(3) According to Farrar the “isolated language” of the Basques has no affinities with the other languages of Europe,[1849] but with:
The aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent [America] and those alone.[1850]
Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.
Palæolithic European man of the Miocene and Pliocene times was a [pg 835] pure Atlantean, as we have previously stated. The Basques are, of course, of a much later date than this, but their affinities, as here shown, go far to prove the original extraction of their remote ancestors. The “mysterious” affinity between their tongue and that of the Dravidian races of India will be understood by those who have followed our outline of continental formations and shiftings.
(4) Stones have been found in the Canary Islands bearing sculptured symbols similar to those found on the shore of Lake Superior. Berthollet was induced by such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early men of the Canary Islands and America.[1851]
The Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the Atlanteans. This fact will account for the great stature evidenced by their old skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners, the Cro-Magnon Palæolithic men.
(5) Any experienced mariner has but to navigate the fathomless ocean along the Canary Islands to ask himself the question when or how that group of volcanic and rocky little islands has been formed, surrounded on every side by that vast watery space. Frequent questions of this kind led finally to the expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which took place in the first quarter of the present century. Some Geologists maintained that the volcanic islands had been raised right from the bottom of the ocean, the depth of which in the immediate vicinity of the island varies from 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Others were inclined to see in these groups—including Madeira, the Azores, and the islands of Cape de Verde—the remnants of a gigantic but submerged continent which had once united Africa with America. The latter men of Science supported their hypothesis by a mass of evidence in its favour, drawn from ancient “myths.” Hoary “superstitions,” such as the fairy-like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of the Hesperides, Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders, all of them mythoi connected with the Peak of Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical Science. The identity of animal and vegetable species, showing either a previous connection between America and the remaining groups of the islands—the hypothesis of their having been drifted from the New to the Old World by the waves was too absurd to stand long—found more serious consideration. But it is only quite lately, and after Donnelly's book had been published several years, that the theory has had a greater chance than ever of becoming an [pg 836] accepted fact. Fossils found on the Eastern Coast of South America have now been proved to belong to the Jurassic formations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic fossils of Western Europe and Northern Africa. The geological structure of both coasts is also almost identical; the resemblance between the smaller marine animals dwelling in the more shallow waters of the South American, the Western African, and the South European coasts, is also very great. All such facts are bound to bring Naturalists to the conclusion that there has been, in distant pre-historic ages, a continent which extended from the coast of Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands and North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.
(6) The great resemblance between the Jurassic fossils of South America, North Africa, and Western Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and admits of no explanation, unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis. But why, also, is there so marked a similarity between the fauna of the (now) isolated Atlantic islands? Why did the specimens of Brazilian fauna dredged up by Sir C. Wyville Thompson resemble those of Western Europe? Why does a resemblance exist between many of the West African and West Indian animal groups? Again:
When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one cannot but be struck with their identity; all, or nearly all, belong to the same genera, while many, even of the species, are common to both continents ... indicating that they radiated from a common centre [Atlantis].[1852]
The horse, according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large proportion of the once “missing links” connecting it with inferior forms have been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse penetrate into Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the oceanic interspaces? Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the Old World, how did such forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the first instance on the migration hypothesis?