for his maintenance, but none more so
than that part of Atlantis which lies over against the savage continents
of Europe and Africa. The common people avoid it, because of a
superstition which says that the spirits of the evil dead stalk about
there in broad daylight, and slay all those that the more open dangers
of the place might otherwise spare. And so it has happened often that
the criminals who might have fled there from justice, have returned
of their own free will, and voluntarily given themselves up to the
tormentors, rather than face its fabulous terrors.

To the educated, many of these legends are known to be mythical; but
withal there are enough disquietudes remaining to make life very arduous
and stocked with peril. Everywhere the mountains keep their contents
on the boil; earth tremors are every day's experience; gushes of unseen
evil vapours steal upon one with such cunningness and speed, that it is
often hard to flee in time before one is choked and killed; poisons well
up into the rivers, yet leave their colour unchanged; great cracks split
across the ground reaching down to the fires beneath, and the waters
gush into these, and are shot forth again with devastating explosion;
and always may be expected great outpourings of boiling mud or molten
rock.

Yet with all this, there are great sombre forests in these lands, with
trees whose age is unimaginable, and fires amongst the herbage are rare.
All beneath the trees is water, and the air is full of warm steam and
wetness. For a man to live in that constant hot damp is very mortifying
to the strength. But strength is wanted, and cunning also beyond the
ordinary, for these dangerous lands are the abode of the lizards, which
of all beasts grow to the most enormous size and are the most fearsome
to deal with.

There are countless families and species of these lizards, and with some
of them a man can contend with prospect of success. But there are others
whose hugeness no human force can battle against. One I saw, as it came
up out of a lake after gaining its day's food, that made the wet land
shake and pulse as it trod. It could have taken Phorenice's mammoth into
its belly,* and even a mammoth in full charge could not have harmed it.
Great horny plates covered its head and body, and on the ridge of its
back and tail and limbs were spines that tore great slivers from the
black trees as it passed amongst them.

* TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Professor Reeder of th