[881] Baldwin: “Prehistoric Nations,” p. 179.

[882] Alberico Vespuzio, the son of Anastasio Vespuzio or Vespuchy, is now gravely doubted in regard to the naming of the New World. Indeed the name is said to have occurred in a work written several centuries before. A. Wilder (Notes).

[883] See Thomas Belt: “The Naturalists in Nicaragua.” London, 1873.

[884] Torfæus: “Historia Vinlandiæ Antiquæ.”

[885] 2 Kings, xxii. 14; 2 Chronicles, xxxiv. 22.

[886] As we are going to press with this chapter, we have received from Paris, through the kindness of the Honorable John L. O’Sullivan, the complete works of Louis Jacolliot in twenty-one volumes. They are chiefly upon India and its old traditions, philosophy, and religion. This indefatigable writer has collected a world of information from various sources, mostly authentic. While we do not accept his personal views on many points, still we freely acknowledge the extreme value of his copious translations from the Indian sacred books. The more so, since we find them corroborating in every respect the assertions we have made. Among other instances is this matter of the submergence of continents in prehistoric days.

In his “Histoire des Vierges: Les Peuples et les Continents Disparus,” he says: “One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean, an immense continent which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.

“The high plateaux of Hindustan and Asia, according to this hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent.... According to the Brahmans this country had attained a high civilization, and the peninsula of Hindustan, enlarged by the displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm, has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their speech was derived the Sanscrit.” (We will have something to say of this language in our second volume.)

“The Indo-Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from the plains of India, equally relates the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of the Tropics.

“Apart from the fact that the supposition of an ancient continent in those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape Verd, is not devoid of geographical probability, the Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the straits of Sund to Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all.

“A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms ‘that all these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and since, it had been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone, the mountain-peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.’

“Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and that it is highly important for science to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be” (pp. 13-15).

This last tradition, translated by Louis Jacolliot from the Sanscrit manuscripts, corroborates the one we have given from the “Records of the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between the “sons of God” and the “sons of giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of the Atlantis.

The final conclusion of M. Jacolliot, who visited personally all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:

“As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.

“The three summits of this continent, Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti, Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumouton, Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.

“All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without provisions.

“On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., had never known each other, had never heard of each other before the arrival of the Europeans. And yet, each of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed a part of an immense stretch of land which extended toward the West, on the side of Asia. And all, brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, ‘Where is the cradle of your race?’ for sole response, extended their hand toward the setting sun” (Ibid., p. 308).

[887] These “magic mirrors,” generally black, are another proof of the universality of an identical belief. In India these mirrors are prepared in the province of Agra and are also fabricated in Thibet and China. And we find them in Ancient Egypt, from whence, according to the native historian quoted by Brasseur de Bourbourg, the ancestors of the Quichès brought them to Mexico; the Peruvian sun-worshippers also used it. When the Spaniards had landed, says the historian, the King of the Quichès, ordered his priests to consult the mirror, in order to learn the fate of his kingdom. “The demon reflected the present and the future as in a mirror,” he adds (De Bourbourg: “Mexique,” p. 184).

[888] Pay’quina, or Payaquina, so called because its waves used to drift particles of gold from the Brazil. We found a few specks of genuine metal in a handful of sand that we brought back to Europe.

[889] The regions somewhere about Udyana and Kashmere, as the translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule), believes. Vol. i., p. 173.

[890] “Voyage des Pèlerins Bouddhistes,” vol. 1.; “Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-Thsang,” etc., traduit du Chinois en français, par Stanislas Julien.

[891] Lao-tsi, the Chinese philosopher.

[892] “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 318. See also, in this connection, the experiments of Mr. Crookes, described in chapter vi. of this work.

[893] Max Müller: “Buddhist Pilgrims.”

[894] Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1846.

[895] Colonel Yule makes a remark in relation to the above Chinese mysticism which for its noble fairness we quote most willingly. “In 1871,” he says, “I saw in Bond street an exhibition of the (so-called) ‘spirit’ drawings, i.e., drawings executed by a ‘medium’ under extraneous and invisible guidance. A number of these extraordinary productions (for extraordinary they were undoubtedly) professed to represent the ‘Spiritual Flowers’ of such and such persons; and the explanation of these as presented in the catalogue was in substance exactly that given in the text. It is highly improbable that the artist had any cognizance of Schott’s Essays, and the coincidence was certainly very striking” (“The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 444).

[896] Schott: “Essay on Buddhism,” p. 103.

[897] “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., Preface to the second edition, p. viii.

[898] Ibid., vol. i., p. 203.

[899] “Visdelon,” p. 130.

[900] “Pliny,” vii., 2.

[901] “Philostratus,” book ii., chap. iv.

[902] Ibid., book iv., p. 382; “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 206.

[903] There are pious critics who deny the world the same right to judge the “Bible” on the testimony of deductive logic as “any other book.” Even exact science must bow to this decree. In the concluding paragraph of an article devoted to a terrible onslaught on Baron Bunsen’s “Chronology,” which does not quite agree with the “Bible,” a writer exclaims, “the subject we have proposed to ourselves is completed.... We have endeavored to meet Chevalier Bunsen’s charges against the inspiration of the “Bible” on its own ground.... An inspired book ... never can, as an expression of its own teaching, or as a part of its own record, bear witness to any untrue or ignorant statement of fact, whether in history or doctrine. If it be untrue in its witness of one, who shall trust its truth in the witness of the other?” (“The Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record,” edited by the Rev. H. Burgess, Oct., 1859, p. 70.)

[904] Remusat: “Histoire du Khotan,” p. 74; “Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 206.

[905] Like the Psylli, or serpent-charmers of Libya, whose gift is hereditary.

[906] “Ser Marco Polo,” vol. ii., p. 321.

[907] “The Spiritualist.” London, Nov. 10, 1876.

[908] Read any of the papers, of the summer and autumn of 1876.

[909] Tite-Livy, v. déc. i.,—Val. Max., 1, cap. vii.

[910] See “Les Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie;” “La Magie au XIXme Siècle;” “Dieu et les Dieux,” etc.

[911] “De Idol. Vanit.,” lib. i., p. 452.

[912] These, after their bodily death, unable to soar higher, attached to terrestrial regions, delight in the society of the kind of elementals which by their affinity with vice attract them the most. They identify themselves with these to such a degree that they very soon lose sight of their own identity, and become a part of the elementals, the help of which they need to communicate with mortals. But as the nature-spirits are not immortal, so the human elementary who have lost their divine guide—spirit—can last no longer than the essence of the elements which compose their astral bodies holds together.

[913] L. Jacolliot: “Voyage au Pays des Perles.”

[914] “Ultimate Deductions of Science; The Earth Motionless.” A lecture demonstrating that our globe does neither turn about its own axis nor around the sun; delivered in Berlin by Doctor Shoëpfer. Seventh Edition.

[915] Champ.-Figeac: “Egypte,” p. 143.

[916] Ibid., p. 119.

[917] Ibid., p. 2.

[918] Ibid., p. 11.