Ah, it’s there, tiny, his name is Pierre, not M. Pierre, and page 219. My next eye app’t is in October.
ATLANTIS.*
By Pierre TERMIER, Member of the Academy of Sciences, Director of Service of the Geologic Chart of France.
There is a somber poem, that of Atlantis, as it is unfolded to our eyes, marvelously concise and simple, in two of Plato’s dialogues. We understand, after having read it, why all of antiquity and the Middle Ages, from Socrates to Columbus, for nineteen hundred years, gave the name “Sea of Darkness” to the ocean region which was the scene of so frightful a cataclysm. They knew it, that sea, full of crimes and menaces, wilder and more inhospitable than any other; and they questioned fearfully what there was beyond its mists, and what ruins, still splendid after a hundred centuries of immersion, were hidden beneath its peaceful waves. To brave a voyage across the Sea of Darkness and to pass the gulf where sleeps Atlantis, Columbus required a superhuman courage, an almost irrational confidence in the idea that he had apprehended the true shape of the earth, an almost supernatural desire to bear the Christ—after the manner of his patron, St. Christopher, the sublime river ferryman— to the unknown peoples who so long were awaiting Him, “ seated in the shadow of death,”
On the mystie shores of the western world.
After the voyages of Columbus terror disappears, curiosity remains. Geographers and historians are occupied with the question of Atlantis; leaning over the abyss they seek to determine the exact location of the engulfed island, but, finding nowhere any definite indication, many of them slip into skepticism. They doubt Plato, thinking that this great genius might indeed have imagined, from beginning to end, the fable of Atlantis, or that he mistook for an island of gigantic dimensions a portion of Mauritania or of Senegambia. Others transpose Atlantis into northern Europe, while others at length do not hesitate to identify it with all America. The poets alone remain faithful to the beautiful legend; the poets who,
1 Lecture given before the Institut Océanographique of Paris Noy. 30, 1912. Translated by permission from Bulletin de l’Institut Océanographique, No. 256, 1913.
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220 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915.
according to the lofty phrase of Léon Bloy, “ne sont stirs que de ce qwils devinent ” [are sure of only what they dream]; the poets, who would never be satisfied with an Atlantic Ocean which had no drama in its past, and who would not be resigned to the belief that the divine Plato might have deceived them, or that he might himself have been entirely mistaken.
It may be, indeed, that the poets were once more right. After a long period of disdainful indifference, observe how in the last few years science is returning to the study of Atlantis. How many naturalists, geologists, zoologists, or botanists, are asking one another. to-day whether Plato has not transmitted to us, with slight amplification, a page from the actual history of mankind. No affirmation is yet permissible; but it seems more and more evident that a vast region, continental or made up of great islands, has collapsed west of the Pillars of Hercules, otherwise called the Strait of Gibraltar, and that its collapse occurred in the not far distant past. In any event, the question of Atlantis is placed anew before men of science; and since I do not believe that it can ever be solved without the aid of oceanography, I have thought it natural to discuss it here, in this temple of maritime science, and to call to such a problem, long scorned but now being revived, the attention of oceanographers, as well as the attention of those who, though immersed in the tumult of cities, lend an ear to the distant murmur of the sea.
Let us first, if you please, again read Plato’s narrative. It is in the dialogue called “ Timeeus,” or “ Concerning Nature.” There are four speakers: Timzeus, Socrates, Hermocrates, and Critias. Critias has the floor; he is speaking of Solon, and of a journey that this wise lawgiver made to Sais, in the delta of Egypt. An old Egyptian priest profoundly amazes Solon by revealing to him the history of the beginning of Athens, all but forgotten by the Athenians.
I will make no secret of it with you, Solon [says the priest], I agree to satisfy your curiosity, out of respect for you and for your country, and, above all, in order to honor the goddess, our common patroness, who reared and established your city, Athens, offspring of the Earth and Vulcan, and a thousand years later our own city, Sais. Since the foundation of the latter our sacred books tell of a lapse of 8,000 years. I will then entertain you briefly with the laws and the finest exploits of the Athenians during the 9,000 years which have elapsed since Athens began to live. Among so many great deeds of your citizens there is one which must be placed above all else. The records inform us of the destruction by Athens of a singularly powerful army, an army which came from the Atlantic Ocean and which had the effrontery to invade Europe and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the strait which you
eall the Pillars of Hercules there was an island larger than Libya and even Asia. From this island one could easily pass to other islands, and from them
1The latest comer of these poets of Atlantis is a young girl, Emilie de Villers (Les Ames de la Mer [The Souls of the Sea], Paris, 1911, pub. Eug. Figuiere).
ATLANTIS—TERMIER. a1
to the entire continent which surrounds the interior sea. What there is on this side of the strait of which we are speaking resembles a vast gateway, the entrance of which might be narrow, but it is actually a sea, and the land which surrounds it is a real continent. In the Island Atlantis reigned kings of amazing power. They had under their dominion the entire island, as well as several other islands and some parts of the continent. Besides, on the hither side of the strait, they were still reigning over Libya as far as Egypt and over Europe as far as the Tyrrhenian. All this power was once upon a time united in order by a single blow to subjugate our country, your own, and all the peoples living on the hither side of the strait. It was then that the strength and courage of Athens blazed forth. By the valor of her soldiers and their superiority in the military art, Athens was supreme among the Hellenes; but, the latter having been forced to abandon her, alone she braved the frightful danger, stopped the invasion, piled victory upon victory, preserved from slavery nations still free, and restored to complete independence all those who, like ourselves, live on this side of the Pillars of Hercules. Later, with great earthquakes and inundations, in a single day and one fatal night, all who had been warriors against you were swallowed up. The Island of Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea. Since that time the sea in these quarters has become unnavigable; vessels ean not pass there because of the sands which extend over the site of the buried isle.
Here surely is a narrative which has not at all the coloring of a fable. It is of an exactness almost scientific. It may be thought that the dimensions of the Island of Atlantis are slightly exaggerated here, but we must remember that the Egyptian priest did not know the immensity of Asia, and that the words “larger than Asia” have not in his mouth the significance that they have to-day. Everything else is perfectly clear and entirely probable. A large island, off the Strait of Gibraltar, mother of a numerous, strong, and warlike race; other smaller islands, in a broad channel separating the large island from the African coast; one may pass easily from the large island to the little ones, and from the latter over to the continent, and it is easy then to gain the shores of the Mediterranean and to subdue the peoples who have become established there, those of the south first, as far as the frontier of Egypt and of Libya, then those of the north, as far as the Tyrrhenian, and even to Greece. This invasion by the Atlantic pirates Athens resists with success. Perhaps, however, She might have been vanquished, when a cataclysm came to her aid, in a few hours engulfing the Island Atlantis, and resounding, with violent shocks and frightful tidal wave, over all the Mediterranean shores. The conflicting armies disappear, taken unawares by the inundation of the shores; and when the survivors recover themselves they perceive that their invaders are dead, and they learn then that the very source is wiped out whence descended those terrible hordes. When long, long after some hardy mariners venture to pass through the Pillars of Hercules and sail across the western seas,
1 Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, pp. 109-113, Paris, pub. Rey and Gravier.
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they are soon stopped by such a profusion of rocks and débris from the engulfed lands that fear seizes them, and they flee these accursed regions, over which seems to hang the anathema of a god.
In another dialogue, which is entitled ‘“ Critias,” or “ Concerning Atlantis,” and which, like the foregoing, is from the “’Timeus,” Plato indulges in a description of the famous island. It 1s again Critias who is speaking. ‘Timeus, Socrates, and Hermocrates are listening to him. Critias says:
Aceording to the Egyptian tradition a common war arose 9,000 years ago between the nations on this side of the Pillars of Hercules and the nations coming from beyond. On one side it was Athens; on the other the Kings of Atlantis. We have already said that this island was larger than Asia and Africa, but that it became submerged following an earthquake and that its place is no longer met with except as a sand bar which stops navigators and renders the sea impassable.
And Critias develops for us the Egyptian tradition of the fabulous origin of Atlantis, fallen to the share of Neptune and in which this god has placed the 10 children that he had by a mortal. Then he describes the cradle of the Atlantic race; a plain located near the sea and opening in the central part of the island, and the most fertile of plains; about it a circle of mountains stretching to the sea, a circle open at the center and protecting the plain from the icy blasts of the north; in these superb mountains, numerous villages, rich and populous; in the plain, a magnificent city, the palaces and temples of which are constructed from stones of three colors—white, black, and red—drawn from the very bosom of the island; here and there mines yielding all the metals useful to man; finally the shores of the island cut perpendicularly and commanding from above the tumultuous sea.t_ We may smile in reading the story of Neptune and his fruitful amours, but the geographic description of the island is not of the sort which one jokes about and forgets. This description tallies well with what we would imagine to-day of a great land submerged in the region of the Azores and enjoying the eternal springtime, which is the endowment of these islands; a land formed from a basement of ancient rocks bearing, with some fragments of whitish calcareous terranes, extinct volcaniec mountains and lava-flows, black or red, long since grown cold.
Such is the Atlantis of Plato, and such, according to the great philosopher, is the history of this island, a history fabulous in its origins, like the majority of histories, yet extremely exact and highly probable in its details and tragic termination. This is, furthermore, all that antiquity teaches us, for the accounts of ‘Theopompus and Marcellus, much vaguer than that of Plato, are inter-
1 Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, p. 247. Paris, pub. Rey and Gravier.
ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 223
esting only from the impression that they leave us of the wide circulation of the legend among the peoples along the Mediterranean shores. On the whole, down to very nearly our own era, there was a general belief, all about the Mediterranean, in the ancient invasion by the Atlantians, come from a large island or a continent— come at all events from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, an invasion abruptly checked by the instantaneous or at least very sudden submergence of the country from which these invaders came.
Now, let us see what science teaches as to the possibility or the probability of such a collapsing, so recent, so sudden, so extended superficially, and so colossal in depth. But we must as a preliminary recall the facts of geography as to the region of the Atlantic Ocean where the phenomenon must have occurred.
For a ship sailing due west the distance across the Atlantic Ocean from the Strait of Gibraltar is about 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles). Such a ship would touch the American coast in the locality of Cape Hatteras. She would not in her voyage meet any land. She would pass, without seeing them, between Madeira and the Azores, and she would leave the Bermudas very far to the south, though these coral islands, very small and low, might to the eyes of the crew have emerged from the marine horizon. Her passengers would have no suspicion of the relief of the ocean depths, so irregular notwithstanding, and none of the mysteries of the “sea of darkness” would have risen before them.
But had the ship lengthened her route a little by making a detour, first toward the southwest, then toward the northwest, then again toward the southwest, it would have been enough, successively, to bring in view Madeira, the more southern Azores, and finally the Bermudas. And if the travelers, whom we are supposing embarked on our vessel, had possessed a perfected instrument for sounding, and had known how to use it, they might have ascertained, not without surprise, that the marine depths over which they were passsing are strangely unequal. Very near Gibraltar the bottom of the ocean is 4,000 meters down; it rises again abruptly to form a very narrow socle, which bears Madeira; it drops again to 5,000 meters between Madeira and the southern Azores; reascends at least 1,000 meters in the neighborhood of these latter islands; remains for a long distance between 1,000 and 4,000 to the south and southwest. of the Azores, with very abrupt projections, some of which approach very nearly to the surface of the sea; then plunges to more than 5,000 meters, and for a short distance even to more than 6,000; rises again suddenly in a bound which corresponds to the socle of the Bermudas; remains buried under 4,000 meters of water to within a short distance of the American coast, and finally rises again in a steep acclivity toward the shore,
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224 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915,
Let us imagine for a moment that we could entirely empty the Atlantic Ocean, drain it completely dry; and, that done, let us contemplate from above the relief of its bed. We shall see two great depressions, two enormous valleys extending north and south, parallel with the two shores, separated one from the other by a median zone elevated above them. The western valley, extending the length of the American coast, is the larger and deeper of the two; it shows oval fosses, or depressions, descending to more than 6,000 meters below the level of the shores, and also occasional elevations, one corresponding to the Bermudas, which, from the bottom of the gulfs, rise boldly toward the surface. The eastern valley, along the European coast, appears to us narrower and of less depth, but much more hilly; and numerous pyramids, some thin and slight like that of Madeira, others massive like those which bear the archipelago of the Canaries and Cape Verde, rise here and there in the midst of the valley or near its eastern barder. The much elevated median zone outlines before us a long promontory, whose axis coincides with that of the Atlantic abyss. It curves in an § shape like the two valleys and the two shores, and, starting from Greenland and surrounding in its mass Iceland and the northern islands, goes tapering southward and ends in a point at the seventieth parallel of latitude south. In most of its course, this promontory has a mean breadth of about 1,500 kilometers (937.5 miles). Far from being regular and with a uniformly spherical curve, its surface is everywhere indented, bristling with projections, riddled with hollows, especially in the region of the Azores, what we call the Azores being merely the summits of the highest protuberances.
In this complete view of the ocean drained and dry we would certainly observe many other things, which are otherwise invisible beneath the waters.. We would see not only the longitudinal arrangement which I have just described and which has been revealed to us by soundings but also the transverse irregularities which can not fail to exist and of which, at the present time, we know almost nothing, because the soundings have not yet been numerous enough. The map of the archipelago of the Azores shows clearly that the nine great islands of which it is composed are ranged along three parallel bands, in a direction from east-southeast to westnorthwest; and these bands are staked out by the islands over a total length of nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles). No doubt such lines are prolonged very far under the waves, and they would have great importance in making a model of the ocean bed, but they are evidently not the only ones. The day will come when the charts of the Atlantic depths will be exact and detailed; we shall then see fault lines and bands of folds crossing the vast abyss and extending
ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 225
from Europe to the United States, or from Morocco to the West Indies, or from Senegambia to the South American Continent.
Now, let geology say its word. In the same way that the painter’s eye perceives a whole world of colors and reflections unsuspected by other men, so is the eye of the geologist impressed by the vague and very uncertain gleams which illumine, for him alone, the darkness of the gulfs and the still deeper night of the distant past. And his ear, sensitive as that of the musician, vibrates to the murmurs, the crackings, and the sighs which come from the earth’s depths or from the depths of history and which the majority of men mistake for absolute silence.
Observe one primary fact: The eastern region of the Atlantic Ocean, over all its length and probably from one pole to the other, is a great volcanic zone. In the depression along the coast of Africa and of Europe and in the eastern part of the highly elevated strip which occupies the middle of the sea volcanoes are abundant. All the peaks which reach the surface of the sea outcrop in the form of volcanic islands or bearing volcanoes. Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension, the Cape Verde Islands, the Canaries, the great Madeira and the neighboring isles, all the Azores, Iceland, Jan Mayen Island are either integrally or in greater part _ formed of lava. I will tell in a moment how certain dredgings in 1898 found lavas, at depths of 3,000 meters, on a line from the Azores to Iceland, and at about 500 miles or 900 kilometers to the north of the Azores. One navigator in 1838 established the existence of a submarine volcano on the Equator at about 22° west longitude, or on the line joining Ascension to the archipelago of Cape Verde; warm steam was rising from the waves and shallows had formed unlike those indicated on the charts. On the islands I have just named many volcanoes are still in activity, the extinct ones appear to have been extinguished only yesterday, everywhere earthquakes are frequent, here and there islets may spring up abruptly from the sea or rocks long known may disappear. The continuity of these phenomena is concealed by the ocean covering them, but to the geologist it is unquestionable.
The volcanic zone of the eastern Atlantic is comparable in length, in breadth, and in eruptive or seismic activity, to that which forms the western border of America, and coincides in the south with the cordillera of the Andes; it is one of the characteristic traits of the present phase of the earth, quite like the fiery girdle of the Pacific Ocean. Now, there is no volcano without a convulsion, or, at the very least, not without a subsidence of some portion of the terrestrial crust. The volcanoes of the fiery girdle of the Pacific stake out the border of a deep marine foss which compasses this ocean, and which,
18618°—sm 1915——15
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