There is ample geological evidence that at one time the entire area of Great Britain was submerged to the depth of at least seventeen hundred feet.  Over the face of the submerged land was strewn thick beds of sand, gravel, and clay, termed by geologists “the Northern Drift.”  The British Islands rose again from the sea, bearing these water-deposits on their bosom.  What is now Sicily once lay deep beneath the sea:  A subsequently rose 3000 feet above the sea-level.  The Desert of Sahara was once under water, and its now burning sands are a deposit of the sea.

Geologically speaking, the submergence of Atlantis, within the historical period, was simply the last of a number of vast changes, by which the continent which once occupied the greater part of the Atlantic had gradually sunk under the ocean, while the new lands were rising on both sides of it.

We come now to the second question, Is it possible that Atlantis could have been suddenly destroyed by such a convulsion of nature as is described by Plato?  The ancients regarded this part of his story as a fable.  With the wider knowledge which scientific research has afforded the modern world, we can affirm that such an event is not only possible, but that the history of even the last two centuries has furnished us with striking parallels for it.  We now possess the record of numerous islands lifted above the waters, and others sunk beneath the waves, accompanied by storms and earthquakes similar to those which marked the destruction of Atlantis.

In 1783 Iceland was visited by convulsions more tremendous than any recorded in the modern annals of that country.  About a month previous to the eruption on the main-land a submarine volcano burst forth in the sea, at a distance of thirty miles from the shore.  It ejected so much pumice that the sea was covered with it for a distance of 150 miles, and ships were considerably impeded in their course.  A new island was thrown up, consisting of high cliffs, which was claimed by his Danish Majesty, and named “Nyoe,” or the New Island; but before a year had elapsed it sunk beneath the sea, leaving a reef of rocks thirty fathoms under water.

The earthquake of 1783 in Iceland destroyed 9000 people out of a population of 50,000; twenty villages were consumed by fire or inundated by water, and a mass of lava thrown out “greater than the entire bulk of Mont Blanc.”

On the 8th of October, 1822, a great earthquake occurred on the island of Java, near the mountain of Galung Gung.  “A loud explosion was heard, the earth shook, and immense columns of hot water and boiling mud, mixed with burning brimstone, ashes, and lapilli, of the size of nuts, were projected from the mountain like a water-spout, with such prodigious violence that large quantities fell beyond the river Tandoi, which is forty miles distant. . . .  The first eruption lasted nearly five hours; and on the following days the rain fell ill torrents, and the rivers, densely