They had no Ararat
in their neighborhood.
The traditions of the early Christian ages touching the Deluge pointed
to the quarter of the world in which Atlantis was situated.
There was a quaint old monk named Cosmos, who, about one thousand years
ago, published a book, "Topographia Christiana," accompanied by a map,
in which he gives his view of the world as it was then understood. It
was a body surrounded by water, and resting on nothing. "The earth,"
says Cosmos, "presses downward, but the igneous parts tend upward," and
between the conflicting forces the earth hangs suspended, like
Mohammed's coffin in the old story. The accompanying illustration (page
95) represents the earth surrounded by the ocean, and beyond this ocean
was "the land where men dwelt before the Deluge."
He then gives us a more accurate map, in detail, of the known world of
his day.
I copy this map, not to show how much more we know than poor Cosmos, but
because he taught that all around this habitable world there was yet
another world, adhering closely on all sides to the circumscribing walls
of heaven. "Upon the eastern side of this transmarine land he judges man
was created; and that there the paradise of gladness was located, such
as here on the eastern edge is described, where it received our first
parents, driven out of Paradise to that extreme point of land on the
sea-shore.
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