The Crystal City Under the Sea (17 page)
“Imbued with the pure traditions of Egyptian art, —for the learned and skilful among our ancestors, who came from the ancient land of Isis, had taken care to form their taste and guide their hand,—they created fresh wonders every day. In their free
The history of Atlantide.
cities magnificent temples were reared and consecrated to the gods.
“Life flowed on serene and majestic. This liberty of which thou hast spoken, as a blessing worth shedding rivers of blood to secure,—the only good worth living for, as my father has taught me from my cradle,—we possessed without fighting for. The most humble among us had rights observed by all, and he respected those of the greatest of his nation. The earth, young and fruitful, produced in abundance all the food required by her happy children. The air was pure, bright, and balmy. Oh, Charicles, we have often envied these happy mortals the light of Phœbus, the great blue heaven above their head, shady .forests, snow-capped mountains hiding their heads among the clouds! Neither thou nor I could know the delight of breathing the vivifying air of our native land. And yet, can we complain? What a marvel is our existence here! What a proof of the prodigious genius of our ancestors! Thou art a witness to it, stranger.
“Toward the middle of the twentieth Olympiad, during the rule of Aclepios, the happiness of the people of Atlantide was suddenly troubled by a terrible catastrophe. One morning Phoebus appeared, his face troubled, surrounded by lightning clouds. Then a ruddy cloud covered him entirely; an angry wind arose, and thunder was heard in the blackened sky. Every one with suppliant hands raised to heaven invoked the gods; but the sea waves, agitated with a convulsive movement, surged up in the port, as if unknown monsters of the deep were trying to escape from them. Portentous sounds were heard from a neighbouring mountain. For several days—a frightful phenomenon—its summit opened, and vomited volumes of black, tainted smoke. Suddenly, a sheaf of flame shot forth and rose to the clouds, which dissolved in torrents of rain. Down the sides of the mountain rushed torrents of red-hot lava, which burnt and destroyed the houses nestling on its verdant slopes. At the same time horrible crashing noises were heard underground, under the feet of the horrified inhabitants who were taking flight.
The earth opened and melted away, carrying with it thousands of people. On all sides the ground was torn asunder, uprooted trees strewed the ground, temples and dwellings fell to pieces with a crash,— and the heavens rained flames which burned the monuments which the cataclysm had spared. Huge sea waves submerged the coast, and absorbed and drowned all who sought to escape in that direction!
“The scourge lasted for many days. At last the elements calmed their rage; and, when the terrified people reckoned up their disasters, they perceived that the isthmus which had united Atlantide to the African continent no longer existed. A wide strait, a sea still convulsed with surging waves, replaced it, and what had been an enormous peninsula was from that time forward a sea-girt isle. As the days wore on those thus cut off were mourned by their friends left behind. Those who had met their death in the cataclysm, and whose disfigured bodies strewed the ground, were piously collected together. An immense funeral pile was erected on the newly formed seashore, and, amidst the lamentations of an entire people, their remains were consumed. Every family had lost a member, and some had altogether disappeared. In the place of sublime monuments, the work of our ancestors, heaps of ruins, blackened by the flames, were seen on all sides.
“But the hearts of the Atlantes were too noble to give way to discouragement. Each one, man, woman, and child, worked to the full measure of his strength, and, within a comparatively short time, the cities of Atlantide recovered their ancient splendour. The inhabitants took fresh courage, their grief was assuaged, and oblivion, that plant which my father tells me nourishes naturally in the human heart, took root in theirs; and, in time, the awful cataclysm which had separated them from the rest of their kind,— to which some among them, considering the near neighbourhood of barbarous African tribes, were soon reconciled,—in time, I say, this event became nothing more than a memory.
“But the anger of the gods, for some inscrutable reason, was aroused against the Atlantes. Though they had escaped the fire from heaven and that of the volcano, as well as the earthquake and the floods, another and more alarming phenomenon appeared. They perceived that the soil was subsiding. Slowly, surely, with a constant but hardly perceptible movement, our island sank. One day, the cliff, formed by the destruction of the isthmus, looked down from a height of a hundred cubits. The next day its appearance was less bold, and in the space of a few moons it could hardly be seen above the water level. The verdant fields near to it were lost to view in the caresses of the traitorous sea, and their inundated soil gave way, transformed into a miniature lake, under the feet of the unwary traveller. At first, they could not and would not believe it, but at length the truth was forced upon them.
“Our shores disappeared, little by little, beneath the waves. By insensible degrees the higher land of the interior followed. The most frightful death appeared inevitable. At first, as the truth dawned upon them, the unhappy Atlantes were filled with consternation. Public prayers were ordered to be made; sacrifices smoked on the altars. But the resistless enemy continued, nevertheless, to undermine, day by day, the foundation of their country. The seers then met in consultation. Our country had always been remarkable for the ingenious sagacity of her children. The most experienced of them worked for the space of two moons at their calculations; they took observations and averages, and they arrived at the conclusion that in ten or twelve years, at least, the soil of Atlantide would be entirely under water.
“Certainly the situation was appalling enough, and the stoutest hearts might well be dismayed at the prospect. Such was not the case, however. As soon as the result of their deliberations was made public, two parties were formed in the country. One determined to leave, to emigrate en masse, to seek a new country whither they could transport their civilization. Their decision, culminating in this memorable exodus, was the pivot on which our history rests. It was these colonists who rowed their galleys towards the sea to which the Pillars of Hercules are the entrance. We have preserved among us a tradition that they were the founders of Phoenicia.
“Others, more attached to their cherished Atlantide, —and they were, moreover, the students, the artists, and the nobles of the country, —resolved to maintain themselves where they were, come what might, still struggling against the encroachment of the water.
“Dikes were constructed, earthworks were thrown up, cyclopean barriers erected to shut out the ocean. Often, in my childish hours, I have contemplated, from a distance, these monster blocks of stone through the walls of the crystal prison in which I was born. I will show them to thee, stranger. Covered as they are to-day with sea-weed, which has woven for them a waving mantle, they are a proof, in their enormous size, of the gigantic labour of my ancestors. The encroachment of the sea was retarded, to some extent, by the formidable wall, but it did not arrest it. Instead of ten years, twenty or thirty years, perhaps, were gained. The disappearance of the doomed land was only a question of time,
“Among the most illustrious of the learned men of the country shone a sage, the pure and noble Archytas. Permit me to sing his praises, stranger; he was an ancestor of ours. Charicles and I feel in our veins the generous blood which beat through his noble heart.
“Admired by everybody, he displayed from early youth a surprising taste for scientific pursuits. What thou hast told us about Archimedes made me think of what I have been taught about Archytas. The most difficult problems were mere play to him. Always deep in the study of cosmic forces, he went through life as if in a dream, and the most ordinary incident was to him a pretext for sublime discoveries or lofty thought. He was never spoken of but in terms of the greatest respect, and, in the Atlantic Republic, he was justly accorded the highest rank. He did not use for himself the fortune with which fate had abundantly endowed him, except by consecrating colossal sums to the pursuit of his beloved science. Simply clothed in white linen, and using the floor for his couch at night, he lived on ears of wheat, milk, and fruit. Like the divine Pythagoras, of whom thou spakest this evening, he had a horror of shedding the blood of innocent creatures for his own subsistence. We, his descendants, follow this example. This sage cherished an ardent love for his country. His genius was roused and his pride
The second Exodus.
revolted at the idea of leaving it forever. Should man allow himself to be conquered by the blind forces of Nature? Never! He would struggle to the last, and come out conqueror from this strange duel! And before the astonished people Archytas unfolded a plan of unheard-of boldness. Strong in all the resources of the most refined science, armed with his great wealth, he had conceived the idea of an Atlantide which might continue to exist under the waves and defy their fury. This plan he realized by constructing, at his own expense, a bell-shaped town, a colossal crystal palace provided with everything necessary for social life, and where cultivation, industry, heat, and light should all be artificial, all the product of human effort.
“This palace, this submarine town, thou hast seen with thine own eyes, stranger. Thou breathest with ease the oxygen produced by the science of my great ancestor. Thou wouldst never have supposed that this wonder was due to the genius of a mere mortal? It is so, however; Archytas, my glorious ancestor, conceived and executed it quite alone. He regulated the minutest details of it even as he designed the entire plan, and the astonished people had nothing to do but to obey his directions. Everybody set himself to work. But that does not imply that the entire population accepted the fate of being ingulfed by the waves. No sooner was the project divulged, than an edict went forth ordering all the citizens of Atlantide to devote themselves to carrying out the plan of Archytas. No one refused, and the work made rapid strides. But every day some family declared that they would leave the country before it finally foundered.
“As soon as the most important part of the work was finished there was a second exodus. Admire, stranger, the generosity of those who failed in the courage necessary for plunging into the abyss. They did not leave till their help was no longer needed, but their nobleness of soul did not save them. A storm, which broke over them during their voyage, swallowed them up in the very waves they endeavoured to fly from. That, no doubt, explains the fact of the wonderful enterprise of Archytas always remaining a mystery to the inhabitants of the globe, as thou callest our planet, though I have always been taught to consider it a disc, and not a sphere. But, no doubt, I am very ignorant of many things, and I will apply myself with docility to thy lessons, young stranger, if thou wilt take pity on a child whose life has been spent in exceptional surroundings, and to whom the world outside is a mystery.
“Hardly more than twenty families were left with Archytas. The crystal arch had been built up on the highest point of the town, the citadel. From that point they had seen their territory decrease day by day. The sea slowly and insidiously gnawed at the coast. The cliffs had entirely disappeared, and they were followed by the houses and the temples, and the only thing to be seen at last was a sort of peak, crowned by the crystal bell. It subsided in its turn, and the oceanic winding-sheet enveloped all that remained of Atlantide. The glass cupola buried itself under the waste of waters, and the inmates saw the sea mounting slowly, slowly, through the transparent walls, until they could see nothing around them but the blue waves. Above them the azure dome of the heavens was visible for a little longer. Pale Phœbus darted his last rays through it, and finally, one evening, the fatal waters met overhead. All was over; Atlantide had disappeared forever from the land of the living!
“Archytas sustained every one by his courage and his example. Electricity, whose secret he had discovered, and which, as thou seest, still illumines us, came to replace, with its clear, pure brilliance, the rays of the god of day. The illuminated town still continued to fall gently to the bottom, where it has remained through the centuries, fixed like a colossal pearl in the cavity of an oyster shell. There she has defied the ravages of time, ignored by all the world, an unknown marvel, worthy of the admiration of the universe.