from Asia to America.  He admits that the roots must have been transported from one country to the other by civilized man.  He argues that it could not have crossed the Pacific from Asia to America, because the Pacific is nearly thrice or four times as wide as the Atlantic.  The only way he can account for the plantain reaching America is to suppose that it was carried there when the North Pole had a tropical climate!  Is there any proof that civilized man existed at the North Pole when it possessed the climate of Africa?

Is it not more reasonable to suppose that the plantain, or banana, was cultivated by the people of Atlantis, and carried by their civilized agricultural colonies to the east and the west?  Do we not find a confirmation of this view in the fact alluded to by Professor Kuntze in these words:  “A cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have been under culture for a very long period—­we have not in Europe a single exclusively seedless, berry-bearing, cultivated plant—­and hence it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants were cultivated as early as the beginning of the middle of the Diluvial Period.”

Is it possible that a plant of this kind could have been cultivated for this immense period of time in both Asia and America?  Where are the two nations, agricultural and highly civilized, on those continents by whom it was so cultivated?  What has become of them?  Where are the traces of their civilization?  All the civilizations of Europe, Asia, and Africa radiated from the Mediterranean; the Hindoo-Aryans advanced from the north-west; they were kindred to the Persians, who were next-door neighbors to the Arabians (cousins of the Phoenicians), and who lived along-side of the Egyptians, who had in turn derived their civilization from the Phoenicians.

It would be a marvel of marvels if one nation, on one continent, had cultivated the banana for such a vast period of time until it became seedless; the nation retaining a peaceful, continuous, agricultural civilization during all that time.  But to suppose that two nations could have cultivated the same plant, under the same circumstances, on two different continents, for the same unparalleled lapse of time, is supposing an impossibility.

We find just such a civilization as was necessary, according to Plato, and under just such a climate, in Atlantis and nowhere else.  We have found it reaching, by its contiguous islands, within one hundred and fifty miles of the coast of Europe on the one side, and almost touching the West India Islands on the other, while, by its connecting ridges, it bound together Brazil and Africa.