Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/229

Rh ceived with doubt. For their mythology taught that beyond the Ocean lay the Elysian fields, the regions of the Blest:

The ideas which Greek mythology thus associated with the west were very different from those connected with the other extremities of the world, and bear a striking resemblance to the accounts given by the first Spanish discoveries. Greek mythology was in a great measure a system founded on events which had taken place in the earliest ages of the world, the recollection of which was imperfectly handed down to later times; and in this instance the popular belief actually was that land did exist beyond the Atlantic, and that Ocean was not a boundless expanse of sea.

The statement given by Plato in the Timæus is generally treated as if it was altogether unsupported by the testimony of any other writer. But it will be shown that this is not the case. The passage is as follows,

Platonis Timus.

"For at that time the sea in those parts was navigable; for it had an island before its mouth which you call ‘Hercules Pillars’, and the island was larger than Africa and Asia together, and from it there was access to the other islands for the men of that time in their journeyings, and from the islands to the whole opposite (literally directly opposite) continent that