Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

370 CONCLUSIONS.

rash Phaéton dead and buried, Jove repairs, with especial care, “his own Arcadia.”

It must not be forgotten that Phaéton was the son of Merops ; and Theopompus tells us that the people who inhabited Atlantis were the Weropes, the people of Merou. And the Greek traditions * show that the human race issued from Upa-Merou ; and the Egyptians claim that their ancestors came from the sland of Mero » and among the Hindoos the land of the gods and the godlike men was Meru.

And here it is, we are told, where in deep caves, and from the seas, receding under the great heat, the human race, crying out for merey, with uplifted and blistered hands, survived the cataclysm.

And Ovid informs us that this land, “with a mighty trembling, sank down a little” in the ocean, and the Gothic and Briton (Druid) legends tell us of a prolongation of Western Europe which went down at the same time. -

In the Hindoo legends the great battle between Rama and Ravana, the sun and the comet, takes place on an island, the Island of Lanka, and Rama builds a stone bridge sixty miles long to reach the island.

In the Norse legends Asgard lies to the west of Europe; communication is maintained with it by the bridge Bifrost. Gylfe goes to visit Asgard, as Herodotus and Solon went to visit Egypt: the outside barbarian was curious to behold the great civilized land. There he asks many questions, as Herodotus and Solon did. He is told:

“The earth is round, and without it round about lies the deep ocean.”

* “ Atlantis,” p. 171. + The Fooling of Gylfe—The Creation of the World—The Younger Edda.