tion settled in Central America, where perhaps their
civilization had been previously introduced. The reasons urged in
support of this hypothesis make it seem plausible, if not probable, to
imaginative minds.

In the first place, Brasseur de Bourbourg claims that there is in the
old Central American books a constant tradition of an immense
catastrophe of the character supposed; that this tradition existed every
where among the people when they first became known to Europeans; and
that recollections of the catastrophe were preserved in some of their
festivals, especially in one celebrated in the month of _Izcalli_, which
was instituted to commemorate this frightful destruction of land and
people, and in which "princes and people humbled themselves before the
divinity, and besought Him to withhold a return of such terrible
calamities." This tradition affirms that a part of the continent
extending into the Atlantic was destroyed in the manner supposed, and
appears to indicate that the destruction was accomplished by a
succession of frightful convulsions. Three are constantly mentioned, and
sometimes there is mention of one or two others. "The land was shaken by
frightful earthquakes, and the waves of the sea combined with volcanic
fires to overwhelm and ingulf it." Each convulsion swept away portions
of the land, until the whole disappeared, leaving the line of the coast
as it is now. Most of the inhabitants, overtaken amid their regular
employments, were destroyed; but some escaped in ships, and some fled
for safety to the summits of high mountains, or to portions of the land
which, for the time, escaped immediate destruction. Quotations are made
from the old books in which this tradition is recorded which appear to
verify his report of what is found in them. To criticise intelligently
his interpretation of their significance, one needs to have a knowledge
of those books and traditions equal at least to his own.

In the second place, he appeals to the story of Atlantis, preserved in
the annals of Egypt, and related to Solon by the priests of Sais. It is
stated in Plutarch's life of Solon that while in Egypt "he conferred
with the priests of Psenophis, Sonchis, Heliopolis, and Sais, and
learned from them the story of Atlantis." Brasseur de Bourbourg cites
Cousin's translation of Plato's record of this story as follows:

"Among the great deeds of Athens, of which recollection is preserved in
our books, there is one which