In 1898 a cable-laying vessel, looking for a broken cable between Brest and Cape Cod discovered that the sea-floor 1,000 miles (1609 kilometers) north of the Azores at a depth of 3,100 metres consisted of high peaks and mountainous valleys. Special sounds dragged along the bottom brought up fragments of vitreous lava which could only have solidified in that particular form under atmospheric pressure; yet they must have been plunged beneath the water shortly after cooling because the process of erosion had not planed down the surface and levelled out the sharp hollows and protuberances of the rock. From this data a few geologists of eminence,25 agreeing about the volcanic nature of this part of the Atlantic bed, have come to the conclusion that there must have been an island such as Plato’s island existing in the Atlantic long after the opening of the straits of Gibraltar.
Lost Atlantis
This conclusion is based on the mountainous character of the ocean bed in the region of the Azores, the volcanic nature of the islands in the ocean depression West of the African-European zone, and the fact that the lava and other volcanic detritus which has been brought up from the ocean bed north of the Azores between Cape Cod and Brest must have cooled quite recently under atmospheric pressure, i.e. above water. According to Termier the Platonian history of the Atlantic is highly probable. Professor Scharff of Dublin also indicates the volcanic nature of the Atlantic islands and states his belief that up to Tertiary times the Azores and Madeira were connected with Portugal; there was in his opinion a south Atlantic continent as well stretching from Morocco and the Canaries southwards towards South America. The northern part remained until Miocene (late Tertiary) times when the Azores and Madeira became isolated from Europe and the north and south Atlantic became joined. More recently Scharff stated his belief that the Atlantic islands were reunited with the Old World in the early part of the Ice Age when man, who had already appeared in western Europe, could have reached these islands by land. Professor Gregory thinks that the Atlantic islands are fragments of an Atlantic continent into which the Atlas and Alpine ranges were once produced; and Professor Hull characterises the Azores as peaks of a submerged continent which flourished in the Ice Age.
