Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/26

 20 island—that it was a continent—and was an extension of Central America away out into the Atlantic and over towards Africa. The peninsula of Yucatan is considered, by the people who hold this theory, as part of that continent which sank at. some remote age of the world, and left the West India islands as mountains, sticking up above the sea to remind us of its former existence.

This continent, or great island, Atlantis, is said to have



had just such temples and palaces of stone as we find in Yucatan to-day lying in ruins in the wilderness. Did the Phœnecians visit this country by coasting the shores of Atlantis, or did part of the Atlantides themselves escape to Central America and there build the cities buried in the vast forest there now? It has not been proven that they did, any more than that the Jews came from the north, or the Malays and the Japanese from the west.

And what has been proven by all our study of the ruins and the records of this people?