THE LOST CONTINENT.

Waipawa Mail, Volume 2, Issue 136, 31 December 1879, Page 3

THE LOST CONTINENT.

One of the most plausible, and believed by many scientists to be the true theory, is tnis: Ages ago (says the Popular Science Monthly) the Americas presented a very different appearance from what they do now. Then an immense peninsula extended itself from Mexico, Central America and New Granada so far into the Atlantic that the Madeiraa, Azores, and West India Islands are now fragments of it. This peninsula was a fair and fertile country, inhabited by rich and civilised nations, a people versed in the arts of war and civilisation —a country covered with large cities palaces, their rulers, according to tradition, reigning not only on the Atlantic Continent, but over islands far and near, even into Europe and Asia. Suddenly, without warning, this whole fair land was bngulfed by the sea in a mighty convulsion of nature. Now this catastrophe is not impossible or even improbable. Instances are not wanting of large tracts of land, seven hundred miles in extent, disappearing in a like manner. The Island of Ferdinandes suddenly appeared, and after a while as suddenly disappeared. In 1819, during an earthquake in India, an immense tract of land near the river Indus, sank from view, and a lake now occupies its place. The whole bed of the Atlantic, where Atlantis is said to have been situated, consists of extinct volcanoes. The terrible Lisbon earthquake of 1755, and the later American shock created commotion throughout the whole Atlantic area. That Atlantis possessed great facilities for making a sudden exit cannot be doubted. Its very situation gives good color to the narratives of ancient Grecian historians and Toeletian traditions that “ it disappeared by earthquakes and inundations.”