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Greeks, Others believe, on the contrary, that Atlantide was a Greek colony, perhaps one of those founded by Jason and his companions on their search for the Golden Fleece. But all these writers are agreed in stating that Atlantide disappeared some thousands of years before the present era, and that the shallows, the banks of marine grass known by the name of “The Sea of Sargasses,” the peaks and the islands of this region, are, in some sort, the ruins of a submerged continent.
    So much for the summary, but positive, indications gleaned by René from history. He knew, moreover, that the navigators of the fifteenth century believed in the existence of Atlantide. Christopher Columbus, for one, endeavoured to find his way to the Indies by going westward, with the conviction that he was sure to find, at various distances apart, the islands surviving from the great continent, which would serve him as places where he might put into port by the way. The discovery of the Azores and the Antilles justified, in a great measure, this idea, based, as it was, on traditional geography.
    All the soundings made during the last half century, notably those by Admiral FIeuriot de Langle, in the part of the Atlantic between the twelfth and sixtieth degrees west longitude, show, moreover, a region literally “paved” with shallows, reefs, and sandbanks. In short, the actual conclusions drawn from the physiography of the globe forbade him to doubt any longer the possibility, and even the probability, of these facts relative to Atlantide and its disappearance. Considerable changes have been and still are produced, under our own eyes, in the configuration of sea and land, such as the sundering of the land at the Straits of Dover, which is of comparatively modern date. The coast of Normandy, too, was encroached upon by the sea, shortly before the Carlovingian era, and nothing was left above high-water mark but the Channel Islands, and, even in our own day, the Island of Santorin, in the middle of the Mediterranean, has disappeared from view.
    Then new islands have appeared, while, in the far east, frightful inundations have changed, in a few days, the physiognomy of the Japanese Archipelago. It is well known, also, that America was in primitive times much less extensive than it is now; that the enormous basin of the Amazon, that of La Plata, Florida, Patagonia, Louisiana, and Texas, are lands but recently abandoned by the ocean. In a word, there are endless proofs in evidence of the fact that the surface of the globe is ceaselessly changing, sometimes by the slow and continued action of winds and waves, sometimes by the sudden effect of some great local disturbance.
    René was able, therefore, without imprudence, to admit as certain the fact that an Atlantic country had been submerged beneath the ocean, and to connect this historical known quantity with the indelible remembrance of his submarine sojourn near the Azores. The more he looked into the subject, the more sure he felt that the old man and the young girl were Atlantes, veritable Atlantes in flesh and blood, surviving the wreck of their country. How? By what mysterious means? By what refined artifices? By what superhuman power? He could not tell, and he would not risk useless hypotheses in this regard. But he was certain of one thing; what he had seen once he was determined to see again; to bring to light this mystery; to elucidate, perhaps, a great geographical problem.
    Why not, after all? Why not embark voluntarily, systematically, and with his eyes open, on this voyage which a sea wave had already unconsciously accomplished for him? Why not descend once more of his own accord to the scene he had left in an inanimate condition, and come and go at his own pleasure? René made up his mind to attempt it. And so, as he was accustomed to do thoroughly what he did at all, he asked himself, to begin with, by what means he could exchange ideas with these Atlantes, supposing he were fortunate