India from the Punjab, which lies to the north-west of that region; and that their traditions represent that they came there from the west, to wit, from the direction of Europe and Atlantis. CHAPTER XI. ATLANTIS RECONSTRUCTED. The farther we go back in time toward the era of Atlantis, the more the evidences multiply that we are approaching the presence of a great, wise, civilized race. For instance, we find the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Israelites, from the earliest ages, refusing to eat the flesh of swine. The Western nations departed from this rule, and in these modern days we are beginning to realize the dangers of this article of food, on account of the trichina contained in it; and when we turn to the Talmud, we are told that it was forbidden to the Jews, "because of a small insect which infests it." The Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, and others of the ancient races, practised circumcision. It was probably resorted to in Atlantean days, and imposed as a religious duty, to arrest one of the most dreadful scourges of the human race--a scourge which continued to decimate the people of America, arrested their growth, and paralyzed their civilization. Circumcision stamped out the disease in Atlantis; we read of one Atlantean king, the Greek god Ouranos, who, in a time of plague, compelled his whole army and the armies of his allies to undergo the rite. The colonies that went out to Europe carried the practice but not the disease out of which it originated with them; and it was not until Columbus reopened communication with the infected people of the West India Islands that the scourge crossed the Atlantic and "turned Europe," as one has expressed it, "into a charnal-house." Life-insurance statistics show, nowadays, that the average life and health of the Hebrew is much greater than that of other men; and he owes this to the retention of practices and beliefs imposed ten thousand years ago by the great, wise race of Atlantis. Let us now, with all the facts before us, gleaned from various sources, reconstruct, as near as may be, the condition of the antediluvians. They dwelt upon a great island, near which were other smaller islands, probably east and west of them, forming stepping-stones, as it were, toward Europe and Africa in one direction, and the West India Islands and America in the other. There were volcanic mountains upon the main island, rising to a height of fifteen hundred feet, with their tops covered with perpetual snow. Below these were elevated table-lands, upon which were the royal establishments. Below these, again, was "the great plain of Atlantis." There were four rivers flowing north, south, east, and west from a central point. The climate was like that of the Azores, mild and pleasant; the soil volcanic and fertile, and suitable at its different elevations for the growth of the productions of the tropical and temperate zones.