repeatedly in the inscriptions.  It was composed of seven stages, equal in height, and each one smaller in area than the one beneath it; each stage was covered with stucco of different colors, “a different color representing each of the heavenly bodies, the least important being at the base:  white (Venus); black (Saturn); purple (Jupiter); blue (Mercury); vermillion (Mars); silver (the Moon); and gold (the Sun).” (Lenormant’s “Ancient History of the East,” vol. i., p. 463.) “In England, to this day the new moon is saluted with a bow or a courtesy, as well as the curious practice of ‘turning one’s silver,’ which seems a relic of the offering of the moon’s proper metal.”  (Tylor’s “Anthropology”, p. 361.) The custom of wishing, when one first sees the new moon, is probably a survival of moon-worship; the wish taking the place of the prayer.

And thus has it come to pass that, precisely as the physicians of Europe, fifty years ago, practised bleeding, because for thousands of years their savage ancestors had used it to draw away the evil spirits out of the man, so the business of our modern civilization is dependent upon the superstition of a past civilization, and the bankers of the world are to-day perpetuating the adoration of “the tears wept by the sun” which was commenced ages since on the island of Atlantis.

And it becomes a grave question—­when we remember that the rapidly increasing business of the world, consequent upon an increasing population, and a civilization advancing with giant steps, is measured by the standard of a currency limited by natural laws, decreasing annually in production, and incapable of expanding proportionately to the growth of the world—­whether this Atlantean superstition may not yet inflict more incalculable injuries on mankind than those which resulted from the practice of phlebotomy.

PART V.

THE COLONIES OF ATLANTIS.

CHAPTER I.

The central American and Mexican colonies.

The western shores of Atlantis were not far distant from the West India Islands; a people possessed of ships could readily pass from island to island until they reached the continent.  Columbus found the natives making such voyages in open canoes.  If, then, we will suppose that there was no original connection between the inhabitants of the main-land and of Atlantis, the commercial activity of the Atlanteans would soon reveal to them the shores of the Gulf.  Commerce implies the plantation of colonies; the trading-post is always the nucleus of a settlement; we have seen this illustrated in modern times in the case of the English East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company.  We can therefore readily believe that commercial intercourse between Atlantis and Yucatan, Honduras and Mexico, created colonies along the shores of the Gulf which