to
Europe in their ships; a few, also, to America. It has been claimed
that Atlantis may still be traced in an elevation of the ocean floor
about seven hundred miles wide and a thousand miles long, its greatest
length from northeast to southwest, and the Azores at its eastern
edge--mountain tops not quite submerged. As some believe, it was from
this cataclysm that has sprung the world-wide legend of a deluge.

From some of the enchanted lands, perhaps near the American shore,
Merlin went to England, piled the monoliths of Stonehenge on Salisbury
moor, and after gaining respect and fear as a magician and prophet,
sailed back across the waste. The Joyous Island of Lancelot; the island
where King Arthur wrestled and bested the Half Man; Avalon, the Isle
of the Blest, where Arthur lived in the castle of the sea-born fairy,
Morgan le Fee, were probably near the British or Irish coasts.

Many days' sail from Europe was the Island of Youth. A daring Irish
lad reached it, borne by a horse as white as the foam, that never
sank. He paused on the way to slay a giant who held a princess in his
enchantment, and reached, at length, a land where birds were so many
that the trees shook with the burden of them, and the air rang with
their song. There, with his wife and a merry band of youths and maids,
he spent a hundred years--one long joy of killing; for from dawn till
dark the deer met death at his hand, bleeding from the stroke of dart
and knife. A floating spear was found near the shore one day, rusted
and scarred with battle, and as he grasped it memories of old wars
returned to him, so that he was sick with longing to go home and hurl
the cutting metal through the ribs of his enemies and see the good
red flood burst from their hearts. He remounted his white steed and
reached Ireland, careless of the happiness he had left: for those who
deserted the island might never return. He reached his home to find
men grown too small and mean to fight him, which probably means that
he had waxed so great as to make them seem like dwarfs. Appalled at
this change, dismayed at the loss of all chance for battle, he sank
to the earth. His age came suddenly upon him, and he died.

In one of the great Irish monasteries lived St. Brandan, of the holy
brotherhood that tilled the soil, taught the permitted sciences,
copied and illumined the works of the early Christians, fed four
hundred beggars daily, though living on bread, roots, and nuts
themsel