remains inspired them. They have been astounded and overcome by the magnificence and the prodigality of workmanship here to be admired. Courts, halls, gate-ways, pillars, obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, rows of sphinxes, are massed in such profusion that the sight is too much for modern comprehension." Denon says, "It is hardly possible to believe, after having seen it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings collected on a single point—in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the incalculable expense of so much magnificence." And again, "It is necessary that the reader should fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who views the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt whether he be perfectly awake." There were lakes and mountains within the periphery of the sanctuary. "The cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris could be set inside one of the halls of Karnac, and not touch the walls! . . . The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from the Catacombs to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, pyramids, and pillars." Every stone was covered with inscriptions.

The state of society in the early days of Egypt approximated very closely to our modern civilization. Religion consisted in the worship of one God and the practice of virtue; forty-two commandments prescribed the duties of men to themselves, their neighbors, their country, and the Deity; a heaven awaited the good and a hell the vicious; there was a judgment-day when the hearts of men were weighed:

"He is sifting out the hearts of men Before his judgment-seat."

Monogamy was the strict rule; not even the kings, in the early days, were allowed to have more than one wife. The wife's rights of separate property and her dower were protected by law; she was "the lady of the house;" she could "buy, sell, and trade on her own account;" in case of divorce her dowry was to be repaid to her, with interest at a high rate. The marriage-ceremony embraced an oath not to contract any other matrimonial alliance. The wife's status was as high in the earliest days of Egypt as it is now in the most civilized nations of Europe or America.

Slavery was permitted, but the slaves were treated with the greatest humanity. In the confessions, buried with the dead, the soul is made to declare that "I have not incriminated the slave to his master," There was also a clause in the commandments "which protected the laboring man against the exaction of more than his day's labor." They were merciful to the captives made in war; no picture represents torture inflicted upon them; while the representation of a sea-fight shows them saving their drowning enemies. Reginald Stuart Poole says (Contemporary Review, August, 1881, p. 43):

"When we consider the high ideal of the Egyptians, as proved by their portrayals of a just life, the principles they laid down as the basis of ethics, the elevation of women among them, their humanity in war, we must admit that their moral place ranks very high among the nations of antiquity.

"The true comparison of Egyptian life is with that of modern nations. This is far too difficult a task to be here undertaken. Enough has been said, however, to show that we need not think that in all respects they were far behind us."

Then look at the proficiency in art of this ancient people.

They were the first mathematicians of the Old World. Those Greeks whom we regard as the fathers of mathematics were simply pupils of Egypt. They were the first land-surveyors. They were the first astronomers, calculating eclipses, and watching the periods of planets and constellations. They knew the rotundity of the earth, which it was supposed Columbus had discovered!

"The signs of the zodiac were certainly in use among the Egyptians 1722 years before Christ. One of the learned men of our day, who for fifty years labored to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancients, found upon a mummy-case in the British Museum a delineation of the signs of the zodiac, and the position of the planets; the date to which they pointed was the autumnal equinox of the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell, to whom the fact was communicated, employed his assistants to ascertain the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the equinox of that year. This was done, and a diagram furnished by parties ignorant of his object, which showed that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C. the moon and planets occupied the exact point in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum." (Goodrich's "Columbus," p. 22.)

They had clocks and dials for measuring time. They possessed gold and silver money. They were the first agriculturists of the Old World, raising all the cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, etc. They manufactured linen of so fine a quality that in the days of King Amasis (600 years B.C.) a single thread of a garment was composed of three hundred and sixty-five minor threads. They worked in gold, silver, copper, bronze, and iron; they tempered iron to the hardness of steel. They were the first chemists. The word "chemistry" comes from chemi, and chemi means Egypt. They manufactured glass and all kinds of pottery; they made boats out of earthenware; and, precisely as we are now making railroad car-wheels of paper, they manufactured vessels of paper. Their dentists filled teeth with gold; their farmers hatched poultry by artificial beat. They were the first musicians; they possessed guitars, single and double pipes, cymbals, drums, lyres, harps, flutes, the sambric, ashur, etc.; they had even castanets, such as are now used in Spain. In medicine and surgery they had reached such a degree of perfection that several hundred years B.C. the operation for the removal of cataract from the eye was performed among them; one of the most delicate and difficult feats of surgery, only attempted by us in the most recent times. "The papyrus of Berlin" states that it was discovered, rolled up in a case, under the feet of an Anubis in the town of Sekhem, in the days of Tet (or Thoth), after whose death it was transmitted to King Sent, and was then restored to the feet of the statue. King Sent belonged to the second dynasty, which flourished 4751 B.C., and the papyrus was old in his day. This papyrus is a medical treatise; there are in it no incantations or charms; but it deals in reasonable remedies, draughts, unguents and injections. The later medical papyri contain a great deal of magic and incantations.

"Great and splendid as are the things which we know about oldest Egypt, she is made a thousand times more sublime by our uncertainty as to the limits of her accomplishments. She presents not a great, definite idea, which, though hard to receive, is, when once acquired, comprehensible and clear. Under the soil of the modern country are hid away thousands and thousands of relics which may astonish the world for ages to come, and change continually its conception of what Egypt was. The effect of research seems to be to prove the objects of it to be much older than we thought them to be—some things thought to be wholly modern having been proved to be repetitions of things Egyptian, and other things known to have been Egyptian being by every advance in knowledge carried back more and more toward the very beginning of things. She shakes our most rooted ideas concerning the world's history; she has not ceased to be a puzzle and a lure: there is a spell over her still."

Renan says, "It has no archaic epoch." Osborn says, "It bursts upon us at once in the flower of its highest perfection." Seiss says ("A, Miracle in Stone," p. 40), "It suddenly takes its place in the world in all its matchless magnificence, without father, without mother, and as clean apart from all evolution as if it had dropped from the unknown heavens." It had dropped from Atlantis.

Rawlinson says ("Origin of Nations," p. 13):

"Now, in Egypt, it is notorious that there is no indication of any early period of savagery or barbarism. All the authorities agree that, however far back we go, we find in Egypt no rude or uncivilized time out of which civilization is developed. Menes, the first king, changes the course of the Nile, makes a great reservoir, and builds the temple of Phthah at Memphis. . . . We see no barbarous customs, not even the habit, so slowly abandoned by all people, of wearing arms when not on military service."

Tylor says (" Anthropology," p. 192):

"Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and Assyria handicrafts had already come to a stage which could only have been reached by thousands of years of progress. In museums still may be examined the work of their joiners, stone-cutters, goldsmiths, wonderful in skill and finish, and in putting to shame the modern artificer. . . . To see gold jewellery of the highest order, the student should examine that of the ancients, such as the Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan."

The carpenters' and masons' tools of the ancient Egyptians were almost identical with those used among us to-day.