ATLANTIS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 27 April 1925, Page 5

ATLANTIS.

LEGEND OR HISTORICAL TRUTH?

JULES VERNE’S REFERENCE

There will probably always be speculation as to the location of the lost Atlantis, the more or less legendary place that once was said to be the centre of the world’s commerce, and of which Plato wrote as a great island city situated west of the Straits of Gibraltar, opposite Mount Atlas, _ whose people were very prosperous and adventurous. Tradition states that they even invaded Africa and Europe, but on one of their latter incumions were defeated by the Greecians. Plato tells the story in his “Timoeus.” Sceptics have been inclined to believe that the story of Atlantis originated from the tales told by sailors of the Canaries and Azores, but others have stoutly maintained that there was such ap island or continent, and that it was overwhelmed by the ocean. The lengend is made to live in Jules Verne's forty-year-old prophetic novel, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” in which he so faithfully foretells the coming of the submarine and wireless telegraphy. It will be remembered that Captain Nemo, a great scientist,, has invented a submarine craft named the Nautilus, and adjuring mankind, he spends his time ploughing the oceans, above and below, living entirely on the products of the sea, and studying at his leisure submarine life in a manner that no one had ever contemplated. It is in an encounter with this strange craft that M. Arronax, his servant, and Ned Land, a Canadian harpooner, are thrown into the sea, and find themselves clinging to the strange- bulk of the Nautilus. Their position becomes known to those within, and a panel is opened and they are admitted as compulsory guests, taken round the world and through the seven seas, under the most amazing conditions ever imagined when the book was written. The Nautilus has but lately emerged from the Mediterranean, and after examining the wrecks of the galleons of Spain as they lie on the floor of the ocean in Vigo Bay, and collecting therefrom much gold and silver, the craft steers west until some 150 miles off the coast of Spain, and there Nemo proposes a walking expedition under the sea. The dauntless JYI. Arronax promptly accepts, and after donning their diving dresses and air helmets (a sort of miniature reservoir of compressed air), the two step down on to the bed of the ocean. After a long tramp, they come upon a great submarine volcano, which lights up the sea for a mile around. “There, indeed, under my eyes,”, writes M. Arronax, “ruined, destroyed, lay a town, its roofs open to the aqueus sky, its temples fallen, its arches dislocated, its columns lying on the ground, from which one could still recognise the massive character of the Tuscan architecture. Further on some remains of a- great aqueduct; here the high bases of an Acropolis, with the floating outline of a Parthenon; there traces of a quay, as if an ancient port, had formerly abutted on the border of the ocean, ancl disappeared with its merchant vessels and its war galleys. Further on again long lines of sunken walls and broad deserted streets —a perfect Pompeii escaped beneath the waters. Such was the sight Captain Nemo brought before my eyes. "Where was I ? I must know at any cost. I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture, and picking up a chalk stone, advanced to a rock wall of black basalt, and traced the one word, ‘Atlantis.’ ”