sun, and Ravana, the comet, the scene is laid on the Island of Lanka.
In the Tahoe legend the survivors of the civilized race take refuge in a cave, in a mountain on an island. They give the tradition a local habitation in Lake Tahoe.
The Tacullies say God first created an island.
In short, we may say that, wherever any of these legends refer to the locality where the disaster came and where man survived, the scene is placed upon an island, in the ocean, in the midst of the waters; and this island, wherever the points of the compass are indicated, lies to the west of Europe and to the east of America: it is, therefore, in the Atlantic Ocean; and the island, we shall see, is connected with these continents by long bridges or ridges of land.
This island was Atlantis. Ovid says it was the land of Neptune, Poseidon. It is Neptune who cries out for mercy. And it is associated with Atlas, the king or god of Atlantis.
Let us go a step further in the argument.
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CHAPTER III.
THE BRIDGE.
THE deep-sea soundings, made of late years in the Atlantic, reveal the fact that the Azores are the mountaintops of a colossal mass of sunken land; and that from this center one great ridge runs southward for some distance, and then, bifurcating, sends out one limb to the shores of Africa, and another to the shores of South America; while there are the evidences that a third great ridge formerly reached northward from the Azores to the British Islands.