Brasseur de Bourbourg claims that these traditions, on both sides of the Atlantic, mean the same thing. The “island of Atlantis,” larger than Libya and Asia Minor together, was the extended portion of the American continent. These concurring traditions can not be devoid of historical significance. The constant references by ancient Greek writers to the Atlantes, who are always placed at the extremity of Europe and Africa, on the ocean which bears their name, may reasonably be regarded as vague and faded recollections of such a history connected with that ocean as that implied by what was said of their island in the annals of Egypt. In support of his view of what is meant by the traditions, he adds this philological argument: “The words _Atlas_ and _Atlantic_ have no satisfactory etymology in any language known to Europe. They are not Greek, and can not be referred to any known language of the Old World. But in the Nahuatl language we find immediately the radical _a_, _atl_, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, _Vocab. en lengua mexicana y castellana_, etc.) From this comes a series of words, such as _atlan_, on the border of or amid the water, from which we have the adjective _Atlantic_. We have also atlaça, to combat or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes _atlaz_. A city named _Atlan_ existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraba, in Darien, with a good harbor; it is now reduced to an unimportant pueblo named _Acla_.” In the third place, he quotes opinions expressed without any regard whatever to his theory to show that scientific men who have considered the question believe that there was formerly a great extension of the land into the Atlantic in the manner supposed. The first quotation is from Moreau de Saint-Mery’s “Description topographique et politique de la Partie Espagnole a l’Isle de Saint-Domingue,” published in 1796, as follows: