. . . It
is a type of the white race imperfectly developed."
We may regard this yellow race as the first and oldest wave from
Atlantis, and, therefore, reaching farthest away from the common source;
then came the Hamitic race; then the Japhetic.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ANTIQUITY OF SOME OF OUR GREAT INVENTIONS.
It may seem like a flight of the imagination to suppose that the
mariner's compass was known to the inhabitants of Atlantis. And yet, if
my readers are satisfied that the Atlantean, were a highly civilized
maritime people, carrying on commerce with regions as far apart as Peru
and Syria, we must conclude that they possessed some means of tracing
their course in the great seas they traversed; and accordingly, when we
proceed to investigate this subject, we find that as far back as we may
go in the study of the ancient races of the world, we find them
possessed of a knowledge of the virtues of the magnetic stone, and in
the habit of utilizing it. The people of Europe, rising a few centuries
since out of a state of semi-barbarism, have been in the habit of
claiming the invention of many things which they simply borrowed from
the older nations.
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