PART V.
THE COLONIES OF ATLANTIS.
CHAPTER I.
THE CENTRAL AMERICAN AND MEXICAN COLONIES.
The western shores of Atlantis were not far distant from the West India
Islands; a people possessed of ships could readily pass from island to
island until they reached the continent. Columbus found the natives
making such voyages in open canoes. If, then, we will suppose that there
was no original connection between the inhabitants of the main-land and
of Atlantis, the commercial activity of the Atlanteans would soon reveal
to them the shores of the Gulf. Commerce implies the plantation of
colonies; the trading-post is always the nucleus of a settlement; we
have seen this illustrated in modern times in the case of the English
East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company. We can therefore readily
believe that commercial intercourse between Atlantis and Yucatan,
Honduras and Mexico, created colonies along the shores of the Gulf which
gradually spread into the interior, and to the high table-lands of
Mexico. And, accordingly, we find, as I have already shown, that all the
traditions of Central America and Mexico point to some country in the
East, and beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people;
and this region, known among them as "Aztlan," lived in the memory of
the people as a beautiful and happy land, where their ancestors had
dwelt in peace for many generations.
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