“The Indo-Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from the plains of India, equally relates the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of the Tropics.

“Apart from the fact that the supposition of an ancient continent in those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape Verd, is not devoid of geographical probability, the Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the straits of Sund to Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all.

“A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms ‘that all these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and since, it had been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone, the mountain-peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.’

“Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and that it is highly important for science to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be” (pp. 13-15).

This last tradition, translated by Louis Jacolliot from the Sanscrit manuscripts, corroborates the one we have given from the “Records of the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between the “sons of God” and the “sons of giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of the Atlantis.

The final conclusion of M. Jacolliot, who visited personally all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:

“As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.

“The three summits of this continent, Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti, Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumouton, Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.

“All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without provisions.

“On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., had never known each other, had never heard of each other before the arrival of the Europeans. And yet, each of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed a part of an immense stretch of land which extended toward the West, on the side of Asia. And all, brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, ‘Where is the cradle of your race?’ for sole response, extended their hand toward the setting sun” (Ibid., p. 308).