by themselves,
succeeded in defeating these powerful invaders, the natives of Atlantis.
After this a violent earthquake, which lasted for the space of a day and
a night, and was accompanied with inundations of the sea, caused the
islands to sink; and for a long period subsequent to this, the sea in
that quarter was impassable by reason of the slime and shoals.--Plato,
_Tim._, 24-29, 296; _Crit._, 108-110, 39, 43. The learned Gessner is of
opinion that the Isle of Ceres, spoken of in a poem of very high
antiquity, attributed to Orpheus, was a fragment of Atlantis. Kircher,
in his "Mundus Subterraneus," and Beckman, in his "History of Islands,"
suppose the Atlantis to have been an island extending from the Canaries
to the Azores; that it was really ingulfed in one of the convulsions of
the globe, and that those small islands are mere fragments of it.
Gosselin, in his able research into the voyages of the ancients,
supposes the Atlantis of Plato to have been nothing more nor less than
one of the nearest of the Canaries, viz, Fortaventura or Lancerote.
Carli and many others find America in the Atlantis, and adduce many
plausible arguments in support of their assertion.--Carli, _Letters
Amer._; Fr. transl., ii., 180. M. Bailly, in his "Letters sur
l'Atlantide de Platon," maintains the existence of the Atlantides, and
their island Atlantis, by the authorities of Homer, Sanchoniathon, and
Diodorus Siculus, in addition to that of Plato. Manheim maintains very
strenuously that Plato's Atlantis is Sweden and Norway. M. Bailly, after
citing many ancient testimonies, which concur in placing this famous
isle in the north, quotes that of Plutarch, who confirms these
testimonies by a circumstantial description of the Isle of Ogygia, or
the Atlantis, which he represents as situated in the north of Europe.
The following is the theory of Buffon: after citing the passage relating
to the Atlantis, from Plato's "Timaeus," he adds, "This ancient tradition
is not devoid of probability. The lands swallowed up by the waters were,
perhaps, those which united Ireland to the Azores, and the Azores to the
Continent of America; for in Ireland there are the same fossils, the
same shells, and the same sea bodies as appear in America, and some of
them are found in no other part of Europe."--Buffon's _Nat. Hist._, by
Smellie, vol. i., p. 507.]

[Footnote 8: The first authentic description of the Mar di Sargasso of
Aristotle is due to Columbus. It spread