pose these islands to be the tops of the most
elevated of a chain of mountains which crowned a portion of the
continent whose submersion has produced the Gulf of Mexico. But to
sustain this opinion it must be added that another vast surface of land
which united the islands of this archipelago to the continent, from
Yucatan to the mouth of the Orinoco, was submerged in the same way, and
also a third surface which connected them with the peninsula of Florida
and with whatever land may have constituted the northern termination;
for we can not imagine that these mountains whose summits appear above
water stood on the terminating line of the continent."

He quotes, also, another authority which "can not be suspected," namely,
M. Charles Martins, who said, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for March
1, 1867, "Now, hydrography, geology, and botany agree in teaching us
that the Azores, the Canaries, and Madeira are the remains of a great
continent which formerly united Europe to North America." He could have
added other quotations in the same strain. Those geologists who believe
that "our continents have long remained in nearly the same relative
position" would probably give the supposed change a much greater
antiquity than Brasseur de Bourbourg would be likely to accept; and the
geological "Uniformitarians" would deny with emphasis that so great a
change in the shape of a continent was ever effected by such means, or
with such rapidity as he supposes. But the latest and most advanced
school of geological speculation does not exclude "Catastrophism," and,
therefore, will not deny the possibility of sudden and great changes by
this method.

Doubtless the antiquity of the human race is much greater than is
usually assumed by those whose views of the past are still regulated by
mediaeval systems of chronology. Archaeology and linguistic science, not
to speak here of geology, make it certain that the period between the
beginning of the human race and the birth of Christ would be more
accurately stated if the centuries counted in the longest estimate of
the rabbinical chronologies should be changed to millenniums. And they
present also another fact, namely, that the antiquity of civilization is
very great, and suggest that in remote ages it may have existed, with
important developments, in regions of the earth now described as
barbarous, and even, as Brasseur de Bourbourg supposes, on ancient
continents or portions of continents now o