'The cross-cake,' says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 'was their
hieroglyph for civilized land;' obviously a land superior to their own,
as it was, indeed, to all other mundane territories; for it was that
distant, traditional country of sempiternal contentment and repose, of
exquisite delight and serenity, where Nature, unassisted by man,
produces all that is necessary for his sustentation."
And this land was the Garden of Eden of our race. This was the Olympus
of the Greeks, where
"This same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden and the fruits to grow."
In the midst of it was a sacred and glorious eminence--the umbilicus
orbis terrarum--"toward which the heathen in all parts of the world, and
in all ages, turned a wistful gaze in every act of devotion, and to
which they hoped to be admitted, or, rather, to be restored, at the
close of this transitory scene."
In this "glorious eminence" do we not see Plato's mountain in the middle
of Atlantis, as he describes it:
"Near the plain and in the centre of the island there was a mountain,
not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the
earth-born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he
had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter, who was named
Cleito.
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