Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel
388 CONCLUSIONS.
great museums. They tell a marvelous religious and historical story.
I think the unprejudiced reader will agree with me that these legends show that some Atlantic island played an important part in the very beginning of human history. Tt was the great land of the world before the Drift ; it continued to be the great land of the world between the Drift and the Deluge. Here man fell ; here he survived ; here he renewed the race, and from this center he repopulated the world.
We see also that this island was connected with the continents east and west by great ridges of land.
The deep-sea soundings show that the vast bulk of land, of which the Azores are the outcroppings, are so connected yet with such ridges, although their crests are below the sea-level ; and we know of no other island-mass of the Atlantic that is so united with the continents on both sides of it.
Is not the conclusion very strong that Atlantis was the island-home of the race, in whose cave Job dwelt ; on whose shores Phaéton fell ; on whose fields Adam lived ; on whose plain Sodom and Gomorrah stood, and Odin and Thor and Citli died ; from which the Quiches and the Aztees wandered to America; the center of all the races; the root of all the mythologies ?