Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/18

 2 WEST AFEIOA. existence of a land to the west of the Mediterranean, the site of which it is now difficult to determine. Assuming that it still exists, this Atlantis might possibly be the New World, which, after having been discovered by the Phoenician sea- farers, was again forgotten, to be rediscovered two thousand years afterwards by the Norman and Genoese navigators. Or is it to be identified with the seaboard of tropical Africa, coasted far beyond the Mediterranean skies by some daring adventurers in remote times? Or else was this Atlantic region nothing more than an insiJar group, or perhaps a solitar}^ island, enlarged by human fancy to the proportions of a continent ? Some writers, such as the Swede, Rudbeck, have even identified it with the polar lands, or with Scandinavia, although, according to the more general hj^othesis, it was simply another name for the " Hesperides," the "Fortunate Islands," or " Isles of the Blest," expressions current in ancient legend and tradition. Others again accept Plato's statement in all its essential features, believing that a distinct continental mass, filling a great part of the oceanic basin west of the Atlas, was really engulfed during the present geological epoch, at a time when some civilised peoples were struggling for the dominion of the Mediter- ranean lands. Such a conjecture, however, which became a sort of literary com- monplace in classic poetry, rests on no solid foundation of fact. A convulsion, which " in a single night " shifted the equilibrium of land and water, changing a continent to an oceanic basin, could not have occurred without causing a tremendous reaction, especially if, as KrummeFs investigations seem to show, the weight of the continents, from their submerged roots to their summits, is precisely the same as that of the oceans and inland seas. Changes in the Relief of the Atlantic. But if there has been no Atlantis, as a distinct region, in the present geological epoch, there can be no doubt that in previous ages, over " nine thousand years " before Plato, there existed a continent in this section of the terrestrial surface. Doubtless, no means are yet available for directly studying the rocks of the oceanic bed, whence the soundings have brought up only some specimens detached from the deposits of chalky mud. But the disposition of the opposite shores of the Atlantic, and the fossils embedded in their strata, offer a ready solution of many geological problems. Where the corresponding formations on either side of the Atlantic, although belonging to the same geological age, present considerable differences in their respective faunas, it is inferred that the marine laboratories where they were deposited must have been separated by upheaved lands. On the other hand, a close resemblance and even identity of organic forms in the two now distant regions shows that the corresponding strata were at one time connected by dry land of some sort. Thanks to these comparative studies, it may be asserted that w^hen the Jurassic sedimentary rocks were constituted, the waters of the Old and New World were not