The most rational explanation of these and similar queries is seemingly a consideration of the almost world-wide tradition of a lost island, the home of a scientific world-wandering race. The legend of submerged Atlantis was related to Solon by an Egyptian priest as being historic fact, and the date of the final catastrophe was definitely set down by Plato from information given to Solon as having been about 9000 B.C. Solon was neither a fool himself nor the man to suffer fools gladly. It is admitted by geology that there actually existed a large island in the Atlantic during tertiary times, but this we are told is a pure coincidence and it is impossible to suppose any tradition existing of such an island or land. Science has very generally denied the credibility of tradition, yet tradition has almost invariably proved truer than contemporary scholarship. Scholarship denied the possibility of finding Troy, notwithstanding the steady evidence of tradition to the mound at Hissarlik where it was eventually disclosed. Even when Schliemann had uncovered the lost city the scientists of every European capital ridiculed his pretensions, and it was only gradually that they ungraciously yielded to the irresistible evidence of their physical senses. Science similarly denied the possibility of buried cities at the foot of Vesuvius, yet popular tradition always asserted the existence of Pompeii and Herculaneum; indeed, contemporary science has so consistently scouted the possibility of every advance in discovery that mere airy dismissal is not now sufficient to discredit either the Atlantean, or any other theory. From China to Peru one finds the persistent tradition of a drowned land, a story which is in itself so preposterous as unlikely to arise without some solid grounds of reality. Thierry has observed that legend is living tradition, and three times out of four it is truer than what we call history. Sir John Morris Jones would seemingly endorse this proposition, for he has recently contended that tradition is _itself a fact_ not always to be disposed of by the hasty assumption that all men are liars.[22] The Irish have their own account of the Flood, according to which three ships sailed for Ireland, but two of them foundered on the way. The Welsh version runs that the first of the perilous mishaps which occurred in Britain was "The outburst of the ocean 'Torriad lin lion,' when a deluge spread over the face of all lands, so that all mankind were drowned with the exception of Duw-van and Duw-ach, the divine man and divine woman, who escaped in a decked ship without sails; and from this pair the island of Prydain was completely re-peopled".