words. Proclus (ad Tim. p. 24) tells us that Grantor, the first commentator on Plato, took the account for a history, but acknowledged that he incurred thereby the ridicule of his contemporaries. Strabo (ii. p. 102) barely mentions the legend, quoting the opinion of Poseidonius, that it was possibly true; and Pliny refers to it with equal brevity (vi. 31. s. 36). But of far more importance than these direct references, is the general opinion, which seems to have prevailed more or less from the time when the globular figure of the earth was established, that the known world occupied but a small portion of its surface, and that there might be on it other
islands, besides our triple continent Some statements to this effect are quoted in the preceding article [Atlanticum Mare]. Mela expressly affirms the existence of such another island, but he places it in the southern temperate zone (i. 9. § 2). Whether such opinions were founded on the vague records of some actual discovery, or on old mythical or poetical representations, or on the basis of scientific hypothesis, can no longer be determined; but, from whatever source, the anticipation of the discovery of America is found (not to mention other and less striking instances) in a well-known passage of Seneca's Medea which is said to have made a deep impression on the mind of Columbus (Act ii. v. 375, et seq.): —
"Venient annis saecula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
Tethysque novos detegat orbes;
Nec sit terris ultima Thule."
In modern times the discussion has been carried on with great ingenuity, but with no certain result. All that has been said, or perhaps that can be said
upon it, is summed up in the Appendix of Cellarius to his great work on ancient geography, De Novo Orbe, an cognitus fuerit veteribus (vol. ii. p. 251 — 254). and in Alexander von Humboldt's Kritische Untersuchungen uber die historische Entwickelung der geographischen Kenntnisse der neuen Welt, Berlin, 1826.
One point seems to deserve more consideration than it has received from the disputants on either side; namely, whether the stories of ancient voyagers, which seem to refer to lands across the Atlantic, may not, after all, be explained equally well by supposing that the distant regions reached by these adventurers were only parts of the W. shores of Europe or Africa, the connection of which with our continent was not apparent to the mariners who reached them after long beating about in the Atlantic. By the earliest navigators everything beyond the Straits would be regarded as remote and strange. The story of Euphemus, for example, might be almost matched by some modern adventures with negroes or apes on the less known parts of the W. coast of Africa. It is worthy of particular notice, that Plato describes Atlantis as evidently not far from the Straits, and allots the part of it nearest our continent to Gadeirus, the twin brother of Atlas, the hero eponymus of the city of Gades or Gadeira (Cadiz) If this explanation be at all admissible (merely as the ultimate core of fact round which the legend grew up), it is quite conceivable that, when improved knowledge had assigned the true position to the coasts thus vaguely indicated, their disappearance from their former supposed position would lead to the belief that they had been swallowed up by the ocean. On this hypo-
ATLAS.
thesis, too, the war of the Atlantines and the Greeks might possibly refer to some very ancient conflict with the peoples of western Europe. [ P. S. ]
ATLAS (Άτλας: adj. Άτλας, fem. Άτλαντίς: , Άτλαντίκός, Atlanticus, Atlantēus), a name transferred from mythology to geography, and applied to the great chain of mountains in the NW. of Africa, which we still call by the same name. But the application of the name is very different now from what it was with the ancients. It is now used to denote the whole mountain system of Africa between the Atlantic Ocean on the W. and the Lesser Syrtis on the E., and between the Mediterranean on the N. and the Great Desert (Sāhăra) on the S.; while, in the widest extent assigned to the name by the ancients, it did not reach further E. than the frontier of Marocco; and within this limit it evidently has different significations. To understand the several meanings of the word, a brief general view of the whole mountain chain is necessary.
The western half of North Africa is formed by a series of terraces, sloping down from the great desert table land of North Central Africa to the basin of the Mediterranean; including in this last phrase that portion of the Atlantic which forms a sort of gulf between Spain and the NW. coast of Africa. These terraces are intersected and supported by mountain ranges, having a general direction from west to east, and dividing the region into portions strikingly different in their physical characters. It is only of late years that any approach has been made to an accurate knowledge of this mountain system; and great parts of it are still entirely unexplored. In the absence of exact knowledge, both ancient and modern writers have fallen into the temptation of making out a plausible and symmetrical system by aid of the imagination. Thus Herodotus (ii. 32, iv. 181) divides the whole of N. Africa (Libya) W. of the Nile-valley into three parallel regions: the inhabited and cultivated tract along the coast; the Country of Wild Beasts (ή ζηριώδης) S. of the former; and, S. of this, the Sandy Desert (ψάμμος καί άνυδρος δεινώς καί έρήμος πάντων, comp. iv. 184, sub fin.), or, as he calls it in iv. 181, a ridge of sand, extending like an eyebrow (όφρύη ψάμμης) from Thebes in Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules. A similar threefold division has been often made by modern writers, varying from that of Herodotus only in naming the central portion, from its characteristic vegetation, the Country of Palms (Beled-el-Jerid); and the parallel chains of the Great and Lesser Atlas have been assigned as the lines of demarcation on the S. and in the middle. Such views have just enough foundation in fact to make them exceedingly apt to mislead. The true physical geography of the region does not present this symmetry, either of arrangement or of products. It is true that the whole region may be roughly divided into two portions, the cultivated land and the sandy desert (or, as the Arabs say, the Tell, and the Sāhăra), between which the main chain of Atlas may be considered, in a very general sense, as the great barrier; and that there are districts between the two, where the cultivation of the soil ceases, and whore the palm chiefly, but also other trees, flourish, not over a continuous tract, but in distinct oases: but even this general statement would require, to make it clear and accurate, a more detailed exposition than lies within our province. In general terms, it may be observed that the Tell or com-growing country, cannot be defined by the limit of the Lesser or even the Great Atlas
